Being A World Christian
BEING A WORLD CHRISTIAN
Acts 11
I want to begin this morning with a couple of principles about the Kingdom of God that are so preliminary, but are so foundational to understanding and believing in missions. I think there is a lot of things we talk about that aren’t worth talking about. There’s a lot of things we talk about in pulpits that aren’t worth explaining. The Gospel is not one of those things. The Good News is to be shared at all times, in all places, with all people, at all costs. Now, we really believe Christ is for the whole world. And any church that deserves to be called Christian is going to believe that.
Now, there are two principles that we begin with: first, Jesus has commissioned his disciples to take on the world. Nobody could accuse Jesus of a lack of a vision. He told his disciples, in Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” So, if you’re a disciple of Jesus, you cannot think just locally. You must think globally. Our purpose in life is to love and save the world through Jesus Christ. Now that purpose makes two assumptions. Assumption number one is that the world needs saving. And it assumes, number two, that Jesus is necessary for that salvation. And that raises the fundamental question when it comes to missions. Is missions a divine necessity or is it just a divine nicety? In other words, do people really need Jesus or does it just make things better if they have Jesus? If we’re going to believe that Christ is for the world, it’s going to demand this conviction that all of creation needs of the imputed righteousness of Christ to be able to stand before a holy God. That’s not politically correct. Especially in our age where all dogs go to heaven and there’s lots of ways to get to God. What undergirds missions is the conviction that only the imputed righteousness of Christ allows anybody to stand before his holy God. Now is that what the Bible teaches?
- Listen to Peter in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” He does not say it’s one of the names. He says there is no other name. That’s what Peter thought.
- What did Paul think? I Timothy 2:4-5, “God wants all men to be saved and come to acknowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Paul said there’s only one way to God.
- What did John think? I John 5:12, “He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
- And most importantly of all, what did Jesus think? John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father expect through me.”
It’s a simple as this folks; a man can die without many things, but Jesus cannot be one them. He’s commissioned us to take on the world because the world needs him. Missions is not just a charity, folks, it’s a necessity. We exist to love and save the world through Jesus Christ.
Now, here’s the other principle: Jesus is committed to reaching the world through his church. Now you may not think that you need the church, but Jesus thinks that the world needs the church. In Matthew 16 it says, “I tell you Peter, upon this rock of your confession I’m going to build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven ad whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus said, “I’m going to build a church.” He does not promise to build a school. He does not promise to build an organization. He does not promise to build a country. Although, all those things can serve God. It’s through his church that hell’s going to be hampered and the reach of the kingdom of God is going to be advanced.
You know what will really shake up your understanding of the church is when you look closely at those words of Jesus in Matthew 16. When Jesus said, “I’m going to build a church that the gates of hell cannot stop.”, you need to remember that gates are a defensive weapon. The idea that Jesus had was that His church was going to be militant. His church is going to be aggressive. His church is going to be advancing. “I’m not going to build a church that hangs behind walls and hides. I’m going to build a church that tears down walls and grows.” The bible says in Ephesians 3:20-21, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen.”
Now, let me tell you something real quick. When Jesus said, “I’m going to build my church and my church is going to be my vessel, my instrument for advancing the will of God and pulling people of out the dominion of darkness,” when Jesus said that’s what I’m going to do He was not talking about some perfect ideal church that has never existed. It has never existed. The church has never been perfect. The church has always been divine because Jesus is the founder. But the church has always been human because clay vessels like you and me are her members. When Jesus said, “I’m going to build a church that’s going to take on hell,” he’s talking about the church in Corinth, and the church in Rome, and the church in Ephesus, and the church in Seminole -- with all our flaws and with all our warts. You mean God’s got to use people with all the mistakes we have, and all the flaws we have, and at the errors in our doctrines we have? That’s the only church He’s got! He doesn’t have another kind of church. Somebody said, “The church is like Noah’s ark. If it wasn’t for the storm on the outside, you wouldn’t be able to stand the stench on the inside.” The Church has never been perfect. The church has never been ideal. The church has always been full of flawed people like you and me. And when Jesus said, “I’m going to build a church to take on the gates of hell,” he’s talking about us. He’s talking about churches like this one. I know we have our weaknesses. I know we’re full of frailty, but when you fuse the majesty of Christ with the frailty of the church, the gates of hell come down.
