The Ends of the Earth

Connect Card Talk: Good Morning church! It’s so good to see you this morning. I pray you have had a good weekend so far! If this is your first time worshiping with us here at East, you are our special guest! We are pumped that you are here! And we actually have a free East tshirt in the lobby for you today. If you will simply grab the card from the seat in front of you, fill it out with as much info as you feel comfortable with and drop it by our Next Steps Area, they will hook you up.

We have been in what I feel is a rather important series for our church going forward. We have been in the book of Acts through this month, not studying it verse by verse, but breezing through it more in an overview fashion with one singular focus: What is the mission of the church?

Often times, we want to define the trajectory of our lives, our families, and even our church. But what we see in the book of Acts, and really in the Bible as a whole is that God has already laid out a purpose and direction for all of those things! We as a church don’t get to decide WHAT we do or WHY we do it. Those things are found throughout Scripture. And I believe they are most concisely seen in the book of Acts.

I’ve introduced you to a statement that I pray you get tired of hearing me say, because then you will start mocking me by saying it yourself, and then, guess what? That means you have memorized it! I’ll take the mocking!

But this statement is really what we see the early church adopting in the book of Acts and it is what we are adopting going forward:

The glory of God in US our NEIGHBORS and the NATIONS

We began by seeing the tight nit community of care and love and discipleship that was going on among the believers. THAT’S WHAT WE NEED HERE! No more, “Hi! How are you? It’s a beautiful day, no?” We need to long for REAL lasting relationships in this body of believers! It’s why we changed up our group model and created LIFE GROUPS that are longer and relationship driven. We feel that these groups will be super important for the long-term healthy of what we do together. When we all buy into lasting relationships here in this church, that’s what it looks like to see the glory of God in US!

Then we looked at how the early church loved their city. They were centered in Jerusalem and were known for their hospitality and openness to those around them. We need that here at East! God may not have planted us in a large, bustling city, but he has planted us here! And we need to be faithful to this area. We want those within 3-5 miles of our church to know that our church exists to worship God but also to love our neighbors well. We want them to know that they are loved and always welcome here at East! Three schools sit in that radius and lots of physical needs. That will be our focus as a church! When we do those things well, we will see the glory of God in our neighbors.

Last week we saw the early church begin to spread out. In the earliest days, their focus had been on people just like them, Jews in Jerusalem. But they quickly began to recognize that God was redeeming a people through Jesus’ blood much greater than just one people group! He was calling men and women from all nations! We see that they begin reaching out to the Samaritans who they had previously avoided and even hated. In that, we learn that there is no room for prejudice in our mission! And we also see that the way the mission of Christ spreads is through the planting of churches not just through sharing the Gospel, meeting needs and moving on. Our prayer as a church is that God would begin to prepare us as a multiplying church. We want to learn what it looks like to plant a church somewhere in North America and then we want to do it sometime in the future. We believe this is what it looks like to see the glory of God in our (not so close) neighbors.

And today, we are going to see the Gospel continue to spread from the new multi-cultural church at Antioch.

Let me read the first three verses of chapter thirteen. Then I will pray and come back to dive in.

Acts 13:1–3 CSB

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As 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 they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off.

PRAY

One of the things I love about small groups is that they can be really weird sometimes! Y’all ever been in a weird group? It is really easy to meet up with a group of your friends who are just like you and have little inside jokes and study the Bible together. You know what’s not easy? Sitting in a room with people from all different walks of life, opening God’s Word, and forcing ourselves to be honest and real with people we are just beginning to get to know. That is HARD and WEIRD!

But guess what? It’s beautiful! It’s in that type of group that God seems to speak and move most often!

The group we see gathered here for study and prayers is a strange group! I told you last week that the first local church was centered in Jerusalem. But Barnabas was sent from the Apostles to help establish a local church in Antioch. He gets the support of the newly converted Saul.

Barnabas and Saul are both Jewish. But Saul was raised in the traditional Hebrew environment. What we would call a Hebraic Jew. He would followed the law as best he could. He went through the training system that was in place for young Hebrew boys and he excelled at it! Sat under one of the most well-known rabbis of the day!

Barnabas however is what we call a Hellenistic Jew. They were still Jewish by practice, and many even by birth, but they also adopted certain things from the Greek culture. They would not have been so hard-nosed about every letter of the law. Hebraic Jews and Hellenistic Jews didn’t always get along. It’s actually the issue that almost causes a split in the church in Jerusalem multiple times in the book of Acts! But here, the Gospel has changed these men’s hearts and they two are showing grace to one another as God has shown grace to them.

There are also two Africans in the group. Simeon is called Niger. Not sure if this was a nickname or simply a description but either way, it had to be because he was black. Niger meant black and is where Nigeria would later get their name.

Lucius is also from Africa. He is from Cyrene which was on the northern coast of Africa south of the Meditarranean Sea.

Two africans, two Jews that don’t get along… And Manaen was the icing on the cake.

