return to Antioch

So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.
Acts 11:25-26

There is a lot crammed into these two verses. Acts 11 is a turning point in the history of the church. It documents the overwhelming shift that took place when the church embraced the gospel mission to the gentiles. No longer was faith in Christ just an offshoot brand of Judaism limited to the synagogue. At this point, it took on the identity as a world religion by embracing the mission to the gentiles. And the flashpoint became the city of Antioch.

The church leaders in Jerusalem receive a report back from Peter and his party that gentiles have come to faith in the episode of Cornelius' conversion. Their conclusion is straightforward: "Then to the gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life." (Acts 11:18). The church that scattered after Stephen's death began preaching the gospel to gentiles and greek-speakers with the result that a strong new church emerged in the gentile city of Antioch. Barnabus is sent by the apostles to investigate this new work. As Barnabus supported this new church, the gospel expanded and even more gentiles were coming to faith. The work of discipleship was more than one leader could manage. Barnabus remembered God's call on a man who has dropped off the scene. He travels to Tarsus (we don't know how long this took) and tracks down Saul. He brings him to Antioch and for the next year they faithfully teach the hungry new disciples.

The church at Antioch developed its own identity. The incredible response and growth in this new mission field, combined with the powerful teaching under Barnabus and Saul create a new distinction in the gentile world. The people of the city begun to take notice of these people who seem like "little Jesuses". The give them a nickname: Christians - "little Christs". And the church embraces this derisive title as a noble calling. The growing church in Antioch became the model of ministry for the advance of the gospel. And in the process the entire body of believers gained a new identity.

There is so much to unpack here, but in the interest of brevity I will just mention the powerful principles in these two verses. 1) The exponential power of the gospel is clearly demonstrated. If we preach it in the context of the Spirit's leading, lives can change, and sometimes the effect will be incredibly responsive in a short amount of time. Antioch was sort of an "instant church". 2) There is something to be said for team ministry here. Barnabus knew Saul was just the kind of man God had raised up for ministry among gentiles. He dropped everything, left Antioch, and did not return until he had Saul along with him to assist in the endeavors. Getting the team right was crucial to the success of the church. It was after that happened that the large church grew into a healthy and strong church that was noticed by its surrounding society. 3) Christianity gets noticed when it is authentically lived out in its culture. In the case of Antioch believers, it resulted in a new ridicule that the church embraced as a name that framed their mission! 4) There is witness to the strategic power of God. Saul was set on the back burner because of the controversy he had been causing. God led Barnabus to bring him back at just the right time for a task that built the church to a point that Saul was nearly ready to launch out in a dynamic ministry that would bring the gospel to the heart of Roman world. Like stages in a rocket, Antioch would take the gospel to the point where missions trips to the gentiles would create the modern church as we know it.


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simple gospel, simple faith, elegant beauty

And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
Acts 10:42-43

Peter has literally been led by God to the home of a God-fearing gentile centurion in Caesarea. There, in a gentile home, in a predominantly gentile city, Peter's Jewish prejudices have been stripped away and the gospel is all that remains. It is clear to him that Jesus' command to preach to everyone includes non-Jews. He is obeying the Lord's command by telling Cornelius about the Lord's command!

What He tells those assembled there is what still comprises the gospel today. Christians preach (proclaim) it and back it up with their own experience (testify) as they help others come to an understanding of eternal salvation through Jesus Christ. The elements of it are straightforward: 1) Jesus was appointed by God as the judge of the living and the dead. This is the outcome of Lordship at its must essential. All people will give an account of themselves to Jesus Christ. 2) The scriptures (both Old and New Testament) teach this clearly. One can demonstrate through the biblical texts that Jesus accomplished what God had sent Him to do. 3) People must believe the gospel by faith in order to receive forgiveness of sin through Christ. The element of faith, the object of faith, and the exercise of faith is necessary for salvation. It is not what I do, but what I believe about what Jesus has done that results in forgiveness of sins and salvation.

The impact in this story was profound. As soon as these gentiles turned by faith to Christ, God evidenced it to Peter and the Jews with him by pouring out His Holy Spirit on the gentiles. It was clear that they had the same life-changing relationship with Jesus that all believers had. There was no reason not to accept them into the Body of Christ. Peter immediately suggested that they be baptized. A new era in God's work starts in the house of a soldier in Caesarea. From this point on, the gospel begins to move into the world, one people group at a time.

I enjoy this simple look at the elegance of the gospel. It is not complicated. It is direct. It appeals to the deepest of human needs, but requires no forms, no disclaimers, no layers of complicated efforts. Faith believes that Jesus is Lord and has accomplished the forgiveness of my sins. And that faith launches out in obedience to the Lord in a life that is dramatically changed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I can think of nothing more beautiful, more emotional, more powerful, or more amazing to be a part of than this!


