Commended to the grace of God

Good morning. As we look at the last hours of the new year, this year and then on into the new year, one of the things that comes to mind, this is actually a perfect wrap-up to the new year because this is the last passage addressing Paul's first missionary journey.

And it brings a lot of things together. And so it also introduces the beginning of next year, chapter 15, which will deal with some very important and relevant issues for us. And so I'm really glad and excited about the content that we have here as we look at the close of Paul's first missionary journey. And at one point, actually, where Courtney began reading to us, it almost looks like you could stop the book of Acts right there. So we will take a look at that and take one step at a time through this.

One of the things to point out is this passage is full of some really big and important themes. One of the sets of words that it has in there is the faith, which is one that is exceedingly important. Words that pair of words that faith starts in Acts chapter 6 and continues on into the book of Revelation repeatedly Carried out and not just you know by the Apostle Paul And not just by Luke here in Acts, but all the way into the book of Revelation It's continued the faith and we'll talk about what that means the gospel is another one the word is The kingdom of God is another one, the grace of God, the disciples, and had made many disciples is another one that shows up here.

Paul and Barnabas returned to the church that sent them, Antioch, that is at the end of the passage there. Big, really massive issues are going to surface before Paul goes on another journey, and we're going to see, for example, Paul and Barnabas Here, it just seemed like inseparable partners are going to part ways, and we're going to see why and what significance that has. Paul and Barnabas, in this case, in this passage, appoint elders in each church. This first missionary journey, just think of what it's like. Here's Paul and Barnabas. They go into each city, and where do they start? They start with the Jews. They go to the synagogues first.

So as Paul wrote in Romans, and so here's a pitch for the Romans elective, right? In Romans chapter 1, he's going to say they go to the Jew first and then to the Greek, as he puts it, that's the representative Gentile. This is the dominant Gentile. So the Jew first, and even here on the first missionary journey, what does he do? He goes in each city to the Jews first, and we're going to see that pattern again as Paul goes on his second missionary journey. Here is Barnabas, who is, by the way, he always gets called Barnabas after the first place he's introduced. Never again does he get called Joseph.

But son of encouragement. This must have been such a prominent characteristic of this man that that's what stood out. And even after his initial introduction, here's this guy's name. Then he gets called Son of Encouragement every single time after that. But he is a Levite, which tells us this.

Levites were ones who worked in the temple regularly. They had regular assignments in the temple. They did everything that was not specifically assigned to the priests. So here is Barnabas, who would have been very knowledgeable about everything having to do with what goes on in the temple. So here's Barnabas the Levite, the son of encouragement.

Along with him, Paul the former Pharisee. And Paul, as we'll see later on in Acts, actually still claims to be a Pharisee. But a former Pharisee, he is from a place that was considered the apex of worldly wisdom. We think of where is Paul from? He is Paul of Tarsus, right? Well, what doesn't particularly strike us as we hear that is, okay, that's the city where he's from. Tarsus was considered to be, this is one of the capital places in the world for worldly wisdom. The tutor of Augustus Caesar was from Tarsus because they wanted to pick the best of the best.

So here's Paul, who has this great background as a Pharisee and with worldly wisdom, and he gets sent along with Barnabas on this missionary journey. They go both to Cyprus, which is the home place of Barnabas, and then on into Galatia. And we're going to see as we proceed, this place, Galatia, continues to be important all the way into Paul's third missionary journey. John Mark goes with them through Cyprus and then heads back home.

Some have said, well, he's a mama's boy. Well, exactly what the problem is. We'll take a look at that later. But the Lord's going to do a miraculous thing and a wonderful thing here in the life of this guy, John Mark. And so we'll be looking at that as we proceed through Acts. Going through the cities of Galatia one time through and then he makes a return trip through each city as we'll see here in this passage.

