Acts 13:1-3

DEI

Acts 13:1–3 “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. 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.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.”

Much is made of diversity in our culture at this time. And there are current ongoing cultural battles surrounding the topic of diversity. And I don’t personally have much interest in any of those battles. Increasingly I feel that in the United States both the left and the right, culturally speaking, are leaving behind Biblical truths such that neither of them have much appeal for me. Be that as it may, the Bible does have something to say about diversity and it is so simple and so common sense that it almost doesn’t bear mentioning but I am going to mention it anyway here.

Diversity at its root is a word that simply means differences. The differences between people is what makes diversity. And there are 3 kinds of differences. Neutral differences, good differences, and bad differences. Neutral differences would be like they speak Spanish in Mexico. Is that good or bad? Neither, it’s just a difference. So it doesn’t matter. The vast majority of differences between humans fall under this category. Certainly all physiological differences fall in this category- tall or short, dark skinned or light skinned, etc., none of those differences are good or bad they are just different. Taken as a whole we would say they are good of course because God made many different kinds of people and it makes the world more interesting, beautiful, colorful, and so forth.

Good or bad differences are not physical characteristics or language we speak but tend to be cultural and involve Godliness vs. ungodliness. A culture that values human sacrifice like the Aztec culture we would say is a bad difference. It is an unholy practice, and when the Lord says through His prophet Jeremiah that the Israelites are sacrificing their children to Molech by burning them alive He is calling out a kind of diversity that is evil and to be shunned.

Whereas a culture that has an ethic of respecting their elders, say the Japanese culture we might say is a good difference, for the Bible teaches us in 1 Peter 5:5 and in other passages as well that respect for elders is a good and holy ethic to hold to.

And for the Church that is the entire teaching on diversity. That is all any of us need to know about that topic and our task as humans is simply to always be critiquing diversity through the Word of God as to whether it is neutral, bad or good and treat that kind of diversity accordingly.

Now it must be noted, lest there be confusion that during the Old Testament era the Biblical focus was not on diversity so much, but rather on exclusivity for the Lord was concerned to make for Himself a people, a nation, which would be the womb, as it were, for the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who would be the light of the world, and the blessing of salvation to the Gentiles and Jews alike. So God gave strict rules to His people that involved taking what would ordinarily be characterized as ‘neutral’ kinds of diversity, like wearing clothes with different materials in it, or eating specific kinds of food like pork or shellfish, and declared these actions to be ritually unclean so as to draw boundaries around the Jewish people that would help to keep them apart from the surrounding nations who worshiped other gods. In the end all those laws were in service to the first commandment, to worshiping YHWH and YHWH alone.

So a significant part of the movement of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts is the movement of reclaiming those neutral diversities as neutral. Not good, just neutral again. So, for example when God shows Peter all the unclean animals the Lord doesn’t say that it’s better to eat these animals than other ones. He just says basically that all of them are on the menu now, it is now once again a neutral diversity, and by extension all the cultural laws of the OT that were designed to keep Israel separate from the pagan nations are no longer in effect for the Church. Since Jesus’ message is to bring salvation to the four corners of the Earth to all the nations of the Earth, the borders in terms of culture or race or language, etc., matter not at all. The Church encompasses all races, all people groups, every language, every tribe, without exception. The borders of the Church, in other words, are not externally defined, but now internally defined. It is the state of our hearts before the Lord that defines the Church, the dividing line is one of those who have given their lives to Jesus and whose lives reflect that reality, vs. those who have not made Him their Lord.

If the definition of diversity in a community is the welcoming of any person regardless of background or skin color or ability or language and so forth, then the Church is fully diverse and will always be so and always has been when properly constituted. The book of Acts makes it abundantly clear, as indeed does the entire New Testament, because all those traits I just mentioned are neutral diversity traits.

Here is one of many such examples. Who are these people. They are not people who would ordinarily be together, but for their shared faith in Christ. What is interesting is that in our culture we would likely focus on Simeon who was called Niger as an example of diversity because he, likely, was a black man hence his name. But for centuries the readers of Acts would have noted that he was a black man, but that would have mattered a lot less to them, for white racism against darker skinned people was a philosophy that would not be invented for hundreds of years to come, but would have mattered much more to them would be the different levels of power- power and rank and authority being the thing that divided people in the ancient world, not skin color or nationality so much.

