The Word Came to Antioch

Scripture Reading

Acts 11:19–30 (ESV)

19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.

20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

23 When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

27 Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius).

29 So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. 30 And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

Main Point

The gospel of Jesus Christ, preached by everyday Christians, creates local churches, which are animated by Christ’s Spirit, governed by Christ’s word, and motivated by Christ’s love.

Message Outline

The Lord Uses Unnamed Evangelists

The Gospel Created a Church

The New Church Confirmed and Exhorted

The New Church Taught and Organized

The New Church Showed Love and Generosity

Message

1) Unnamed Evangelists (v19-20)

Remember, persecution scattered Christians from Jerusalem.

The “persecution…arose over Stephen” (v19), who had been publicly accused, tried, and condemned to death in Jerusalem (Acts 6:8-7:60).

We were introduced to a man named “Saul” who “approved of [Stephen’s] execution” (Acts 8:1) and who was also apparently the instigator of “a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem” during that same time (Acts 8:1).

Luke specifically named “Saul” as the one “ravaging the church…entering house after house…dragging off men and women…to prison” (Acts 8:3).

Those who fled Jerusalem were (probably) mostly Greek-speaking Jews.

We talked about this in Acts 6, when were were introduced to two distinct cultures among Christians in Jerusalem at that time: (1) “Hellenists” (Acts 6:1; ESV) or “Hellenistic Jews” (NASB) or “Grecian Jews” (NIV84) and (2) “Hebrews” (Acts 6:1; ESV) or “native Hebrews” (NASB) or “Hebraic Jews” (NIV84).

Stephen was a Hellenistic Jew, and the Hellenists would have been the easiest targets of Jewish hostility… since they were obviously departing from traditional Jewish customs and rites.

Luke says that “all” the “church in Jerusalem” was “scattered… except the apostles” (Acts 8:1), but there were certainly many Christians still in Jerusalem later on (Acts 9:26, 11:2-3, 11:22, 15:2-4).

It seems best to understand Luke to mean that a great number of the church in Jerusalem were scattered (particularly those who were Hellenistic Jews), but the apostles (who were Hebraic Jews) and many other Christians like them remained.

Whatever the native culture/language of these scattered Christians, they “went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

Some of those Christians who fled Jerusalem came all the way to Antioch.

And most of them (the implication of v1) kept their gospel message aimed at Jews.

Though they “traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch,” they spoke “the word to no one except Jews” (v19).

Luke doesn’t tell us about how many Jewish converts turned to Christ through these evangelistic efforts.

But Luke is interested in telling us about what happened with the Hellenists.

The word translated “Hellenists” (ESV) or “Grecians” (KJV) or “Greeks” (NASB and NIV84) in v20 literally means “Greek-speakers.”

In the context of Acts 6, the focus was on distinguishing two different kinds of Jewish Christians - one that was culturally and linguistically Jewish and the other that was culturally and linguistically Greek or Hellenized.

In our context this morning (in Acts 11), the focus is upon distinguishing Jews and Gentiles (i.e., non-Jews).

Therefore, we are to understand that the “Hellenists” in view here are Gentiles, which has been Luke’s focus at least since Acts 9 (with Saul’s commission in v15 and Peter’s stay with Simon the tanner in v43).

The evangelists Christ used in Antioch were nobodies.

Luke says, “But there were some of them [i.e., some of those scattered by persecution], men of Cyprus and Cyrene [two Greek towns far away from Jerusalem and from Antioch], who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus” (v20).

We will study what happened more as we go, but let’s take a moment here to consider the encouragement and the challenge we see here.

Christianity is a religion of nobodies.

Brothers and sisters… There is no buying your way in… Your social status is nullified by the universal condition of sin and the universal dependence we all must have upon Christ… Even your political or national affiliation is overwhelmed by and subject to your greater citizenship in Christ’s kingdom, which has no earthly boundaries or limits.

This is why the Scripture says, “Here [i.e., among Christ’s people] there is not Greek and Jew… barbarian, Scythian, slave [or] free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).

The gospel is a message to nobodies from nobodies about the greatest somebody in the whole universe.

This should free us from the fear of man.

When your friend hears the gospel and turns to Christ, this is not a reflection upon you… You’re a nobody; Christ is who they’ve come to know and love and worship.

