Sermon Tone Analysis

Worthy of the Name

Ron Dunn

Acts 11:19-30

 

The last sentence in verse 26 says, "And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."

Has anybody ever called you a Christian?

I know that you call yourself a Christian and I know that those who know of your affiliation with the church call you a Christian, but has anybody on the outside who did not know you, just on the basis of observation and detection ever called you a Christian?

It is interesting to note that this term "Christian" that we use so frequently and familiarly to describe ourselves is found only three times in the bible and in effect it is never really used by Christians themselves with one exception  It is found here in Acts 11 and found again in Acts 26 where Paul is preaching before Agrippa and Agrippa says "...almost thou persuades me to be a Christian."

Then the other time it is found is in I Peter 4 and Peter there is speaking from the viewpoint of the world and he says "if any sufferer as a Christian.

he does well."

We use that name all the time.

It is a common name to us and yet it is found only three times in the bible.

The fact of the mater is that we don't have any record outside of Peter's reference and there I would say he is speaking from the viewpoint of the world, talking about persecution.

We don't have any record in the bible of Christians calling one another Christians.

The name Christian did not originate with Christians.

It didn't even originate with "God.

It originated with the residents of Antioch.

It was not necessarily a complimentary term but rather a label to distinguish these strangers from everybody else.

They had migrated down from Jerusalem and were different in many ways and you have to label people.

We have to be able to identify folks and so we attach labels to them.

So they called them Christians.

It was not a name that the Christians themselves took upon themselves.

They called themselves "believers", "disciples" or "followers of the way".

It wasn't until after the first century that the term Christian came to be commonly used to describe the followers of Jesus Christ.

Now the word translated "called" is extremely interesting because it is not the usual word you find in the New Testament.

Again and again you will read the phrases "we are the called of God", "we need to live up to our calling" and "God has called us".

Well, that word always refers to the effective call of God to salvation but it is not at all the word that is used here.

When it says "they were called Christians", it is a word that originally meant "I conduct my public business" nd it referred to a person's vocation...the job he worked at...his occupation.

It was a practice in the ancient world that a man's surname came from his occupation I stayed with a family in Bradford, England a couple of years ago by the name of "Dyson when I was there in a meeting.

This man said he had traced his family tree and learned that his ancestors had been "dyers".

Their occupation was to dye hides and fabrics and that was how they acquired the name......they were the sons of a dyer.

That was a common practice during that time.

I suppose the Bakers use to bake and the Fishers use to fish and the Grahams use to make crackers.

The name originally meant, "I conduct my public business" and referred to a person's PUBLIC occupation.

Now, that is important.

Thee citizens of Antioch are observing these strangers who have come all the way from Jerusalem and they don't know what to call them but they seem to be busy about the occupation of having to do with Christ.

When you listen to them and when you watch them, it seems that their public business has to do with somebody named "Christ", so they called them Christians.

A number of years ago when I was a teenager we had a quite famous rodeo clown in our church.

He had come to Christ and was a fantastic Christian and preacher.

I remember hearing him give his testimony one time and he said that people often asked him what he did for a living.

He said he always told them that he was a Christian.....that was his business, He just rodeoed to pay the bills.

Now, even as a teenager, I knew that was good theology.

I am not making this in form of a motion, but it might not be a bad idea when someone comes to Christ for the very first time that we withhold the name Christian from them, We can call them something else...maybe "believers", that is a good biblical name, or maybe "disciples", that is a great biblical name and wait until somebody outside the church calls them a Christian before we call them Christians.

Perhaps that term we take so lightly should be taken more seriously.

We don't have a right to call ourselves a Christian until someone on the outside calls us one.

Maybe we need to earn that name before we take it for ourselves.

It is something to think about.

It may be that we call ourselves Christians because NOBODY ELSE WILL.

I notice as I read the New Testament that the writers had the idea that you and I would live lives that would be such that people would ask questions.

Peter said in that same epistle to "be ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks you concerning the hope that is in you."

