A Church that Reaches Beyond the Walls

Introduction

What should the church be?

Over the years I’ve heard different ideas and opinions about what people envision the church to be.

Some think the church should be a place for internal community.

There is an element of the truth in that - the church is a family.

We are rescued from our sins and adopted into the family of God by Jesus’ work on our behalf.

We have an obligation to care for and serve one another.

But when that becomes the chief vision or culture of the church, the church then becomes just a social club to give us friends and something to do.

Some have told me the church should be a vigilant defender of the truth.

The church should emphasize truth and putting down anyone and everyone who strays from the truth, as that church defines it.

In this view, the church should war against culture and the evil agenda of moral decline.

It should shame and humiliate anyone who deviates from its rigid doctrinal and ethical vies.

Again, there is an element of truth in this vision - the church is called the “pillar and buttress of truth”

We are called to uphold the doctrine and ethics of the Christian way.

But when this defender of truth perspective becomes the dominate vision the church becomes an arrogant and hostile entity that demands conformity instead of Christ’s compassion.

The church becomes a battlefield tank, lobbing rockets and projectiles at anything it views as an enemy.

The question I want to ask is this, what does God want the church to be?

The vision that the Bible has for the church is not one that is a social club for our own comfort, nor a battlefield tank waylaying all our foes.

Instead, the church should be an embassy.

A people and a location here in the world, but not of the world.

A people and a location that is concerned chiefly with the mission of our King and his kingdom.

The church should be a gospel-centered, gospel-focused, gospel-driven embassy driven by the mission of God’s love and grace for sinners.

Or, if I can say it this way:

Big Idea: Gospel centered churches reach out—to proclaim, to send, and to serve.

This morning I want to continue our series by talking about how the church should reach out.

Acts 11:19-30 gives us a picture of disciples of Jesus, and two local churches that embodied this practice as a gospel-centered church that reached out.

If we say we want to be an embassy of the grace and gospel of God, then what should we do? What does that look like?

Key Question: How does a church that loves the gospel reach out?

First, it:

Proclaims the gospel wherever it goes. (Acts 11:19-21)

This is what is evident of people who love God and respond to his grace.

They are gospel ambassadors everywhere they go.

Here’s what happened in the early church:

Acts 11:19 tells us that because of the martyrdom of Stephen and the subsequent persecution that fell on Christians in Jerusalem, there was a great scattering.

Believers were scattered everywhere.

One of the results of that dispersion was believers went to far away places from Jerusalem.

Phoenicia is a region north of Israel on the Mediterranean Sea.

Cyprus is an island in the Med sea.

Antioch is a city that stood as a crossroads far to the north.

The Greek and Roman empires leveraged Antioch as a city hub to move their culture and influence south into the regions of Palestine and Egypt

The believers that scattered went, but the mission was particularly tied to sharing the gospel of Jesus as the Messiah only with the Jewish people.

Yet this is a turning point for the movement of the good news and the spread of the gospel.

Just as Antioch became a city famous for the spread of the culture of Greece and Rome, it was going to be transformed into a city that was famous for the spread of the gospel.

Certain believers, Luke notes, “men of Cyprus and Cyrene” - so people who weren’t from Jerusalem predominately, when they came to Antioch they “spoke to the Hellenists”.

This phrase is referring to the non-Jewish community in the city.

They preached the Lord Jesus.

And what was the result?

Acts 11:21 ESV

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

They loved God, they loved his grace, and they were compassionate enough to share the gospel wherever they were, with whomever they came in contact with.

Let me point out something important here.

We read this and we are focused on the results of verse 21.

“A great number who believed turned to the Lord.”

We love that…

But we have a mistaken vision of how that happens.

In prior generations what has happened in the American church is that we’ve come to believe to see great numbers of people turn to the Lord we must have great crusades or conferences and celebrities share the gospel.

Make no mistake, I am grateful for how the Lord used people like Billy Graham and Luis Palau to share the gospel with millions through their crusades.

But friends - that is not the NORMATIVE way of the gospel being shared and movements happening.

I am concerned that we give away or dismiss our calling to share the gospel wherever we are because we aren’t, in our own eyes, professional or gifted evangelists.