When your friend hears the gospel and rejects Christ or reacts with indifference, this is not a reflection upon you… You’re a nobody; Christ is who they’ve rejected or ignored.

This should give us unconquerable confidence!

The person in front of you may have great social influence, he or she may be politically connected, and he or she may even have the power to cause you real harm or violence.

BUT, he or she is a nobody when compared with Christ! We are all subjects of the King; and either we are submitting to the King or we are rebelling against Him… but Jesus Christ is the king… who offers grace and mercy to those who repent and believe, and who condemns to judgment those who remain in sin.

The gospel of Jesus Christ goes out by the mouths of everyday Christians… and what happens when everyday Christians preach the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ?

2) The Gospel Created a Church (v21)

These unnamed men preached the gospel.

Luke tells us that they “preached the Lord Jesus” (v20).

Luke does not repeat the same details at every point of gospel expansion in Acts, but he does use shorthand phrases to refer to that message which the Apostles and the early Christians proclaimed.

Luke recorded Peter’s message at Pentecost (at least a good bit of it) in Acts 2:14-39… and also Peter’s message in Solomon’s Portico in Acts 3:12-26.

Luke recorded Stephen’s message of judgment in Acts 7, which centers on the same claims that Peter had already made.

Stephen’s message, like Peter’s, emphasized God’s promise of the coming Savior or anointed one or “Righteous One” (Acts 7: 52), and also the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah or Christ which God promised.

Luke’s most common shorthand for the gospel message is to refer to it as “the word” (v19).

At Pentecost, Luke says that “those who received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:41).

At Solomon’s Portico, Luke says that “many of those who had heard the word believed” (Acts 4:4).

When persecution was ratcheting up in Jerusalem, the whole church gathered and prayed that God would “grant [that] your servants…continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29).

And at each section break in the Acts storyline, when Luke wants to move the reader from one geography and people-group to another, Luke says that “the word of God continued to increase” (Acts 6:7) or “the word of God increased and multiplied” (Acts 12:24) or “the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily” (Acts 19:20).

And it is that message of the word of God or the word about Jesus Christ which the unnamed evangelists proclaimed or “preached” in Antioch (v20).

God is the holy and righteous judge, and you are unholy and condemned… But God has sent Jesus to offer forgiveness and reconciliation… Therefore, repent (turn from sin) and believe this gospel!

And many in Antioch believed!

Because “the hand of the Lord was with them...” Luke tells us that there was “a great number who believed [and] turned to the Lord” (v21).

This is a principle and even a doctrine which we have seen repeated again and again in the book of Acts.

The gospel is the message of glorious and gracious salvation, and God (particularly the Holy Spirit) is the one who grants the gifts of repentance and faith to some of those who hear the gospel.

That is: The Holy Spirit (i.e., Christ’s Spirit) animates or gives life to or invigorates sinners, converting them from unbelief to belief and turning them from sin to discipleship (i.e., following the Lord).

Brothers and sisters… we beat this drum a lot here, but I think we must keep on beating it.

Everyone and everything else around us urges us to think and expect the opposite.

Do you want to see more of your friends converted? Then learn this method of evangelism!

Do you want to see more kids and teens following Christ? Then here’s how you can be relevant!

Do you want to see your membership numbers grow? Then follow these steps to revitalization!

But the Scripture urges us to be faithful and trust the Lord with the results.

We should have gospel conversations with our friends...

We should teach and model for our own kids what it truly means to be a follower of Christ...

We should invite our unchurched friends and family to come along with us on a Sunday...

And we should pray that God will produce fruit from all these efforts… because none of us have the power to change anyone’s heart.

The believers in Antioch became a church.

Luke initially tells us only that there were a “great number who believed [and] turned to the Lord” (v21).

It’s not until v26 that the believers in Antioch are called a “church.”

However, I want to highlight the fact that this whole passage is a picture of the kind of progression which the whole New Testament assumes, exemplifies, and teaches… regarding gospel expansion, conversion, and discipleship.

Let me lay it out like this:

Gospel expansion begins with preaching the gospel (formally and informally), teaching people the gospel of Christ with the aim to persuade.

“believing” and “turning” to the Lord (v21) is New Testament language that carries with it the whole idea of conversion (which we often lose when we merely talk of “making a decision for Christ” or “getting saved”).