Has anybody asked you lately about the hope that is in you?

When everything went to pieces economically a few years ago and other folks were wringing their hands in despair and you remained steadfast and there were no frowns or creases of anxiety on your face, did anybody as you where you got the hope that you had?  What makes you different from everybody else?

 

Paul writing to the Colossians said "pray for me that I might be ready always to give an answer to then that ask me."

In those days they didn't have to wear badges, beads and bumper stickers to let people know they were Christians.

Folks just knew it!

Has anybody called you a Christian lately?

Why was it at Antioch they were first called Christians?

Why weren't they first called Christians at Jerusalem or somewhere else?

What was so special about these folks at Antioch?  What made then worthy of the name Christian?

In discovering this, I think we will discover what makes us worthy of the name.

Am I worthy of calling myself a Christian?

None of us are worthy of being saved and our salvation doesn't depend on our worthiness but when it comes to the name that we attach to ourselves, that is another matter altogether.

If we are going to call ourselves Christians, it means that there is something of Christ to be seen in our lives....something visible.

There is an interesting little note there in verse 22 and 23.

There is a great revival going on at Antioch  Now, because Stephen has been persecuted, a lot of these believers fled Jerusalem and many of them have gone as far as Antioch.

It is important to note that Antioch is 300 miles from Jerusalem and as they have come there the hand of the Lord is upon them and people are being saved right and left.

Verse 22 says, "then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem."

I never read that without smiling to myself.

I don't why Luke couldn't have just said, "they heard about it."

The church at Jerusalem had big ears.

I mean they could hear a sin drop a mile away.

You see, Jerusalem was the headquarters...the Nashville of their day...and everybody fled Jerusalem except the apostles who stayed there to set up headquarters.

They kept hearing reports of the great things that were happening in Antioch and perhaps got a little concerned and thought they shoud send someone down there to check those folks out and make sure they were doing everything the way they out to be doing...you now, they might be ordaining women, or they may be using some other literature other than the Sunday School literature and, who knows they may be raising their hands or clapping.

We need to be sure they haven't gone off the deep end.

So they commissioned Barnabus.

The word here means, "an authoritative representative".

He was basically a spy to see if they were doing everything right.

Notice it says in verse 3, "who when he came and had seen the grace of God was glad" and you could translate that, "he was surprised!"

By that it means there was such a manifestation of the grace of God that he was surprised, he had never seen anything like this.

Have you ever seen the grace of God  What color is it?

What shape is it?

What catches my attention is that you can't see grace.

Grace is an invisible quality, an intangible virtue that is not visible to the human eye.

It is no more visible than love, anger, hate or greed.

You say, "but I have seen all of those,"  No, what you have seen are the MANIFESTATIONS of those things .

This means the grace of God, the spirit of Christ, the character of our Lord is so expressing itself that Barnabus immediately recognized it.

I have been in a number of churches where I wasn't certain what to call what I was seeing ,but every once in a while I will be in a place and there is no doubt about what I am seeing and I can say, "this is the grace of God."

I am afraid many times in our Christian living instead of making it clear what we are, we are raising question marks.

"Well, I don't know if that is the real thing or not, I don't know i it is real holiness or just false piety."

What a refreshing thing it was to the eyes of Barnabus when he beheld the behavior of those people at Antioch.

He saw the grace of God!

It was obvious and he had no doubt about it.

He didn't need surveying equipment to check it out.

If you and I call ourselves Christians, there ought to be something obviously seen about our lives.

Let me mention two things that are mentioned here that manifest the grace of God:

 

One,  we manifest the grace of God by the way we receive one another in the name of the Lord.

There is an interesting little statement down in verse 25.  Understand, Barnabus has walked into a revival and he has picked up his part of the load.

He started teaching and even more people now are being saved.

But, suddenly Barnabus, for no good reason, leaves.

It says he departed to Tarsus to seek Saul.

You know who Saul was.....later to become Paul.