There are also a great many phenomenal applications here. The passage and the passages before and after have a lot of very critical applications for us in the body of Christ. Specific to the church at large and specific to churches such as Holly Hills Bible Church. So this passage has many essential applications actually to parents and families and the people who grew up in them. It even has applications to individual believers, so we'll be taking a look at that. Alright, so here we have the map. This is the larger map showing Paul's first missionary journey.

I believe it's on page one of your handout, or I sure hope so, right? By the way, we've had some interesting technical difficulties lately. If things didn't quite come across, sorry about that, one of the things we've discovered is there's a hardware incompatibility between the new computer that I had to get because my old one died and this one. So, if things don't wrap quite correctly, and by the way, I'd never find out until we get there, right? You'll understand why.

Nonetheless, here is the map here and it shows Paul's first missionary journey and the path that he took starting in Antioch and then heading through Cyprus and then in this return loop as you see here in the big picture and then back to Antioch. He goes from there to Jerusalem and we'll see where that story fits in when we step into chapter 15. Here's the chronology from mid-June to August of 49 AD is the return visit to the churches and then taking the month of September 49 AD to return to Antioch of Syria. One of the points of clarification being there's Antioch of Syria where they started from and Antioch of Pisidia which is among the churches and cities of Galatia.

So here is Acts 14.19, But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, having won over the crowds.

They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. And thus endeth the book of Acts. Right? He's dead. We're through. Well, maybe not. So what happens is, you know, actually the Gentiles who were involved here in this stoning, that was not their typical way of doing things, and so it was probably at the leadership and under the encouragement and the example of the Jews that they reacted with this.

You can imagine, here's Paul and Barnabas, they're trying to spread the gospel, the people instead come and try to make a sacrifice of them, mistaking them for Zeus and Hermes, and they say, oh no! And by the way, what do they do? What's their response in addition to just verbally Saying oh, no, that's not the case. They start tearing their clothes and and of course to the Gentile mind You know, what are you tearing your clothes for?

You know, this doesn't make any sense Why would Hermes and Zeus tear their clothes and so that the reaction there turns these Gentiles who once wanted to worship and Offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas now are turning around and joining the Jews in a reaction to stone Paul to death and So they began stoning him. The typical thing, stoning, was to be done outside the city, and so that's what they did.

And then supposing him to be dead, that's one of the things to be looking at here. It looked to them as if Paul was dead. Now, we could ask more details. Was Paul actually dead and was he resurrected? Was Paul just playing dead so they wouldn't throw more rocks? You know, we really don't know all the details.

But that's what they get. And so here's Paul. As far as they can tell, the guy's dead. Their stoning has done the job. They're through and they walk back into the city. So, here they are just looking at it closely. They're ready to go back through the various cities.

Here's Acts 14.20. But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city. The next day he went away with Barnabas and Derby. to Derby so here's Barnabas they head off to Derby And that's going to take a few days What's kind of interesting is to think of how long did it take for the Jews to get from Antioch and Iconium to Lystra up to a week Can you imagine these Jews saying I'm going to get out of my way? for up to a week of time each way and to go and pursue Paul. They have to be really rabid and very, very upset with him in order to have taken that much time. Aside from any time they spent in Lystra, they were going to take essentially half a month to get to Lystra and then get back home.

The term disciples is used three times in this one passage. From here to the third use of the term, there's a slight difference in what it means. We'll take a look at that. Disciples may be brand new believers, and in some cases we'll see this word disciples, and it refers to someone who is a brand new Christian.

They have just believed. Or they may be up to a number of years old in the Lord, as we'll see later as we proceed through the book of Acts. They may be Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or not. And what we see there is the truth from Galatians that neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, in Christ all are the same.

And one of the things that's kind of amazing, all it says is the believers came and stood around. Now at first you think standing around, that's not all that great. We don't know what was happening when they were standing around. Was that standing around? Were they standing around praying? Were they standing around singing hymns? We don't know.