Conversion includes repentance, trust in Jesus as Savior, baptism (i.e., public profession of faith in / conversion to Christ), and a comprehensive life-practice of following Jesus (i.e., learning His words and doing what He says).

The report of conversions is cause for investigation before celebration.

Christian converts are to be exhorted to faithfulness and organized into churches, not merely assured of pardon/forgiveness.

Church members are to be taught what to believe and how to live.

Church members are to believe and live in such a way so as to be observably associated with Jesus Christ.

Now, I’ve already touched on preaching the gospel, and we’ve recently talked much about what it means to be converted (though I’d be glad to discuss this more with anyone interested)… so I’m going to use the rest of our sermon time this morning to try to show how these last four things I just said arise from our text today.

3) Confirmed and Exhorted (v22-24)

The report of conversions caused an investigation.

Luke says, “The report of this [i.e., a great number in Antioch believing and turning to the Lord] came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch” (v22).

Something like this had happened before, when Philip preached the gospel in Samaria and the Apostles in Jerusalem “heard that Samaria had received the word of God, then sent to them Peter and John” (Acts 8:14).

But this time, the reported converts were from a completely different background!

All of those converted up to this point in Acts were either Jewish (having at minimum a general grounding in the OT Scriptures) or God-fearers (also having a worldview significantly impacted by the OT).

Some of the new converts in Antioch may well have been ethnically Jewish, but the great majority of them (at least at the beginning) were utterly Gentile, fully immersed in the Graeco-Roman culture and religion of that day.

This is the whole point of Luke distinguishing between preaching to “no one except Jews” (v19) and to “the Hellenists also” (v20).

So Barnabas’s visit was (at least in part) to investigate if the report was true.

Friends, this flies in the face of so much of what is commonly assumed and practiced among Evangelicals in America today.

Nearly universally, Evangelical missionaries and churches today measure and market their success by shear volume.

NAMB’s NextGen Director recently celebrated his ministry efforts for 2021 by listing his “praise report” [1]

He preached or spoke at 128 events

He had a total attendance (all events combined) of 125,000+

And at those events, he saw more than 10,500 “professions of faith for salvation”

But, we want to actively work against this sort of thinking… We want to aim for a faithful gospel witness, for true conversions, and for healthy churches.

And that’s exactly what Barnabas and the church in Jerusalem model for us in our passage here.

Barnabas confirmed that it was God’s gracious work in Antioch.

Luke says, “When he [Barnabas] came [to Antioch] he saw the grace of God...” (v23).

We can’t tell specifically what Barnabas saw, but he was able to see that God was truly converting sinners in Antioch… there wasn’t merely a political movement or emotional sensation or social attraction.

We can guess that he saw something like what Paul later witnessed in Corinth: Those who were once “sexually immoral…idolaters…adulterers…men who practice homosexuality…thieves…greedy…drunkards…revilers [i.e., slanderers or blasphemers]…swindlers [i.e., cheats and liars]” had now become “washed…sanctified… [and] justified… by the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

Whatever evidence of conversion Barnabas saw, he was “glad” (v23), and he apparently confirmed that these converts were Christians.

Barnabas exhorted the Christians to faithfulness.

The message Barnabas brought to these Christians was an exhortation to “remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose” [or “purpose of the heart” (KJV) or “with resolute heart” (NASB)] (v23).

Friends, Christians are those to believe or trust in the Lord Jesus Christ… and remain faithful to Him (Eph. 1:1; Col. 1:2).

The Scripture both assures and prods us on when it says, “you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, [Christ] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard...” (Col. 1:21-23).

This is why I said before, Christian converts are to be exhorted to faithfulness, and not merely assured of pardon/forgiveness.

First, because Jesus has actually given His people commands, rules to follow.

“turning to Christ” most certainly begins with simple faith or belief or trust in Him as Savior, but no one who truly trusts in Christ can live as though He is not Lord of every aspect of life.

Christian living is a comprehensive life of discipleship, and Jesus is our Teacher, our Master, our King, and our Guide… just as much as He is our Savior.

Second, because perseverance is a vital characteristic of what it means to be Christian.

Some of us this morning may be overwhelmed by our need for a Savior, and we are clinging tightly to Christ.