I think it is no wonder that Satan works overtime to sell the lie that the church is irrelevant because he knows -- the prince of this world knows -- that Christ plans through is church to take him on all over the world.
Now the question for every church -- for this church – is, are we going to be a church that honors and accepts Jesus’ vision? Well, I want us today to look at one church that did. I think it’s maybe my favorite church in al the New Testament. Turn to Acts 11 and I want to introduce you to the church in Antioch. You may remember that Paul and Barnabas when they left for what we call the first missionary journey, they were serving the church in Antioch. In many ways, the genesis of Christian exodus began in Antioch. World missions began, or was birthed, at the church in Antioch. I think there are some reasons why God chose that church. I’m going to begin reading with the 19th verse of Acts 11. Follow along as I read, Acts 11:19-28, “Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen…” Now this is the persecution in Jerusalem, out of the stoning of Stephen. We’re talking here about Jews. People who were down in what they called the province of Judea. Those people – scattered by persecution “traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.”
Now I want you to notice three characteristics about this church that I believe are absolutely essential for effective missions.
I. JESUS’ VISION DEMANDS A GOSPEL OF GRACE CHURCH
Here’s the first and probably the most important: The mission demands a Gospel of Grace church. Few churches have been more significant than the church of Antioch because the church in Antioch was the first church to preach a Gospel that could truly go into all the world. I hope you understood what I just said. Antioch was the first church to preach a gospel that could truly go into all the world. Notice that those who were scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen they left more than just their physical baggage behind when they left Jerusalem. They left some religious baggage behind, too. Some of them went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. That's kind of interesting. By the way, we’ve always heard that Cornelius was the first Gentile convert. Don’t believe that. This happened right after the stoning of Stephen. This was before Cornelius. Cornelius was the test case that caused Jerusalem to deal with the Gentile issue, but before Cornelius, there were Gentiles up in Antioch becoming Christians. And notice, they didn’t change the good news. They preached the good news about the Lord Jesus. But they did adapt their presentation to fit their culture. You see, if you were going to preach to Jews you’d preach about Christ Jesus. Christ the Messiah. You’d show all the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus is the fulfillment of the coming Messiah. But, if you’re talking to Greeks that doesn’t make much sense to them, so you talk abut the Lord Jesus. They didn’t change the good news, but they did adapt the way they presented it to reach their audience. The church in Antioch was the first to separate the core gospel from its Jewish wrappings. They were the first church to say, “You know a lot of this stuff is really about the Jewish background that isn’t necessary to believe to become a follower of Christ.” Now the Church in Jerusalem, comprised exclusively of Jews heard about that. They said, “We're not to sure about all this,” so they sent Barnabas to investigate all this. The Bible says, He saw evidence of the grace of God and he was glad and he encouraged them all. Barnabas was a good man. But you know not everybody was as excited as Barnabas about this new gospel.
I want to show you what happened later. Turn over to Acts 15 with me for a moment. Look at verse 1 and 2 of Acts 15. It says, “Some men came down from Judea (that means Jerusalem) to Antioch and they were teaching the brothers, “Unless you’re circumcised according the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ And this brought Paul and Barnabas into dispute and sharp debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed with some other believers to go up to Jerusalem to see the Apostles and elders about this question.” Now we’ve had our share of church fusses here over the years and most of them have been ridiculous. This one wasn’t ridiculous. This, we call the Jerusalem conference, was about the most important of all questions; what do you have to know to become a Christian? What’s the core of the Gospel? What do you tell a person he’s got to do to be saved? You see, you’ve got to understand the people who had what we might call a more legalistic stance of salvation were not bad people. All your life if you were raised in a Jewish home, and you ate the kosher food, and you went to the synagogue, and you kept the Sabbath, and you heard about the Messiah and then he shows up and he’s a Jew and he fulfills all the Hebrew Scriptures, then you’re excited. And you wonder how can anyone appreciate Jesus if they don’t know about Moses? How can anybody understand Calvary if he doesn’t understand Sinai? So they weren’t saying “You don’t have to believe in Jesus.” They were saying, “Sinai is the screen door and Jesus is the front door and to get to Jesus you’ve got to go through screen door.” They weren’t bad people, but they were adding to Jesus some stuff that, frankly, you just couldn't take all over the world and have fruit.