He was a close friend of Herod the Tetrarch. This is Herod Antipas! His dad is the one who had all the babies in Egypt killed trying to snuff out Jesus when he was young. He divorced his wife so that he could marry his half-brother’s wife who was also his NIECE. He had Jesus’ cousin who we call John the Baptizer imprisoned and later beheaded because he told Antipas this marriage was icky and sinful. Then Pilate sends a bound Jesus to Antipas who hoped to be entertained with a miracle from Jesus, but when Jesus doesn’t perform for him, he sends him back to Pilate after having him beaten and put into goofy clothes as his soldiers mock Jesus.

He was a real stand up guy!

And this guy, who is in the room with these other four guys is one of his golfing buddies! This is the power of God’s grace church!

There is no other situation in this day, in which a Hebraic Jew, a Hellenistic Jew, a black African, a north coast Cyrenian, and the best friend of Herod could sit down and have a healthy conversation. But through the power of the Gospel, they not only talk to one another, THEY LOVE ONE ANOTHER! Don’t miss this!

This is the beauty of the church at Antioch! I love it! Yes, it probably made for some awkward moments, but what better image for the outside world to see in the church than this!? AMEN?

So this ragtag bunch of guys are preaching and teaching in Antioch. Here they seem to be gathered for prayer, fasting, and whatever other form of worship they could think of and God makes it clear to them that he wants Barnabas and Saul to be set apart for a task.

They spend some more time worshiping and then they lay hands on them, pray over them and send them off to do the Lord’s work in the world. This moment signals the beginning of the largest push we see in the Bible to reach the ends of the earth with the Gospel!

There is a simple principle here that we need to take note of as a church

1. They sent out MISSIONARIES

Barnabas and Saul here are sent out as an extension of the church in Antioch to do work in other places. Saul’s mission trips were a little slower than the ones you and I are used to, because he often stayed gone on one journey for years, but he would go out, make rounds and come back to report and gather funding.

As a church going forward, I can’t imagine a mission trip where we all load up and go somewhere, right? We are always going to be sending a team on that mission. And we are going to treat it just like this! Whether that team is going for 5 days or whether they are going for a month or years, we still want to bathe the prep time in prayer and then send them off by laying on hands and Praying!

To those of you who will go on missions in the future, you need to recognize that you represent all of us as you go! It’s a big deal! That’s what we see Saul doing as he goes. He would bring words of encouragement by mentioning the church in Jerusalem and the church in Antioch.

And our prayer will always be that God send MORE. We will not measure the effectiveness of God’s Spirit in us by how many people attend worship on Sunday. Yes, we keep up with that because it is a helpful number. If you are wondering it’s been in the 160s for three weeks in a row. Which is above average percentage for us based on our precovid numbers.

And its good to see that number begin to increase, but listen church!… As we head into 2021, we are tracking another number (really two: one is groups) but these two are far more important! The other one is how many of our people are we sending out on mission to our neighbors and the nations! This is how we see the Glory of God in us our neighbors and the nations, amen?

We are not as concerned with our SEATING capacity here at East as we are our SENDING capacity! That will be a focus going forward!

But I want to look at the particular work that Saul and Barnabas are doing. Because there are many types of mission opportunities that we could jump into, but I want us to look here in Acts to tell us what we should be doing instead of looking at options, alright?

Acts 14:21–23 CSB

After they had preached the gospel in that town and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch, strengthening the disciples by encouraging them to continue in the faith and by telling them, “It is necessary to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” When they had appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

Saul did many things on these missionary journeys: he preached the Gospel, he formed relationships, he met physical needs, he encouraged and discipled existing believers, and many other things. But notice what they do when they leave the cities in this text...

Acts 14:23 CSB

When they had appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

Nerd moment… The word “elder” is the word presbyteros. It is one of three Greek words used for the leadership roles in a church. Another that gets translated as bishop or overseer is episkopos. And we also see the term pastor or shepherd used to describe this role. Most scholars agree that these three terms do not represent three separate roles in the church but actually all point to the same role. So, if you would like to call me an elder, bishop, overseer, or shepherd, you would have some biblical basis to do so! But Heath is fine.

So, if elder here represents the pastoral leadership in each local church, then that seems to be Saul’s ultimate goal: to see a church in the city.

2. They planted CHURCHES

I talked about this a little bit last week, but it’s important to mention again: we can load up a bunch of clothes, shoes, and water and fly anywhere y’all want to go. Find us a place to setup and we can unload every bit of that stuff to the people there.

But will we be doing what is best for that community or people? What if there is an area just a bit further that needs that stuff even more? What if our handouts actually do more damage to the community than if we hadn’t given at all?

These are real questions that I have had to face in ministry and help others face in ministry. I have seen this very thing happen where a church carries things to an area and literally stops in the street and flings the door open to a box truck. People from the neighborhood storm them and seem super thankful for the stuff. But all the while, there was a small baptist church down the road that is doing its best to meet the deepest needs in its community. Helping people who aren’t gonna storm out of their house when they see free stuff being thrown out of an Alabama tagged moving truck! How much better would it have been to have given all of that to the local church pastor to distribute to the needs that he knew were real in his community. He could have delivered those and shared Jesus as he delivered and invited them to the next Sunday’s worship service, right?