We don’t know much about Niger or Lucius other than the latter is from North Africa, but we do know that Saul is a disgraced Pharisee who was run out of Antioch and Jerusalem, and that at least one of these men is well connected and probably quite wealthy having been raised with Herod the Tetrarch also known as Antipas who was the one who killed John the Baptist. It does not indicate in any way that this is a relationship that Manaen has avowed or in any way rejected. It just says that he was raised with him essentially as a child or young man. The picture one comes away with is a group of men committed to Jesus and His Lordship who are quite diverse in background and resources and yet are of one mind in the Holy Spirit. There can be no question that their views on the Roman Empire, on Israel, on who the Emperor was or should be, taxes and slavery and family and probably a host of things we cannot even imagine were probably all quite different from person to person. They are all too different in background to all have the same views on life.

Just as when Christ picked His 12 disciples he would put a tax collector next to a fisherman. It’s no wondered the disciples argued so much. But they were gathered around Christ.

I’ve gone on about this a while I know, but I feel very strongly about this. The Church thrives when we get this right, and historically we often get it wrong. And the book of Acts makes this point several times in several ways but this is the day I am going to emphasize it the most. The Church has but one boundary in a sense, one barrier, and that is the rejection of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, there is no barrier.

That is why in Revelation when John is describing the vision he has been given of the New Jerusalem in all its glory and beauty he says

Revelation 21:26 “They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”

And the word nations there is ethnos, which references all the people groups of the world. The Koreans and the Arabs, the Congolese and the Americans, the Peruvians and the Polynesians, will all bring into the city of God their glory and their honor. The things they have created, the customs they have cherished, all will enter in. And it says the gates will never be closed. It is complete diversity. With the one exception in the very next verse.

Revelation 21:27 “But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb will enter in with thanksgiving, having been made clean. And the nations of the world will bring in their glory and their culture, but whatever was unclean in their culture will never make it through those gates. The United States invented the electric guitar. I know that’s making it in. We also are the number one producer of pornography in the world. Whatever is unclean, will never enter in. Only good diversity lasts forever.

I want to turn now to what these diverse folks were doing in our passage here.

And what are they doing together- look at the verbs- they are fasting, praying, laying on of hands. Fasting and praying are seeking verbs. They are seeking the Lord’s will, actively looking for His presence and His blessing and His leading in their lives. I have said- and I will go to my grave saying it- that we make a mistake as Christians when we try to figure out what the Lord would have us do as if it’s an Easter egg hunt and that He is somehow trying to hide His will from you and you have to find it somehow. That is not how we are to live, in that kind of pagan anxiety that the Lord is not going to tell you what He wants unless you figure out how to discern His will with some kind of formula or ritual, etc. Do not live a life of anxiety about trying to figure out what the Lord’s will is for you.

For one, all that you need to know about what the Lord wants from you is inscribed in the pages of Scripture and everything else is just the details.

However, that is a very different thing than pursuing the presence of the Lord or seeking the blessing of the Lord, or making yourself available to the Lord in active ways.

Praying and Fasting. Why do we pray and why do we fast? The first is almost embarrassing to ask, why do we pray? It’s almost offensive to ask. Can you imagine if someone came up to me and asked me why do I talk to Laura? What do you mean why do I talk to Laura? Well she already knows everything about you, and she about you. Both of you already know all the important things it’s just weird that you guys still talk to each other so much. But I talk to Laura because I am in a relationship with her, because I enjoy hearing her voice and I want to know what she thinks about everything, and so we talk to people we love not just to ask for things, although we may at times do that, but we talk to people because we love them and have a friendship with them or a marriage with them and so forth. So we pray. We pray all the time, we Christians, silently, out loud, even, I would say, subconsciously we pray we who walk by the Spirit. And we do this because we love our Lord. We love God. We love walking with Jesus and talking to Him. We love that when we are ground down and miserable, sorrowful or fearful that we can speak to Him, the Son of God who Himself knew sorrow and fear and was tempted in every way, and knows our struggles and can intercede on our behalf. We love praying because our Lord is not deaf nor is He mute. He hears and speaks to us as well.