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many believers, one church

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
Acts 9:31

The book of Acts is punctuated with these little pauses to measure the growth of the gospel. And they show us the growing maturity of the young church in the process of moving the gospel forward into new regions and to new people. At this point, the church has broken through the walls of Jerusalem and pretty much the entire Holy Land has now been responsive to the gospel. From north to south, Israel has had the gospel preached to it. There are hundreds of little congregations in the towns and villages around the countryside, and important urban centers have a strong central core of believers: Jerusalem, Samaria, Damascus, Caesarea, and Joppa all have churches that have become centers of gospel proclamation and outreach.

And in chapter nine of Acts God does the unthinkable: He converts the fiercest of persecutors into the most aggressive of evangelists. In Saul, a new energy for advancing the gospel and building up the church is born. There was a lull in the attacks on the gospel when God in mercy saved the chief enemy of Christianity. This was the "peace" mentioned in this growth survey. That stability in the absence of the threat of Saul allowed for believers to be built into solid disciples who did two things: They walked in the fear of the Lord and they experienced the comfort of the Holy Spirit. This led to more gospel outreach and a multiplication of the message.

When believers really fear the Lord, the gospel advances. Why? Because they realize just Who Jesus is, what He has done, and what He wants from His followers. Fear is not a cowering in a corner, but rather a healthy respect and awe that moves one to worship the Lord and obey His commands. Real worship leads to an advance of the gospel, not a retreat into a comfortable assembly.

And they were not alone in the move to advance the gospel. The Holy Spirit of God was comforting and encouraging them to multiply the message and grow new churches. All of this was being directed and empowered by God Himself as believers grew and obeyed their Lord's command to take the gospel forward to all who would hear it.

One other point of note from this passage... It is a point of theology, but it is beautiful. The text uses the word "church" (ekklesia) in the singular to refer to the actions of all the believers in the entire geographical extent of gospel outreach. The oldest texts of this passage are consistent in this usage. The entire body of Christian faith began to be referred to as "the church". The assembly, the ekklesia, began to be the term to refer to all of Christian faith. There are many believers, but one church, one faith, and one Lord over them. For those who think celebrating diversity is a liberal value, you might want to look to the true celebration of it in the biblical text. It has been going on through the grace of God for over two thousand years in the church that Jesus founded. And it has been going on in lives that have been changed by that grace. One God gets celebrated. One Savior is praised in song in His church. He is the center around which the diversity makes one beautiful church! Diversity without the center is chaotic and eventually celebrates sin. Diversity within the focus of the central saving work of Christ creates a unity and a joy that is the vibrant, holy life of the church!


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comfort zones hinder the gospel

Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.
Acts 8:25

The concentric circles of gospel impact keep growing. So far the gospel message has been a purely Jewish phenomenon. It has primarily been centered in Jerusalem. But that is changing. A persecution rose throughout the church after the martyrdom of Stephen and the scattered disciples kept at the preaching the gospel. The result of the persecution was continued growth and maturity of the church. Philip winds up in Samaria and proclaims Christ to the people who had traditionally been the religious enemies of the conservative Jews. The gospel is warmly received.

The apostles travel to Samaria to investigate the report, and have the good news confirmed, even with the dilemma of Simon's offer to purchase the gift of the Holy Spirit's power as part of the experience. The gospel comes, with a rebuke, but it still comes to the city and powerfully transforms the people involved. The old prejudices melt away and in the end the event is clearly the advance of the gospel and not only the Samaritan capital city, but villages in Samaritan territory becoming recipients of the gospel message. The command that Jesus gave to His sent men to preach the gospel into Samaria has been obeyed.

I think about this in the light of modern prejudices. And we evangelicals like to think we are a "great commission" people who are reaching our world, but I think there is still a lot of changing to take place. It amazes me that most large seminaries, when they turn out church planters, turn out young men who seem to be most concerned with going to their own generation and people group. In the eighties and nineties it resulted in the mega-church movement with starry-eyed seminarians thinking suburban dreams of box church mall goodness. Ten years ago, the backlash was generational, with youthful church leaders reaching gen-Xer's and post baby boomers. Now the move is to go urban and hip (again... just a new hipness), but primarily we seem to be finding the white middle class, or the children of them, and trying to win them.

This tendency is why I am thrilled to be part of a church, that though it is suburban in its core, is Great Commission in its roots. We have young christian leaders committed to serving in Islamic lands, in China, in hispanic ministry, and to truly serving the poor in Kansas City's urban core. And we partner with these opportunities, not just promote them with 30 second commercials! I love to see the shake up and what it does to our comfortable white bread world! I think it is what the church ought to be doing. It had to be what shook the First Century church forward. May it always do so, even today, until our Lord returns.


