Give of your sons to bear the message glorious...

Antioch: A Sending Church

(Acts 12:25-13:4, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 13, 2012)

[12:25] And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.

These verses present us with an account of the end of one ministry for Barnabas and Saul and the beginning of a second one.

These two men completed the first installment of an undertaking of service that was very near and dear to the heart of God: they brought some of the wealth of the nations into Jerusalem. Antioch was a mixed church with Jewish and Gentile believers worshiping together under the banner of Jesus Christ. Love for the Lord and an appreciation of His gift of Himself had pressed this church forward in service based on a Word from a prophet named Agabus about a future famine. That famine would have had an impact on both Jerusalem and on Antioch. But the church in Antioch wanted to bless the poor Christian Jews in Jerusalem. They had been blessed by the Word of Christ that God had sent forth from Jerusalem. They wanted to express their gratitude by giving back to the church in Jerusalem. God had prophesied in the Old Testament that these days would come. Now the wealth of non-Jews was freely being sent to the support of Jews who needed that help.

Barnabas and Saul came back to Antioch with a young man named Mark, a man who would be the author of the gospel that bears his name who would for a time be a companion of Paul and then of Peter. This time in Antioch would be John Mark's internship. There was much to learn from the church in Antioch.

[13:1] Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.

Barnabas, Saul, Mark... There were also a number of other servants of the Word, prophets and teachers, in the church at Antioch. In chapter 11 we had heard about prophets coming from Jerusalem and bringing a Word from God about a future event. In reading the writings of the Old Testament prophets, you discover that they do much more than predict the future. They comment on the past, and they help us to make sense of the present. They sometimes use earlier messages from God that have been recorded in writing for us that we call the “Scriptures.”

One of the functions of this growing body of written revelation over the centuries was to be a solid Word by which every prophet or teacher of religious truth could be judged. Not every spiritual messenger brings the truth. How are the Lord's people supposed to tell the difference between a false prophet and a true prophet? They judge according to the accepted written Word of God, and they rely on the discernment of other true prophets and teachers.

So, in Antioch there were several prophets and teachers. Someone like Paul was probably primarily a teacher, helping people to see from the Hebrew Scriptures the truth about the Messiah, the necessity of His sufferings, the meaning of His resurrection, and the way of holiness unto heavenly blessing. During Paul's entire ministry of teaching, new Scripture was being written. In fact, Paul himself was the author of no less than thirteen letters that the church eventually recognized as inspired writings from God. Peter wrote about Paul's writings:

… Our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters.... There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:15-16)

So Peter acknowledged that Paul's letters were the Scriptures, right alongside the Torah and the Hebrew prophets. We recognize that we live in a time that is different than the days of Paul's ministry described here. We have a completed written Word, by which all controversies of faith can be judged. But God still calls people to bring the Word, and He uses people like those that are listed here from Antioch, to speak His message to the congregation that He loves.

[2] While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” [3] Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.Men like Barnabas and Paul were gifts of God to the church in Antioch, just as their scarce wealth in a time of impending economic crisis was a gift of God. They did not hoard their money, and they did not hoard their people. They cast their bread upon the waters, as it says in Ecclesiastes 11:1, in the certainty that they would “find it after many days.”

It was not just their own idea that they would be generous. It was in accord with the living Word, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself to us, and it was in accord with the Holy Spirit that Jesus sends forth upon the church. When you read in the Bible about the Holy Spirit doing or saying something, you should remember that this divine Spirit works in complete accord with the Father and the Son.

The church in Antioch was generous because the Holy Spirit led in that direction and they followed. They were eager for God's direction, so they worshiped Him and had a time of fasting, seeking His will. Then an explicit message of God came to them, probably through one of the gifted prophets in the congregation, but affirmed by the rest of the prophets and teachers to be in accord with the will of God and the writings of the Scriptures. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So they did. They had more prayer and fasting. They blessed them again with the laying on of hands as a public testimony to their affirmation of the Lord's call to them as representatives of His church, and as a gift of God to others who might not yet know His Name.

We give our money, and we give something more precious to us than money. We send people we love with our prayers and our blessing. We entrust them to the Lord's care. We help to provide for their needs, and we trust that God will use them. Antioch was a sending church, because God is a sending God. Think of what the Father sent. It was more than money could buy. His Son. “He left his Father's throne above (so free, so infinite his grace!), humbled himself (so great his love!), and bled for all his chosen race. 'Tis mercy all, immense and free; for, O my God, it found out me. Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”

[4] So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

Not only did the Holy Spirit identify the mission, and send out the missionaries through the hands of men, He, the Holy Spirit, was with them as they went. This is our confidence, that when we seek the will of God and find it through the body of Christ, that Jesus will be with us in that will as we set out to serve Him. Do we have all the answers? Absolutely not. We don't even know what question to ask all the time. But the Rock of our salvation is with us. He leads us forward. Anything less than this is religious teaching that is devoid of the Spirit of the Lord.

1. What was the mission that brought Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem?

2. What was the distinction in Antioch, if any, between “prophets” and “teachers?”

3. How did it happen that Antioch became a sending church?

4. What role did the Holy Spirit play in this new phase of ministry in Antioch?

OT Passage: Psalm 145