The Spirit of God works through ordinary people who love him, and are faithful to share wherever they are.

The Spirit works through the small, ordinary, 1:1 sharing of God’s love and Jesus’ kingdom.

George Elliot wrote,

Acts 3.4.1. Establishing the Antioch Church (11:19–21)

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.

These unnamed men of Cyprus and Cyrene were living faithfully and said when they came to this new city, these people need Jesus — let’s share!

They had courage to tell these new neighbors about their hope and their joy.

I was talking with a friend a week ago about their story.

Jen and her husband Mark had been serving overseas in Europe and Japan as global missionaries.

Then about 12 years ago, Jen’s non-Christian dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

So they dropped everything and moved back to Colorado to care for her dad.

Except they didn’t drop their calling to share Christ.

They just started naturally inviting people into their homes, sharing hospitality with them.

When asked why they were there, they could say to care for Jen’s dad, but then they could also share about the love of God in Christ.

Those invitations turned into bible studies, which turned into a church plant, which now is a thriving church that is reproducing and planting other churches.

They simply kept sharing Jesus wherever they went… in ordinary and faithful ways.

So let me just bring this home to us:

Each one of us who calls Jesus as our Savior and Lord has the calling, the empowerment, and the mandate to share Christ with those around us.

You and I live in neighborhood and communities where God has placed us.

We’re not there to be comfortable and at ease.

We are sent missionaries to share the good news of Jesus.

We have workplaces, social circles, schools, and the like that we must think about strategically.

Who are you sharing 1:1 with?

Who are proclaiming the gospel to?

Who are you inviting to hear the gospel and be in the space where the good news of Jesus is preached?

FLIP Camp is for our community… let’s use it to invite families and children to be loved and the next gen hear about Christ.

Reach out!

Share!

Tell people about how the Lord has been merciful to you… start there!

Key Question: How does a church that loves the gospel reach out?

Proclaims the gospel wherever it goes

Second, it:

Raises up and sends out leaders. (Acts 11:22-26)

So what happens?

Well, there are now believers in Antioch.

And this is a good thing that the Jerusalem church hears about.

Non-Jewish men and women are embracing Christ as their Savior and Lord.

So the church in Jerusalem wants to verify and encourage this new group of believers.

They send their best - Barnabas “son of encouragement” to go and encourage them.

Barnabas visits the believers in Antioch and he is thrilled.

He encourages and teaches the believers - this is the sense of the phrase “exhorted” them.

The goal of his exhortation was to help this new community of believers be faithful to the Lord and continue on in the faith.

If you teach people to be faithful and steadfast then you’re build a church that can exist for generations.

They won’t flame out at the first sight of trouble.

Now what happens with this training and discipleship?? - v. 24

“A great many people were added to the Lord.”

That is what God is doing in this church, but notice how God is raising up leaders as well.

Barnabas remembers that his friend and early apprentice, Saul (we’ll know him as Paul later), is nearby in the city of Tarsus.

So he goes to visit Tarsus and bring Paul to Antioch to train and equip him for further ministry to the Gentiles as well as equipping the disciples in that city.

Acts 11:26 ESV

For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

More people hear about Christ, leaders are developed, and reputation grows…

These believers in this city are known as “Christians”

“Little Christs”

This is one of the things I love about being a pastor.

I want to raise up and equip men and women to be leaders in the church and to be developed and sent for ministry.

About 15 years ago I had a kid in my college ministry that was, well… let’s just say when he was a high schooler, I thought he was a punk.

And yet the Lord did some deep work in Darren’s heart and life.

In college he came to me and said he wanted to grow and be used by God in some way.

So we had this little “Expositors Club” where I equipped him and a couple of other guys to teach the Bible in our Sunday School program.

I continued to invest in Darren in ministry.

Others came around him as well, he received formal theological training.

Today he’s pastoring and reaching out to hundreds of college-aged students in a significant university community in Central California.

The gospel keeps moving forward on!

The point is that discipleship, equipping and training, is part of reaching out.

In case you’ve wondered, this is why Woodside has a leadership development program — the Leadership Institute.