Some of you know that my grandmother was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji. and even to the point where they had right there in the capital city, Suba, you could go there and get chicken meat and beef and you could get pork and then right there in the market you could buy people meat in Suba. So that was where she went to be a missionary, right among the cannibals. But one of the things that happened towards the end of her time there, she got the flu, and it was one of those really, really bad flus that was killing thousands of people. And as she first just kind of went into almost a coma, but as she was waking up from it, the very young believers were all standing around her and singing hymns.

And they prayed for the sister, right? And so that's kind of what makes me, you know, as I look at this, I'm thinking, we don't know what they're doing, but it could be similar whether they're praying for him, singing hymns, whatever. We're not told exactly what else they did besides the standing around, but it could be those other things. But Paul got up and entered Lystra. Can you imagine? I mean, he just got up. And again, we could ask questions about what transpired. We don't know what the answer is.

So the very next day, Paul and Barnabas left for the city of Derby, probably a really good idea, which took about three days. Imagine if you had been somebody who had tried to stone Paul, and now you see him walking around, maybe with a few scabs and bruises and whatnot. I see him walking around, that would be rather disturbing. So taking off for Derby is probably a really good idea. It would take about three days if they traveled straight through. It just went immediately from Lister to Derby.

Here's Acts 14, 21 and 22. After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, here's that the faith term again, and saying through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

Now this passage here brings up all sorts of interesting issues. One is they preach the gospel, it says. Preach the gospel to be believed if a person is to be saved and Drawing this out of 1st Corinthians 15 3 & 4 is a place where it's very clear Christ died for our sins was buried and rose again. This is the content of the gospel to be believed And that's critical that we understand that there are a great many within Christendom who are presenting alternative Gospels or variations in the gospel And so this is what they were passing along to people. This is the gospel to be believed. This is the gospel in Acts.

It's also called by other terms, which we mentioned earlier, the Word, the Word of God or the Word of the Lord, the message about Jesus. We have a listing there on the second line of all the places where the Word of the Lord is used, starting in Acts chapter 8. And by that time, it's not even among the Gentiles yet, all the way into chapter 19, which, as we'll see, goes into Paul's last missionary journeys. Here's Matthew 28, 16, and 20. This is at the end of Jesus' time on earth. He is up in Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had designated. Probably that's Mount Arbel, which is right above Magdala. So that mountain there is what he's talking about.

When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some were doubtful. Can you imagine? Here are Here are the disciples. We're talking about the 11 disciples. They're still struggling with doubt. They've seen multiple times. They've seen Jesus. They're still just, they can't believe it. Isn't that astounding? Why can't they believe it? Hmm. It's very interesting. One is they didn't understand. They didn't understand what He'd been telling them for essentially years. But secondly, secondly, they didn't have the Holy Spirit yet.

So it says there in verse 18, And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. In verse 19, I'm sure many, many sermons have been given, appeals to sign up missionaries.

Go! Go! Go! And so you sign people up, and go is not an imperative. Out of this whole passage, the imperative is make disciples of all the nations, right? Go is more in the nature of as you're going. So it assumes that they will be going, okay? But it's not a command that they will go. So, as you're going, therefore, make disciples of all the nations. So we'll talk about what does that mean. But it is the imperative that's in here. And then, so it continues on.

So, initially, making disciples is salvation, right? As time goes on, however, making disciples is also, as you see in verse 20, teaching. It's teaching. So after Matthew 28 and 19 and 20, this is the only time that the Greek word for make disciples occurs in the rest of the New Testament. What do I mean by that? is here is this rather rare Greek word, it's one verb, make disciples. It is used three times in Matthew and only this one here in Matthew 28, 19 and 20 does it apply to the church. In the rest of the New Testament, this make disciples is only used here. Now, so the question is, Does that mean that all the rest of the apostles did not obey the command to make disciples? Did they mess it? Did they miss it? Did they mess up? No, they did not.

But this is one, Paul and Barnabas are the only ones who explicitly are said to fulfill the command. The others did as well. As a matter of fact, the command continues on. It wasn't just for the eleven apostles who heard it then, but it's for the church, as you see in the rest of the passage, all the way to the end of the church age. So, one of the things we see is that they returned. Paul and Barnabas, on their exit from the first missionary journey, went back to the cities of Lystra and Iconium and Antioch, and as they did, carried out three things, it says in verse 22. Let's take a look at what those three things are.

