Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: Coming into any community as a preacher.

Hard to get things moving.

To serve this church has been a dream come true for me, but never in a thousand years would I have expected it to have gone the way it has.

When God is on the move, so is our enemy.

The last thing Satan wants is for CPCC to be successful in any way.

Can you imagine the impact we will have on Central Park and the city of Topeka if we stay the course and follow God’s lead, not our own lead, but His lead?

For some He is calling to give their whole sum to Him.

For some He is calling you to use the gifts that He has blessed you with.

I tell you this, leadership is key in any church.

For the church in Antioch the key to leadership was seen in encouragement.

Today we are going to dig into the Acts 11:19-30.

We find the church, still very young, but definitely and defiantly on the move.

It was under intense persecution, but it kept on moving.

It did not move and grow without a lot of obstacles.

Fear and trust were major obstacles for the early church.

If I am honest, it has not changed a lot today.

With today’s message my hope is to steer us into a conversation that allows us to see how important each one of us is here today in the moving forward as a church.

God uses all.

I have been serving the church for 25 years now and find the more people who contribute to her growth, the more the church is able to impact its community.

Let’s read.

Barnabas was the perfect person to send to Antioch to see what was taking place.

He bridged the gap between the Greek and Hebrew issues within the church.

Keith Gangle said,

"Having come from Cyprus, he was not a typical “Jerusalemite” Jew.

He had already established a solid reputation for piety, generosity, and encouragement in the Jerusalem church and, after all, what do new converts need more than encouragement?"

His gift of encouragement was a huge blessing for the church.

It was so much so that Luke tells us that the church continued to grow in believers after his arrival to Antioch.

Encouragement goes a long way.

Barnabas was a faithful servant of Christ, using his gift of encouragement, to help the church grow.

There are many of you that carry this gift today and might not be utilizing it.

We need you.

Encouragement went a long way for the early church, especially in Antioch.

When we encourage, and champion on one another, we allow for there to be a desire to learn in the church.

There is great need for strong biblical teaching in the church.

It is the foundation for any church, but imagine how much more so it was for the church in Antioch.

I don’t know how many of you are aware of this, but Antioch was the 3rd largest city in the Roman empire.

While this was quite a prominent city, it was one that was very lax in morals to say the least.

Prostitution ran rampant there.

The people were accustomed to innovative thought and were of the thought, "If it feels good do it".

Does it sound familiar at all?

Today we will see that the Antioch church was being fed by the right people.

They came with a background that allowed them to identify with the newly formed Gentile church.

We will learn that there are two specific jobs expected by the leadership of the church and the people of the church.

One is cognitive, while the other is more practical.

The first job that leadership should meet in the church is....

1. _Teaching the people_

Read: Acts 11:25-26

1. Teaching the people

Clearly the success of the church in Antioch is taking full bloom now.

Barnabas needed help to say the least.

There is no way that Barnabas could continue to be the bearer of all that responsibility and do it well.

Remember that the church is not just growing, it is blowing up!

He was in the need of someone else, another colleague, to work alongside of him.

This church essentially was in need of additional staff.

He would need someone that could relate to these new converts and teach them as well.

Barnabas had decided to pursue Saul.

It had been several years since Saul had become a new convert and put on a ship to Tarsus.

Finding Saul may have not been the easiest choice, but it was the right one.

No one would be better suited to share in this responsibility of ministry with him.

This note may not seem like a big detail to many people, but it stuck out to me.

Barnabas went on his own to go find him.

Barnabas was the perfect man for the job to get him too.

Barnabas was who introduced Saul to the apostles in 9:27 and told them how Saul had preached fearlessly in Damascus.

Who better than the one who began this early faith journey alongside Saul?

Illus: Jeff coming to me to work with the youth in the church (Not many trusted me, but he needed help and knew my conversion to be true)

Barnabas helped establish this organic communication between the Jewish church and the forming Gentile church.

And now his labor and efforts had become so big, he needed Saul to walk with him in this venture.

Saul was the right man for this ministry.

Barnabas found Saul and takes him to Antioch with him.

Together for a year they impacted their surroundings with the teaching of Jesus.

Our passage tells us that they taught a great number of people.

Because of this there were more converts added to this community of believers.

The uniting of believers, both Jewish and Gentile, seems to have gone relatively well.

This way, this new way was widely accepted and allowed to accommodate even the most diverse background (Bruce).

FF Bruce described the diversity this way,

"Antioch was a cosmopolitan city, where Jews and Gentiles, Greek and barbarian rubbed shoulders, where Mediterranean civilization met the Syrian desert; racial and religious differences which loomed so large in Judaea seemed much less important here.

The church of Antioch from the outset had an ethos quite distinct from that of the Jerusalem church."

FF Bruce

That would prove to be a big deal within the that city.

Seeing all the diversity and backgrounds all coming to the faith without letting their differences.

There were differences of past, or color, or race, and state of life that could get in the way, but instead they soaked and bathed in the truth of God and the church grew greatly because of it.

Looking at verse 26 we find an interesting note made by Luke.

He said, "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch."

Now I know at first glance you may think that this is not that big of a deal.

My guess is that the majority here believe that the term Christian is all over scripture.

The fact is that it is only found a total of three times in the NT.

Acts 11:26, Acts 26:28, and 1 Peter 4:16.

“Christian” was more of a nickname given to believers.

These were the people who were always talking about Christ.

Now it would seem on the outset that this was a good thing, but to be honest it was not always the case.

This newly named group of people are no longer the subset or part of Judaism, but now their own very well-known identity.

They were now an enemy in the eyes of Judaism.

This would leave them possibly without the protection of Rome, which is something that they carried when considered a sect of Judaism.

None the less the name was prevalent and now very much a part of who they are.

As Barnabas and Saul continued to teach, the church continued to grow.

As the church continued to grow, so grew other needs within the body.

The second job we will look at of leaders and people of the church is...

2. _Meeting social needs_

Read: Acts 11:27-30

2. Meeting social needs