As we pray about what mission partners God would have us to connect with in the future, just know that our main objective is not to meet physical or even spiritual needs when we go overseas. Our goal is to build up the body of Christ so that she may minister better to her community! Whether that means partnering with an existing local church in the area or working with locals to plant a new church, our goal must always be on the church. It is great to lead a man in India to Christ. But it is even greater to work to see a local church there that can not only lead that man to Christ but also see him discipled in the years to come!

Our mission efforts must have these things as their end just as Saul and Barnabas’s did!

There is one more focus of their efforts that we must look at.

3. They continued REACHING

Let me remind you of the way Jesus commissioned this bunch before he went back to be with the Father...

Acts 1:8 CSB

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

What we see take place in chapters 13 through the last chapter 28 is a movement towards the ends of the earth!

As they travelled on these missionary trips, they faced a lot of backlash for what they were preaching. The Gospel was spreading so quickly at this time through the known world that these missionaries had a reputation before they even arrived in a city!

One such example is when they get to Thessalonica. After a few days of preaching, several of the Jews from that area, many of the Gentiles (or non Jews) and a crowd of important women in the city have all joined Paul and his new companion Silas on this journey of faith in Christ. This leads to a mob being formed and a riot occuring in the city. They storm the home of one of these new rumored Christians hoping to find Paul and Silas, but they don’t. Then this is said...

Acts 17:6 CSB

When they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too,

DUDE! What a word to be said!

At this point, it isn’t the whole world. But Paul continues to work on it. His obvious goal is the spread the gospel to the entire known world. In this effort, he winds up getting arrested for the movement that has started. As a Roman citizen, he has the option to go before Caesar. He opts for that! Can you imagine? This odd Jewish guy from Tarsus getting to share the Gospel with the boss of the whole world at the time! How cool is that!?

But, we get to the end of the book of Acts, Paul is on house arrest, still preaching like a maniac though, and it’s just over...

Acts 28:30–31 CSB

Paul stayed two whole years in his own rented house. And he welcomed all who visited him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Many look at this as anti-climactic. They wanted to see what happened with Caesar. All we know is that Paul was eventually killed. Tradition says he was beheaded. But Paul had made it all the way to Rome. The center of the known world. The heart of man’s sinfulness. The belly of the Beast. And he did what he always did, He made sure a church got planted in Rome.

We may not see the ends of the earth reached by the end of the book of Acts, but that’s not the point. The point is that the work continues! Just as Paul continued to reach for the unreached, so must we!

This actually isn’t a general term for those who haven’t responded to faith. This term “unreached” has a fixed definition. A people group would be consider unreached if less than 2% of the population are true believers. Think about what that means. If you live in an unreached people group, you may live your entire life and never meet a Christian and never hear about Jesus. Think about that! Now, you want to take a stab at the number of people who live in areas like this? Out of the 7.76 billion people on the planet.......... 42.6 percent live in unreached places. That means that over 3.2 BILLION people may be born, live full lives, and die without ever hearing the name of Jesus. And over 1 billion of those live in areas where we know there has never been a Gospel centered church or we know there has been no Gospel work there in over two years......

That’s real life. I’m not making that up! I’m pulling number from the International Mission Board, an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Joshua Project which does tons of research on international missions.

What does this mean for us?

It doesn’t mean that we are all selling our stuff tomorrow and moving overseas, but we have to care. We have to be moved to PRAY for these people! We have to be willing to GIVE towards missionaries who are engaging with them. And, yes, we need to find ways to ENGAGE in the mission itself!

We cannot be a church that puts blinders on in regards to the nations, especially the unreached peoples of the world! We must have skin in the game at some level.

The work that Paul and the other Apostles began, continued through their disciples. And eventually through their disciples and their disciples and their disciples. For 2000 years the efforts of reaching the unreached should have remained in the forefront of our minds. But it hasn’t. We settle into a routine and just roll with life.

But that is not what we see Paul and his travelling buddies doing. They are not settled in, they are consistently pushing. I don’t know all that this looks like yet, but I promise you this, we will be a church for the nations. We must be! It is our calling.

I hope the last few weeks hasn’t been overwhelming for you! Right now, we are in the praying phase of much of this. So, I ask that you join me in praying for wisdom and clarity now.

But I also want to ask you are you ready? For us to see the glory of God in US, our NEIGHBORS and the NATIONS, we must be united. The thing that unites us is the Gospel. I will ask, “Are you living out of the Gospel today?” I am not asking, did you pray a prayer of salvation at a young age or were you baptized. I am asking has God changed your heart and saved you by the blood of Jesus and are you living out of that calling and power each day?

If not, talk to me or one of our counselors during this last song! We would love to help you work through the questions in your heart.

Also, I have told you what we are working towards in the years to come here at East. If that excites you, and you want to link arms with us as a member of this church, let us know that too! (first service can stay for East 101)

Any other prayer need for yourself or others, you can also bring to the altar here before the Lord. And as always you can pray or sing right where you are as a form of response as well.

PRAY