Sermon Tone Analysis

Could go for some chick fil a nuggets.

Oh, it’s Sunday.

Great company.

Middletown opening on my birthday.

Their is a pattern to the way it’s opened.

They do it a particular way because it works.

Remember that the very first week we started this series in Acts we talked about looking at the New Testament church so that we can compare ourselves to the priorities and the things that made them what they were.

We see incredible movements of God in those churches and so we ask, “What was it about that church that made it special?”

We should compare ourselves to that church because those churches produced incredible fruit, and they were started by the very men that walked with Jesus.

Those churches had men and women in them that saw the resurrected Christ and those churches saw the Holy Spirit move in incredible ways.

So we want to study that church because they go back the furthest, they are closest to the source, the source being, Jesus.

Remember the illustration we used the very first week of this series?

We talked about water?

And remember how we said that in order to get the purest water, to get water in it’s purest form is to get it at its source.

The source.

Whether it is the spring or the glacier, the closer you get to the source the purer the water will be.

The same applies to a story about someone.

If you want to get the most accurate version of that story you get it from the person that it happened to.

And again, If we want to learn about what the church should look like in its purest form we look at the churches that started in Acts.

If we don’t do that we struggle.

If we want to learn about what the church should look like in its purest form we look at the churches that started in Acts.

Because those churches were started by the guys who actually heard the words of Jesus.

What was important to them?

What made them tick?

And so we study those New Testament Churches because they are the example of God moving mightily through the Holy Spirit from the very beginning.

If we don’t do that we struggle.

Churches today struggle to try to find out what they are all about.

Rock Band

Children’s Ministry

Dynamic speaker

And listen, it’s not that those things aren’t important, they really are, but if we look at the first churches we really don’t see that.

We see them preach Jesus and give of themselves and the rest seems to take care of itself.

As people surrender their lives to Jesus the natural result of that is a healthy and vibrant church.

And if we read through Acts we see that there is a pattern that emerges in the way churches exist.

We see these cycles and patterns.

And those patterns repeat themselves.

Remember we talked last week about how God removed the barrier between the Jew and the Gentile through the conversion of Cornelius and his family?

We see that now God is available to everyone and everyone has access to God when they put their faith in Jesus as their one and only savior.

So talks about this church that starts in Antioch.

Now Antioch is probably about not quite 300 miles from Jerusalem.

Far away as far as ancient civilizations go.

And the very reason Christ followers ended up there was because of Stephen being executed.

After that a great persecution started and the Christ followers leave Jerusalem to escape Saul who was arresting everyone who spoke of Jesus.

So people fled.

Up to and over 100 miles they flee, and they begin new lives.

Well the great persecution started after that and the people, the Christ followers leave Jerusalem to escape Saul who was arresting everyone who spoke of Jesus.

So people fled.

Up to and over 100 miles they flee, and they begin new lives.

Now Antioch is probably about 125 miles from Jerusalem.

And we kind of just read over that verse and we don’t really think about it personally.

I just need to stop there and ask a question.

Imagine if that happened to us.

This morning, someone with authority, the police comes in and says, “beginning tomorrow you will be arrested because of your association with this church”.

And you know that this is basically a death sentence.

What do you do?

The rubber hits the road.

You either deny Christ, or You run!

You folks who are preppers are all ready, you know how to survive.

You’ve been buying up those MREs and you have the water filters and all of that.

You are ready.

But you run away and start a new life.

A new life!

Tomorrow!

You don’t show up to work, you may not even get a chance to say goodbye to your friends.

You leave your house and you go.

That is what happened to these people.

They go because they are associated with Jesus.

But here is the amazing thing.

This is amazing to me.

They run over 100 miles away, start this new life, but they continue to bring that message of Jesus with them and they tell it to their new neighbors and when people hear about this Jesus who was killed and rose again… they believe in Him!

And more and more people believe and what do you know?

Another church starts!

But they bring that message of Jesus with them and they tell it to their new neighbors and when people hear about this Jesus who was killed and rose again… they believe in Him!

They believe and the church spreads.

Is this insane?

The reason they left in the first place was because of Jesus.

Now they are either a little dense, or they really believe, what they believe.

They cannot help themselves.

They go right back to sharing Jesus.

And the new neighbors and the new friends, they believe, they believe and a new church, a new gathering spreads.

And this new church has made enough of an impression that Jerusalem hears about it, 200 some miles away and they know that this group needs help so they send this guy Barnabas to Antioch.

This wold be a tough assignment.

Antioch

To let you know a little bit about this Antioch.

Antioch was the 3rd most important city in the Roman empire.

It was incredibly important and was very luxurious, very modern, but it was completely immoral.

Pagan worship, prostitution and corruption ran rampant.

It was beautiful city, but it was terrible city too.

Imagine starting a church in that area.

It is said that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians at Antioch but make no mistake, they weren’t being complimentary.

Apparently, the people of Antioch regularly assigned nick-names to people and people groups and they called them a word that basically means, those Christ folk.

It was not a compliment.

There is no place beyond the reach of God.

This was not an easy place to be a Christ folk.

But it is interesting that they were recognizable.

People don’t give you a nick-name unless there is something about you that is different, something that gets you noticed.

Because they aren’t going to be able to thrive or even survive on their own if they don’t have someone with experience to help them.

They need help.

These are gentile believers who need help, they need discipleship.

They send Barnabas to do the groundwork.