But some of us may feel pretty comfortable with ourselves, and we think and act like we only need just enough of Jesus to get rid of our guilt and maintain the status quo in life.

“I know I’m saved! I believe in Jesus… what else do I need?”

Ah, brothers and sisters, we are weak… we are prone to wonder… we are quick to abandon the gospel and turn to something else… we still love this world and our sin far more than we might realize… And we must actively, personally, and intentionally (with “steadfast purpose”) strive to remain faithful!

And we need each other, which is why Barnabas began organizing the Christians in Antioch as a church.

In v24, Luke says that “a great many people were added to the Lord.”

How were they “added”? To what were they added? And how did Luke know that there were “a great many”?

They were “added” by baptism to the church in Antioch the same way the first 3,000 converts were “added” by baptism to the church in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41).

Luke explicitly calls the gathering of Christians in Antioch a “church” in v26, but it is clear that a short time after Barnabas’s arrival they went from being “a great number who believed [and] turned to the Lord” (v21) to being “a great many people [who] were added to the Lord” (v24).

Friends, the biblical structure and method of Christian discipleship is local church membership.

Do you want to be counted among Christ’s people? Then you need a local church.

Do you want to grow in the Lord Jesus Christ? Then you need a local church.

Do you want to help other Christians grow and follow Jesus? Well, you should… and you need a local church.

Do you want to persevere as a Christian, all the way through to the end? Then you need a local church.

When everyday Christians preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the aim is not merely to gain individual converts who’ve “made a decision for Jesus.” No, we want to see people added to the visible body a the Lord Jesus, we want to see new Christians grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, we want to see old Christians finishing the race well, and we want to see the whole body of Christians encouraging and challenging and loving one another all along the way.

4) Taught and Organized (v25-26)

Barnabas brought a helpful teacher.

There’s probably more backstory here than I know, and certainly more than we have time to say much about this morning… but remember that it was Barnabas who first made the case that Saul should be welcomed among the disciples in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26-28).

Antioch was also a good distance away from Jerusalem, and Tarsus (where Saul was living) was pretty close, so geography probably played a part.

At any rate, Barnabas was not just interested in counting the heads of the new Christians in Antioch… he wanted to make sure that there was a strong and healthy church there before he went back to Jerusalem.

So he “found [Saul], [and] brought him to Antioch… [and] they met with the church and taught [them]… a whole year” (v26).

Saul taught new converts what to believe and how to live.

Once again, Luke is not explicit about what Barnabas and Saul “taught” the “church” in Antioch. However, we may reasonably assume at least two things:

One, these Gentile converts needed a lot of teaching on the basics of a biblical worldview… They needed to know God’s/Christ’s word!

Jews, regardless of their culture or language, grew up hearing the stories of Adam and Abraham and Moses and David. They learned the Ten Commandments, and God’s covenant promises were as familiar to them as the Pledge of Allegiance and The Star Spangled Banner are to most of us.

Preaching the gospel to 1st century Jews was like turning on all the lights in the house they’d been living in their whole lives.

But most Gentiles knew little-if-anything of the God of Israel. They grew up with alternative stories of creation, history, and religion. They had all sorts of unbiblical beliefs about human nature, ethics, worship, the family, sexuality, virtue, and a whole host of other subjects.

In short, preaching the gospel to the Gentiles in Antioch was like moving them out of the house they’d been living in their whole lives and showing them around their new home… It was/is a wonderful new home, but it was/is strange and different.

Friends, there was a time in the western world when the culture was generally more familiar with a biblical worldview, but that’s not the culture we live in anymore. Our friends and family members are far more like 1st century Gentiles than we might think.

The next time your hanging out with a friend or family member, just ask them how many of the Ten Commandments they can name… ask them to tell you the gospel in 60 seconds or less… ask them to summarize any basic Christian doctrine (the simplicity of God, the dual natures of Christ, the atoning work of Jesus upon the cross).

Two, the content of the teaching in Antioch was not much different than the teaching Saul/Paul did in the churches of Corinth or Ephesus or Colossae.

Every letter we have in the New Testament was written to a church, to a pastor, or to be shared among many churches… and every single one of them centers on explaining the gospel and urging Christians to faithful living (what to believe and how to live).