So they had the most important conference the church has ever had and here’s what it came down to. Acts 15:11, “Peter stood up and said, ‘We believe it’s through grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, the Jews, just as those Gentiles are.’” The church in Antioch understood that Christ is for the world, but cultural trappings are not. The only Gospel that could go today into any culture anywhere in the world, the only Gospel that could go right now into any tongue or into any tribe of the world is the gospel of grace. The gospel of the salvation by grace through faith. And we don’t mean to, but we do lots of adding. Sometimes we think how we do church here in Florida is how you have to do church everywhere in the world to get saved. I think one of the very best things we could to combat legalism is make every member of the church have to spend 6 months on the mission field. You’d find out real fast that al lot of the stuff we’re used to doing in church here in Florida is not absolutely necessary to make people Christians. You’ve got to be sure of the gospel if you’re going to take on the gates of hell all over the world.
January 1, 1863 William Seward, then Secretary of State walks into the Oval office and puts a sheet of paper on the desk for Abraham Lincoln to sign. It’s about noontime. The President picks up a pen to sign the paper, and puts the pen down. He picks it up and again and puts it down again. Seward’s confused because that piece of paper is the Emancipation Proclamation. The document that says that people in this country were meant to live free not as slaves. Lincoln had literally risked his life for that piece of legislation. Seward couldn't understand the hesitation Lincoln had in signing it. Then the President explained, “Since 9:00 this morning I’ve been shaking hands and my hand is numb. If I sign this now, people will look at my signature later and they will think, ‘Look at that! Look how shaky Lincoln's writing was. I don’t think Lincoln's heart was really in it.’” He said, “I’m not going to sign this until I can sign it boldly.”
You know I think sometime when we preach you’re saved by grace through faith alone, we’re afraid to be bold. The way we preach it, it almost sounds like, “That’s what they say, but I’m not sure their heart is in it.” Folks, people are saved by believing in what Jesus did, not by copying what we do. And you’ve got to be convicted by that or you don’t have a gospel that can go into all the world. Paul put it this way in Acts 20:24, “I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.” If we’re going to be a mission minded church, we’ve got to be a gospel of grace church.
II. JESUS’ VISION DEMANDS A FOR EVERY RACE CHURCH
Secondly, if you’re going to go into all the world, you’ve got to be a for-every-race church. In the book, Strength for Each Day, author Harry Lentz tells of a church service that was being conducted in India. That night a Brahman, a Hindu of the upper caste, was visiting the service. And all during the service, people were giving their testimonies of how they’d been saved because of Jesus’ love. And he stood up at the end and said, “I, to have been saved. But I have been saved by the religion of my fathers not by this Jesus.” And the preacher that night said, “I’m glad that you’ve been saved. After the service maybe you would like to join us because we’re going to go down to a real bad part of town to minister to and feed and clothe the untouchables who live there.” Well, if you were a Hindu you believe that you would be defiled just by having your shadow touch those people. And so he stood back up and said, “I still believe I have been saved. But I haven’t been saved that far.”
The church in Antioch was saved that far because they believed the grace of Jesus reached that far. And once they grasped the Gospel they did something powerful. They started crossing lines that people had not crossed before. Notice they were integrated locally, “They began to speak to Greeks also and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.” That took courage. It took courage for the first evangelist to cross the racial line to speak to people who all his life had been told were nothing more than fuel for the fires of hell. But listen to me, Ephesians 2 says every time the cross goes up, racial walls come down. I don’t care if you’re red, yellow, black, or white we all need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we’re going to be a church that reaches the world, we’ve got to be a for-every-race-church.
The church in Antioch was not only integrated locally, they were also integrated universally. Did you notice that this prophet came up named Agabus who predicted through the Spirit that famine was going to come over the whole empire? Now you’re living in Antioch and you’ve just learned from a prophetic vision that your city is about to suffer from a severe famine. Now, wouldn’t you want to wait and find out how bad you were going to be affected before you had a special offering to help somebody else? Well, the Bible says instead of being cautious the Christians in Antioch immediately began to take up collections of money to send to Jerusalem. Why did they do that? Well I’ll tell you. If you were a Jew who had converted to Christianity back then, you suffered more. If you were a Jew who became a follower of Jesus Christ, back then, you would be kicked off the rolls of the synagogue. You would be denied assistance from the benevolent program for widows. Your own family would disown you. You might lose your job. And the Christians in Antioch understood how tough it would be on the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem when this famine hit. So here are these Greeks taking up money to send to Jews. And they did more good through that contribution than 100 sermons in bigotry. I believe one of the reasons that God has blessed churches in America so much is so that we could use our money to send around the world to tear down some of these walls and make the message of Jesus easier to hear.