It strengthened the souls of the disciples who had believed, and we could take the meme here, I'm here to pump you up, Arnold says, right? That's not exactly what they're doing, is it? They're not here to pump them up and turn them all into weightlifters. But it is strengthening, not the bodies, but the souls of the disciples. that it specifically points to building them up spiritually. It's not even just an emotional, let's get you pumped up, it's not a physical pumping up, but it strengthens the souls of the disciples because it's the soul, the inner part, spiritually speaking, where the building up needs to take place.

Paul and Barnabas encouraged them to continue in the faith, and especially we've got a guy named Barnabas, whose name means son of encouragement, that's exactly what you'd expect, right? Encouraging them to continue in the faith. We'll talk a little bit about the faith. Also, warning them of many tribulations. And this is a key thing that we'll be taking a look at as well here. So, the faith in various places, in Acts, It means, initially, just presenting the gospel. In some context, that's what you see.

And what is the content of the gospel to be believed in order for a person to be saved? And you see the apostles explaining the content of the gospel to different mindsets. In some cases, you can read through Acts and see them explaining the gospel. Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again in a Jewish context.

And as we'll see more and more as we go through the book of Acts, explaining that in a context that the Gentiles would understand. In the largest sense, the words the faith refers to the entire content of the teachings of the apostles. Probably the classic passage is the book of Jude, one chapter long, verse 3. I urge that you contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." Paul and Barnabas encouraged them to continue in the faith.

This is very important, and especially as we're looking forward to 2018. This is very important for 2018. I've got to tell you, through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Now, a few things to get cleared up here. You will hear a number of people talk, oh, the Kingdom of God, that's the Church, right? No, and this particularly makes that point. These people had already become a part of the Church, right? These people had already become a part of the Church. They weren't going to later on enter the Kingdom of God if it were the Church, right? The Church is not the Kingdom, as many continue to speak now.

The kingdom of God is yet future after the rapture and the seven-year tribulation. So this is what he's referring to. So all of us in the body of Christ will come back with Christ as he establishes the kingdom. So if you're a believer here today, you will come back with Christ, and in that way you will enter the kingdom.

But not now, and not yet. Meanwhile now, we can count on Many tribulations, but not THE tribulation. Okay? You will come across people who are saying, boy, you've got to get ready for the tribulation. Right? So there are people who teach that. You've got to get ready for the tribulation. You better start stocking up food and guns and gold. What are the three G's? God, guns, and gold. Right?

You better start stocking them up because it's going to get really, really nasty. And you better get ready for the tribulation. You know what's going to happen? If they really are believers, but go around teaching people that, what's going to happen? They're going to get raptured out. And the God part, yeah, that's good. How many guns and gold items are going to go with you when you get raptured? None. Zip. Nada. Right? So, wrong picture.

But this understanding that many tribulations must enter the Kingdom of God is very important. Think about this. For the Jews, the Jews that Paul had been talking to, their idea, and probably the classic passage is Deuteronomy 28, if you're really obeying God, the Jews were taught, then life is going to be nice. If you're really obeying God, the Jews were taught, then life is going to be nice. You won't be going through tribulations. because you're obedient. So the Jews would all have that thought as well. Among the Gentiles, with the pagan gods, if you please the pagan gods, they'll make your life nice.

So they both had to make a huge contrast here. And that contrast was to tell people in advance, You're going to go through tribulations. You need to understand that. If you're of Jewish background, you need to understand that because you have been taught that if you're obedient to the law, you won't go through trials. You won't go through tribulations. If you're a Gentile, and they've been taught that if you please the gods, then they'll be nice to you. then that's a problem. But what he's telling them is, you will go through tribulations, you will go through difficulties here, and it doesn't automatically mean that God's not happy with you. Why? Because God has a different purpose in it. So that's one of the reasons why they would bring this up.