Take 20 minutes this afternoon to read the book of Ephesians. This particular letter not only proves what I’m saying, but it even divides right in half on these two points… The first 3 chapters explain the gospel, and the last 3 describe how Christians are to live in light of it.

We are on solid ground in assuming that the content of the teaching which Barnabas and Saul did in Antioch for a year was the kind of teaching that centered on believing the gospel and living as a Christian (both in the church and in the world).

And what was the result of this kind of diligent instruction?

The church members were observably and publicly Christ’s disciples.

Luke says that it was “in Antioch [that] the disciples were first called Christians” (v26).

They weren’t Jews, so it didn’t fit to categorize them as a Jewish sect.

But they weren’t living as the average Greek anymore either…

So what could the citizens of Antioch call these Gentile converts who worshipped the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but who quite clearly also worshipped and served Jesus Christ as their God and King?

What could they call these ones who were water baptized in a public display of being associated with Jesus?

What could they call these people who gathered regularly to learn about Jesus as the Christ, to pray to Him as Lord, and to worship Him as God?

What could they call these former pagans who lived their lives with a new ethic, a new set of priorities, and a new hope-filled purpose?

They called them “Christ-ians!”

Get this: Without any fish bumperstickers, without any screen-printed church t-shirts, and without any Christian radio stations to tune into… these Christians stood out so distinctly in their own hometown that everybody started calling them by the name of their Master (no doubt intended to be a slur or degrading name in the beginning).

All of this is already a radical transformation and a testimony of God’s grace truly at work in Antioch, but there’s more! Not only did these Gentile Christians grow in love and maturity among themselves… They also showed incredible love for Christians far away, the very church who’s members had been scattered so long before… to share the gospel with Antioch in the first place.

5) A Show of Love and Generosity (v27-30)

A prophecy of famine.

v27 almost seems like a shift in the Acts storyline, but it’s not… The last 4 verses of chapter 11 provide us with the last scene of this whole episode.

We can talk more about prophets another time, but one “came down from Jerusalem to Antioch” (v27). He “foretold by the Spirit [of God] that there would be a great famine” (v28).

The translations vary slightly on that phrase “over all the world” (ESV). The KJV says, “throughout all the world.” The NET, “the whole inhabited world.” and the NIV, “the entire Roman world.”

It does seem best to render the phrase “Roman world” or “known world.”

At any rate, there was a famine coming, and it was going to have a significant impact on the church in Jerusalem, those Christians who had already suffered incredible persecution at the hands of both Romans and Jews.

The church in Antioch voluntarily raised financial aide.

Like the church in Jerusalem had done for one another at the beginning (Acts 4:32-37), the church in Antioch did for another church far away.

It is interesting that Barnabas was explicitly named as one of those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who “sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:37).

Luke says, “the disciples [in Antioch] determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers [i.e., Christians] living in Judea [i.e., the area/region around and including Jerusalem]” (v29).

And they sent all that they gathered “to the elders [in Jerusalem] by the hand of Barnabas and Saul” (v30).

Let’s just think on this for a minute.

The church in Antioch was largely (maybe entirely) Gentile.

Most of the Jewish Christians who fled Jerusalem and Judea were so socially averse to Gentiles that they wouldn’t even tell them the gospel.

And yet, Christ had so softened the hearts of those Gentile Christians in Antioch that they voluntarily determined to send what they could in financial aide to their Jewish Christian brethren in Judea.

Now, that’s Christian love! That’s Christ’s love! That’s the kind of love that is perfectly exemplified in the cross of Christ and consistently demonstrated among Christ’s people in the world!

Friends, the kind of Christianity we’ve seen and studied this morning is everyday, simple, and ordinary Christianity. The gospel of Jesus Christ, preached by everyday Christians, creates local churches, which are animated by Christ’s Spirit, governed by Christ’s word, and motivated by Christ’s love.

But this kind of Christianity is supernatural, life-transforming, and radically different than everything else in the world. May God help us to be the kind of Christians and the kind of church that follows in the footsteps of these unnamed Christians who’ve gone before us.

Endnotes

[1] see https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=458533575639545&set=a.199248791568026

Bibliography

Calvin, John, and Henry Beveridge. Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010. Print.

Peterson, David G. The Acts of the Apostles. Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009. Print. The Pillar New Testament Commentary.

Polhill, John B. Acts. Vol. 26. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992. Print. The New American Commentary.