Why do we fast? Because the Lord likes us to suffer? No. Because denying ourselves from things we crave from time to time is a healthy spiritual practice for we all are in danger of the flesh overcoming our reason, our desires overwhelming our knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, what is proper and what is excessive, and so on. So fasting is spiritual weight training, building spiritual muscles, and as such it has a purifying effect as well, the denial of worldly desires focuses our mind on spiritual things. It is an internal and personal battle to fast, which is why the Lord tells us to not let others even know if possible, which is to say to not use fasting as a way to show others how holy you are, suffering for God in this way. It is not the point, the suffering, as it were, much less to take pride in it before others.

So there they are, praying and fasting, making themselves available to the Lord. There is no indication of anxiety or fear, anywhere in the New Testament, that the Lord is unable to communicate with us whenever He needs to or desires to in ways that we will understand and hear. But it is pleasing to the Lord and strengthens our relationship with Him when we pray and fast, and so blessings and insights DO flow from them. Because you are walking intentionally deeper into His presence, the Lord will speak to you and bless you more fulsomely. I was convicted in writing this sermon of my lack of fasting lately. I just haven’t said no to much of anything lately, and I think it does weaken my spiritual life when I never deny myself anything.

And so the Lord speaks to them during worship, so says the text here. And most translations will use this word ‘worship’ here. But I recommend following the NASB at this point and I recommend that you cross out the word ‘worship’ and put the word service, or in service in this instance. It is in fact the Greek root from which we get the word ‘liturgy’ from and what it is referencing is the entirety of the Levitical service in the Temple- it basically means serving in the Temple. And so I find the word ‘worship’ to be an unhelpful translation here.

λατρεύω- Service

This is the same root word used when describing Anna the prophet in

Luke 2:37 “and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping (serving) with fasting and prayer night and day.”

So if liturgy is the levitical service in the Temple, the fullness of service to God there that included above all sacrifice but also included singing and studying God’s Word and fellowship of believers, etc., then you can see how that is a fuller word than ‘worship’ might imply.

What was Anna doing in the Temple? She was serving God. Worship, is, I believe, too narrow a word in English to capture all that this word is saying. In our church, for example, if we are using the word Worship casually then we are often referencing worship in song- singing hymns of praise to our God. But service to the Lord encompasses in some ways our whole life, and this is what our text in Acts 13 is referencing, that these prophets and teachers were living the entirety of their lives for Jesus and it is in that space that Jesus through His Holy Spirit blesses them and anoints them with a specific ministry- a calling.

Let me illustrate why I am saying this with the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 12:28–13:1 “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Let brotherly love continue.”

Hebrews 13:2–4 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

And in fact the author of Hebrews goes on to define it- please remember that chapter divisions were not a part of the Bible until roughly 1300 years after it was written. The text just flows here - what does it mean to offer to God acceptable service when there is no Temple? Love one another, show hospitality, remember those who are in prison or who are mistreated, be holy in your marriages, and it goes on for several more paragraphs- an extended definition of what Temple worship now looks like now that WE are the Temple of God, inhabited by the Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 13:15–17 “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

So now let us return to our text here.

Acts 13:1–3 “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. While they were SERVING the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.”

When we are the Church we won’t look like any other gathering of people. On paper it will look like we don’t fit together, but around Christ, we fit perfectly together. And the Church is not a passive Body, it is an active Body. Every Church is running a race to its completion, just as every Christian is. Churches are sent. We are sent into our community to witness to the Risen Christ. We are sent with love. We are sent to bind up wounds, we are sent to mourn with those who are mourning and rejoice with those who are rejoicing, we are sent to pray unblushingly for miracles and we are sent to serve, to wash the feet of the stranger and to serve those whom the world scorns.

We do all this not through our own strength, but all the while we are engaging the world in this way we are in prayer and we are fasting, either overtly fasting, or fasting in more subtle ways by denying our flesh its worldly lusts. We deny our pride. We deny our greed. We deny our narcissism. We deny our need to be popular or well liked or powerful.

And if our Church can be that kind of Church, then the Holy Spirit will set us apart and anoint us for the ministry He has called us to.