Just to kind of get the time frame, here is what the Bible lays out. The first coming of Christ ended with his death, Christ's death and burial and resurrection. He spent 40 days then in various appearances and then ascended and was seated with the Father. We now, starting in Acts chapter 2, are in what's called the Church Age. The Church Age will end, and I hope it's today, The church age will end with the rapture. All the church will be taken up to be with the Lord. This is the description of what's taking place.

Now, wouldn't it be cool if you... I don't know if this is going to happen, but wouldn't it be cool if everybody is looking at the ball and they're counting 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, and everybody is getting ready to rejoice. The ball comes down and a whole bunch of people disappear. That would be cool, you know? And by the way, they would be really distracted too, right? Oh, here's one other thing.

How did we get started in New Year's traditions? Well, the Jews, they've got one story about their Jewish New Year because their calendar was actually given to them by Moses. But, for the Gentiles, you know why they celebrated New Year's? The Gentiles celebrated New Year's because New Year's was when the gods were getting together to make their plans for the year, and you wanted to do things to please the gods so that the gods would make nice plans for you. So that's what New Year's celebrations were all about, and that's kind of the strange thing that we've inherited. Go ahead and celebrate New Year's, but if the Lord raptures us first, then I would say don't worry about it. And you probably won't be.

Okay, Acts 14.23, And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Alright? Now, this introduces, this isn't the first mention of elders, but we're going to see it show up again. This is the first time in Acts that we will see elders of a church mentioned outside of the elders in the church in Jerusalem. There's lots of things that we could say.

One of the things that's interesting is that we don't know for sure, except for Jesus' half-brother James, we don't know for sure the name of any elder in the entire New Testament. That is pivotal. Because what happens is, in our modern era, we tend to put a pastor on a pedestal. In some cases, you may know the name of a pastor and you don't even know the name of the church. In some cases, you may know the name of a pastor, and then I would ask you, can you name any of the other elders? Right? And so, this is a biggie. In the New Testament, having high profile, very popular, very well-known elders was not the pattern. Not the pattern.

But one of the things that comes out very clearly in this passage, it's elders plural in every single church. See that? Elders plural in every single church. A plurality of elders is what Scripture repeatedly spells out for us. Early on, we see indications of what would be made even more clear about the elders in the rest of the New Testament. So this is the first time we see elders, plural, in each church, singular, and talking about that outside of Jerusalem.

But a couple of very important introductory points here. Number one, they took the appointment of elders seriously and spiritually. One, elders were not somebody who just had a good business background. Elders were not simply a board of reference. I heard of one church that appointed an elder because he had a big business background, but his office was down at the local saloon, right? So this is not a good criteria. It is, instead, a serious spiritual appointment. And we'll look into that more because we're going to run across this subject of elders more often here. Thank you.

Secondly, they appointed elders plural in each church rather than a single elder in each church. particularly Baptist churches, but not exclusively. What they tend to use as a model is they'll appoint a pastor, right? And then there'll be deacons, but not a plurality of pastors, shepherds, elders, overseers, right? And we see here just starting off and continuing through the book of Acts and actually through the rest of the New Testament. Elders are plural. in each church rather than a single elder who is a dictator and calls the shots, right?

One other thing here is we mentioned the tip of the iceberg. You've probably seen, as we show here in the picture, the idea that here's the tip of the iceberg. What we see on the surface is often a very small amount compared to the ice that is underneath the surface. This is in the case of icebergs, right?

The first instance of the appointment of elders in Acts is the tip of the iceberg. We'll see more about what the rest of the New Testament says about elders as we continue through the book of Acts, and it gives some very clear and important insights into elders.