We’re committed to training, equipping, and discipling men and women who are called to vocational ministry.

Through our Global 100 initiative we’re raising up a new generation of global missionaries to send to the far ends of the earth.

The Jerusalem church was doing this with raising up and sending Barnabas.

The Antioch church would be replicating this by raising up and sending out Paul.

You might ask, what about training and developing our own congregation.

I am glad you did - This month we’re starting a course over the next year called Foundations to equip you theologically to know God and the Christian faith.

It involves picking up James Montgomery Boice’s book Foundations of the Christian Faith, reading assigned sections each month, and then attending one class per month on the final Monday night of each month.

It’s going to be fun!

It’s how we seek to reach out… to raise up and send out leaders.

We’re called to be part of that movement.

This is how a church that loves the gospel reaches out:

It shares the gospel wherever we go.

It raises up and sends out leaders.

Third, it:

Serves others with sacrificial generosity. (Acts 11:27-30)

So let’s not rush over this, Barnabas and Paul are in Antioch teaching, training, equipping for over a year.

Many are coming to faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord.

The gospel movement is taking form.

You might think, well this church is set, they are maturing, growing, doing great!

They could be a self-contained, isolated, little kingdom of God community unto themselves.

But that’s not the case for this church - it’s not part of their DNA.

Verses 27-29 gives us this snippet of this church caring for and supporting another church.

A group of prophets, usually teaching leaders, came from Jerusalem to Antioch to visit and support the ministry there.

One of them at some point stood up in the gathering and spoke (notice this!) by the Spirit, and told them that there would be a great famine over all the known world.

Luke even tells us who the Roman Emperor was so we’d be able to validate this prophecy.

What do the disciples, who love the gospel and want to reach out do with this news?

They care!

They plan and they give.

Acts 11:29 ESV

So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.

They were going to, out of the resources they had, help their brothers and sisters in Judea during this time of crisis and severe hardship.

This is an act not just of sacrificial generosity, but of LOVE.

There was no compulsion or guilt.

No one was laid upon more than they could give or bear.

But they each determined (every one) — according to their ability — to love and support the believers in Jerusalem.

They raised the funds, and then sent Barnabas and Saul as their own to deliver the gifts to the elders of the church in Jerusalem.

The gospel continued to move forward!

I mentioned this love and generosity was a DNA thing… inherent to this church’s core values.

But I want to point out that this is a DNA matter for us as well.

It’s a DNA matter because love and serving in generosity is right at the heart of the gospel.

Jesus, in love, came for poor, sin-sick, spiritually famished and needy people - you and me!

And he loved us so much that he who was rich, for our sakes became poor and suffered the shame of dying on a criminal’s cross for us.

He served and laid down his life as a ransom for many.

He gave so that everyone who trusts in him will not suffer the wrath of God, but will instead enjoy the glory of God forever.

True Christian DNA has love, service, and generosity at the core.

A church, and by that I mean disciples of Jesus in the church, who don’t serve, don’t give, don’t love are not reflecting the DNA of the gospel.

Friends - this is one of the reasons we ask you to give generously as disciples of Jesus.

We want to support ministry, and meet needs of brothers and sisters for the sake of the gospel.

A portion of our budget each year is prepared and set aside with emergency funds for global partners.

A portion of our budget is dedicated to serve global missionaries in places that have little access or gospel resources.

These boxes we are filling this month with financial gifts are a means to demonstrate the DNA of generosity and love in our lives.

My goal is that every household at our church would participate and give to our Reach campaign this year.

My desire is that every one of us would be generous givers — that you would, every disciple, every one according to their ability, generously give to further allow us to reach out.

Conclusion

How should a church that loves the gospel reach out?

We can’t be a fortress, only protecting ourselves and our own self-interest.

No, a church that loves the gospel — a people that love Christ — reach out!

We’re committed to sharing with everyone everywhere because Jesus came for us.

We’re committed to raising up and sending leaders

We’re committed serving others with sacrificial generosity.

We’re not a social club, we’re not a battlefield tank, we’re an embassy of the living God here on earth - a people in a place with mission to reach out and share the grace of God which we have received.