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electronic textbooks make sense

I am preparing to teach three graduate level courses this semester and discovered that several of the textbooks are available for the Kindle on amazon.com. The cool thing is that even though a Kindle is a popular electronic device, Amazon has chosen to make the process non-platform specific.... and free. That means that you can download Kindle for free for your PC, your Mac, various cellphones and with your Amazon account, you can read your books a lot of places. And you don't have to buy the $189 Kindle to do so. You still have to buy the electronic books, but they are still about the same or often cheaper than the printed textbooks.

So I am going to encourage my students to buy electronic versions when possible. Why? They can take notes in the Kindle application. They can copy citations electronically. It just makes sense. And if you think that paper is ruining the planet (it's debatable) then you can also satisfy your inner hippie environmentalist tree-hugger. I just prefer the lack of library maintenance with paper volumes!

Kindle for PC downloadable by clicking this link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311


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The response to the gospel may not be a happy one.

Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.
Acts 7:52-53

This is not the way most preachers are taught to end a sermon. This is nothing that Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, or Joel Osteen would be proud of! It is the truth and it is meant to convict. It is not a statement made in haste or without context. Stephen has slowly and carefully and most importantly BIBLICALLY made a case that the history of Israel has been one checkered with disobedience and disregard for the God Who called them to Him. His masterful walkthrough of the Old Testament and Israel's history is a homiletical tour de force worthy of careful examination. The bottom line is that this summary conclusion is carefully and powerfully supported in the sermon throughout the text of the Old Testament.

The result of this kind of preaching was evident. Stephen did get a response. The religious leaders were furious and literally rose up as a mob, drove him outside the city and in an expression of outrage at what they perceived as blasphemy, stoned him, leaving his corpse outside the city gates. It was not a pretty sight. Stephen's first recorded sermon is also his last. But his first blood shed in defense of the faith and for the sake of the gospel would not be the last.

Sometimes the gospel must advance through times of hardship and persecution. The first few centuries of church history are written in the blood of the martyrs. They gave their lives for the message of the gospel. They rolled us forward through the preaching of the cross, the reverence of the Holy Scriptures, and their courageous commitment despite the personal and social price.

I wonder if American evangelicalism even has left in it this kind of courage and commitment. We have our most popular preachers holding to a theology of appeasement. We have adopted an entertainment model for the church... dim lighting, musical artistry, drama and staging, sermons deliberately adverse to theology. If a message is preached, it comes across as consumeristic and psychological. Jesus will heal my mind and give me what I want. But there is more to the gospel than this... much more. Jesus said we give up our lives to find life in Him... we carry a cross (where suffering and public torture, and dying happen) daily when we follow Him.

I believe God is calling me to be balanced with the gospel. At times I can see myself like Peter before Cornelius or Paul before the Areopagus, sharing with seekers why turning to Christ will meet their quest. At other times, Stephen moments will exist where those hard and opposed to the truth need to be reminded of where they have offended a holy God, the judgment to come, and the narrowness of the path of discipleship. Above all this, I must resist all efforts to ever soften the gospel in order to manipulate the one who must believe by faith and hear the word of God consistently and carefully proclaimed.


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Where leaders come from

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
Acts 6:3

This passage is the origin of New Testament local church leadership. Traditionally, these seven men are thought of as the first deacons since the issue at stake in this conflict had to do with a service ministry. The apostles statement in Acts 6:2 indicates that administrating a service ministry was the ongoing reason for their appointment and the initial task assigned to them. But it was quickly not just the only thing they did.

To me it is also clear that their leadership was something more to the church than just feeding widows. They were required by the apostles to be men of exceptional spiritual maturity. Their reputations were sound and they demonstrated wisdom and the Holy Spirit's fullness in their lives. They were definitely mature disciples and leaders. It would seem to me that they quickly progressed to more leadership responsibility rather quickly.

Stephen seemed exceptionally gifted as the first among equals. He did wonders and signs, perhaps just as the apostles had been doing in Jerusalem (Acts 6:8). He was a persuasive evangelist and public speaker (Acts 6:9-10) who engaged thinkers and religious leaders with the truth of the gospel. He was much more than an administrative deacon at that point.

These men, elected by the church, were appointed by the apostles into church ministry and leadership. I think they were they first body of leaders meant to focus exclusively on the local church and its community, as the apostles broadened their efforts to expansion of the gospel beyond its present Jerusalem context. I think they became (from a practical standard) elders in the local church. They set the pattern for later development of both the offices of deacon for service and elder for leadership... the offices that still make the local church thrive, grow, and expand the gospel into our generation. Spiritual leaders still come from the local church. It is not just seminaries or colleges or parachurch ministries that make them. They must come from within the context of gospel ministry in the local church setting.

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