We're also going to see more about elders in the chapters just ahead of us, particularly in Acts chapters 15 and 20. Those two particularly, and especially chapter 20. We're going to see some really critical insights. In chapter 20, we'll revisit elders in much more detail, because the chapter itself provides quite a bit of detail. Chapter 20, just to talk ahead, is this is where the Apostle Paul meets for, as far as he knows, the last time with all the elders from the church at Ephesus. And that'll be a valuable one, too, for those who are studying Ephesians and the Ephesians elective. Acts 14, 24 and 25.

They passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. And it sounds like a couple of diseases, doesn't it? Right? Okay. But, you know, probably not. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, They went down to Atilia, and I say those either are diseases or good drug names. But anyway, so it's mostly, however, here, a replacement.

The path of Paul and Barnabas was mostly a retracement of just exactly the same places they had been. And I think this is critical for us to see. As we continue through the book of Acts, we're going to find a few patterns. One, in this first journey, they retraced back through many of these churches in Galatia. Immediately after this time, Paul is going to write the book of Galatians to these people. I mean, immediately after, he's going to write to the Galatians. Why? Because somebody's coming in and selling them legalism. You've got to follow the law of Moses. He's going to write the book of Galatians, and then we're going to see, as we get into chapter 15, there is a church council in Jerusalem where they deal further with the legalism issue.

So, Paul and Barnabas and each of these very young churches would encourage them to continue in grace, strengthening and building the church body in each place they went. By the way, with the book of Galatians, he was writing to believers who were no more than two years old in the Lord by the time he wrote the book. And in many cases, the believers were only months old in the Lord. Even the elders that had been appointed were only months old in the Lord.

Here's Acts 14.26, from there they sailed to Antioch, from which they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had accomplished. So they went back to Antioch.

One of the terms we use is, what is the sending church? And so this is a key thing. In this case, it was a single church. Very often in today's missionary activity, we have sending churches, and that tends to be the pattern. But nonetheless, going back to the sending church, how did things turn out? What happened? What were the things that God did, etc.? ?

Now, we see at the outset, this is going back to the first verses of Acts chapter 13, the Holy Spirit had distinctly and clearly led them to send Paul and Barnabas on this first missionary journey together. The sending of Paul and Barnabas on this mission was not only clearly directed by the Holy Spirit, both before they were sent from Antioch and as they first went on their way, was founded on the grace of God and not founded upon the law of Moses. They weren't there to spread the law of Moses among people.

Acts 14, 27, and 28, when they had arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. And they spent a long time with the disciples. So, here they are, they've come back to Antioch, Antioch of Syria. This is the sending church. It ends up being a pivotal church not only in this, the first missionary journey, but subsequent missionary journeys as we see as well. So this was quite a church in terms of having a mindset for missions and sending Paul out particularly again and again.

And so we'll come back to Antioch as we proceed to the book of Acts. Now, one of the things it talks about here, verse 26, talks about the things that were accomplished in the first missionary journey of Paul, which included Barnabas this time around, right? But, in verse 27, there is a monumental point. If we stopped in verse 26, we'd think, well, Paul and Barnabas did all this great stuff. How did they do it? How did they do all these great things? Even though it looked like Paul and Barnabas did, in fact, accomplish a lot, it was God who did it through them.

This is key. We can do a great many things thinking we're doing something for God, but unless it's God doing it through us, it's for nothing. It's for naught. Real interestingly, this terminology, God opened a door of faith, this word door is used in this way only a few times in the New Testament, this being one of them.

The other two times the Apostle Paul uses it, 1 Corinthians 16.9 and Colossians 4.3, are two instances where the Apostle Paul talks about a door of opportunity, this door of faith. And so it's one very likely that Dr. Luke had gotten this term and this word picture from Paul himself.

It was God opening the door of opportunity or asking for God to open the door of opportunity. This is a big point in determining God's will. What is God's individual will for us or for a group of believers? So this brings forward principles of discovering God's will. Number one, is God opening the door of opportunity? Is the door open because God is opening it, or is the door just open because I need to exercise discernment? So a very, very valuable thing here is to look at what door of opportunity is the Lord open.