I heard a story this week about Dr. Eleanor Chestnut. She was one of the very first medical missionaries to China. She went in 1993. She used her own money to build this hospital. And one day this man came in who was what the locals referred to as a “coolie” – he was a poor man. He needed a leg amputated. The surgery didn’t go very well and he needed skin grafts and there wasn’t anybody there who was willing to share skin with a coolie. Several days later Eleanor Chestnut was there doing surgery and somebody noticed that Dr. Chestnut was limping. They asked why and she said, “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” And later, a nurse said that Dr. Chestnut had gone there, applied a local anesthetic to her thigh and took her own skin to help save that man. Now I think when the church does things like that the world might start paying attention.
Jesus said in John 17:23, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me.” The Gospel is for whosoever will. And a church that acts otherwise does not deserve to be called Christians. So if we’re going to be a global community we’ve got to be a gospel of grace church, a for-ever-race church, and real quick, one more thing. We’ve got to be a seeking God’s face church.
III. JESUS’ VISION DEMANDS A SEEKING GOD’S FACE CHURCH
Look with me quickly at Acts 13, one more little picture of the church in Antioch. Acts 13:2-3 reads, “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. So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.” It’s significant that missions was birthed in the context of fasting and prayer. Churches that march against the gates of hell do it on their knees.
Do you remember when Jesus said, “I’m going to build a church that takes on the gates of hell and whatever I give you authority to bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you looses on earth is going to be loosed in heaven?” Look at Matthew 18:18-19 with me, “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Those are the exact same words as in Matthew 16. Then he says, “Again (I’m about to repeat myself), I tell you that if two of you on earth agree for anything you ask for it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” So how do we take on the gates of hell? How does this authority that Jesus exercises through his church, how does it get distributed and applied against the dominion of darkness? Primarily by agreeing, coming together in unity and praying for it to come down. Satan’s empire is not afraid of our name. It’s afraid of His name. And if we have not, I’m afraid it’s because we ask not. Jesus wants us to pray for his kingdom to come. And you know something? You can’t pray that prayer and think small. You can’t take seriously the prayer for God’s kingdom to come and only think about your church at home. He really is able to do more than we ask, but he’s waiting for us to ask.
Two of the great spiritual giants of the 1800’s were a man by the name of F.B. Myer and a man by the name of A.B. Simpson. Myer was visiting Simpson one day and spent the night. Early the next morning he was getting up to go downstairs to have his devotions. He was trying to be quiet so as not to disturb the rest of the family, but as he was making his way down the stirs he noticed that somebody was already up. There was a light on behind a cracked door in Simpson’s study. So he peered inside and there was A.B Simpson on his knees beside a globe. He had his finger on a spot and Myer could tell that he was praying. Then Simpson turned that globe to another spot and he continued to pray. Then he turned it and put his finger on another spot and started to pray. And then Myer watched as that great old man just wrapped his arms around that globe and began to cry. I want to have a heart like that because a heart that is any smaller than a heart for the world is a heart that is not nearly as big as God’s.
$73,000 is a lofty goal for world missions in 2004. Some of you may not realize that this $73,000 is in addition to the weekly giving that it takes to pay the bills and do the ministry here at First Christian. Missions has always been a strong part of who we are at First Christian of Seminole because we’re trying to fulfill Jesus’ global vision by being a Gospel of Grace, For-Every-Race, and a Seeking God’s Face kind of church.
If you’re a part of the church family here we want you to be praying this week – seek God’s face – about how you can contribute to our mission focus this year. If you are not a part of this church family, if you’ve never made a decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of your life – the real question is – will you honor and accept Jesus’ vision for your life and the world? As we sing our invitation hymn, why don’t you settle that issue today? As we sing you come forward and through confessing your faith in him and being buried in baptism with him, you can walk out of here today a new person in Jesus Christ. If you’re already an immersed believer looking for a church home, we would welcome you into the fellowship of this church family upon the public confession of your faith in Jesus. Whatever your decision, why don’t you come as we stand and sing . .