Secondly, are we praying for God to do so? The Apostle Paul, and he wrote in 1 Corinthians and in Colossians, both cases there was talk about prayer regarding opening of the doors. Is it possible that we as believers can force a door open? Yeah, it is possible. Did the Apostle Paul want to force a door open? No. It was very much asking for God to open the door.

We've talked in recent weeks here about the big picture on God's will. We've said that God's sovereign will is fixed and irreversible, and it includes your position and possessions in Him. And that's one reason why I'm very excited about this next year, where we've got all three electives have a significant, significant part of the teaching is on our position and our possessions in Christ. Very big and very important.

Next, God's moral will is revealed in scriptures and intended to be lived by the life of Christ. This, by the way, is the difference between living life under the law and living under grace. It's not that somehow Christians are no longer moral people. It's not that Christians are somehow continuing to live under the law in order to be moral. But how life gets lived is the critical issue. This last one is the one that comes out here as important.

God's individual will consists mostly of learning to make wise decisions with godly wisdom rather than worldly wisdom, but it's done with the idea, and we'll talk about it more here, it's done with the idea that God opens doors. We want to make sure that it's God opening the doors.

So the disciples and made disciples, we look at that. This passage speaks of Paul and Barnabas having made many disciples. Being a disciple of Christ starts with believing the gospel so as to be saved. Is there somebody who is a disciple of Christ who is not saved? Not happening. I don't care what the church name is. I don't care what kind of title you give it. They must begin in believing the gospel so as to be saved.

But next, Making disciples has been trusted to us in many different roles. Of course, it starts off with evangelism in the body of Christ. There are those who have a gift of evangelism, and by the way, we again tend to look at high-profile evangelists, but it isn't necessarily the case, right? That's kind of our modern era where we look at, you know, what are some names of high-profile evangelists? But there are those that the Lord has gifted with evangelism, and you may not know their names, but the Lord has gifted them nonetheless. but also the roles God has entrusted each of us in the church and even as parents.

The opportunity to make disciples. When we talk about making disciples, what does that mean? Does that mean we just set people into learning a lot of Bible passages? Does that mean that we go and tell people, you know, you've got to do this and this and this and this? No. So where is being a disciple aimed at? Jesus made the aim of being a disciple of His quite clear.

End of the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This was on the night before he was betrayed. John 13, 35, Jesus says that my disciples will love one another. And that is how we are to be identified. This is how others will know that you love one another. Next, in John 15, 1-8, Jesus says that my disciples abide in intimacy and constant dependence upon the Lord Jesus.

We saw that in Acts 14, 3, and they spoke in reliance upon the Lord. So we've seen that in this very chapter here. When the Apostle Paul and Barnabas went out into these various circumstances that the Lord had them in and were spreading the gospel, they did so with reliance upon the Lord. They depended upon Him. There was personal intimacy with Christ and constant dependence upon the Lord Jesus.

So as we look forward to 2018, and it's quite possible we may never get there, And I would be happy with that. But as we look forward to 2018, just like we've seen here, that the Lord is going to be opening doors of opportunity for us. And we need to look and ask the Lord, Lord, make it clear that this is your door of opportunity. I'm not just forcing my way into something. The Lord may be presenting something with us in order for us to exercise wisdom and discernment. But in fact, as we look ahead here, We need to look at what is the Lord providing in the way of opportunity and ask that question and to pray about it. And to look at what is the Lord aiming at. The Lord does not want me to just go through the rules and follow the rules and go through the steps.

He has called us to fellowship with His Son. He has called us to express love to one another, not because it's just on the list of good things to do. but because those who depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ and have an intimate relationship with him will express that love that is characteristic of his disciples.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the tremendous opportunity that you've opened before us. And we don't know when you will come for us. We hope it's today. But if not, Lord, we look for you to provide the opportunity and an open door, and that you be making that apparent so that we will walk through those doors of opportunity that you have prepared. We thank you for your faithfulness through the course of this year, and we can count upon your faithfulness in the times to come, however long that be. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.