Fulfilling the Mission

Introduction

What attracts most of your attention in the world today? What news headlines are you most likely to click? How closely are you watching the latest fed decision or stock market data? How much do you really know about what’s happening in Russia or Ukraine? Has the rising cost of everything put you in a financial pinch? Are you most concerned about healthcare, social and cultural decline, the price of gas, or the next political election?

Or maybe your interests often help you escape reality. How much time did you spend last week watching mindless TV or movies? How much do you know about the recent celebrity courtroom drama, centered on Johnny Depp and Amber Heard? How much time have you devoted to the latest Twitter controversy or to simply scrolling through Facebook or Instagram? How many hours did you waste in the last several days on some game you played on your phone or your Xbox or your PlayStation? Don’t lie, these devices keep records, you know!

If you’re like me, then you might be easily distracted by the urgent, by the inconvenient, and by the useless-but-interesting. We aren’t all attracted by the same distractions and we don’t all have the same interests, but we are all sinners… prone to be consumed by those things that keep our attention focused on this world and on selfish interests.

Our passage today will, Lord willing, challenge us to set our minds on something that may seem far less interesting at first than any of the topics I’ve mentioned. But, after an honest assessment and a little basic introspection, I pray that our passage today will beckon us to give ourselves more to the sorts of interests and activities which the worldly people around us reject as unimportant and out of step with modern culture.

Our passage picks up in the middle of a story already in motion. If you were here when we studied through the last chapter and a half of Acts, you might recall that Paul and Barnabas had been sent on a missionary journey from a church in Antioch of Syria (Acts 13:1-3). After preaching the gospel, they’d been kicked out of a different Antioch (in Pisidia) by the leaders of that town, they’d barely escaped a murderous plot in Iconium, and then Paul was finally stoned to death in Lystra (or at least the mob thought they’d killed him). And after all of this, Paul and Barnabas had simply carried on with their missionary task of preaching the gospel – they just went on to the next town, to Derbe.

That’s a quick summary of Acts 13:1 to 14:20, and that leads us into our passage today, which recounts the final stage of Paul’s first missionary journey and his return home.

Let’s stand together as I read from Acts 14:21-28.

Scripture Reading

Acts 14:21–28 (ESV)

21 When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. 24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia.

25 And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, 26 and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.

27 And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they remained no little time with the disciples.

Main Idea:

The mission of the local church is bigger than any one church, it often seems slow and mundane, and Christians should expect to persevere in it through much hardship.

Sermon

1. Strengthening Disciples (v21-22)

Verse 21 says that Paul and Barnabas “preached the gospel” in Derbe, and they “made many disciples” there. This was the same thing they’d been doing in the other towns they’d visited, but Luke doesn’t tell us hardly anything about what happened in Derbe. Instead, Luke turns our attention to a couple of important details about the conclusion of the missionary task and the journey back home… After they’d “preached the gospel” in Derbe and “made many disciples,” they “returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch” (v21).

Now, I wish we had time this morning to consider together the discussion that Paul and Barnabas (and any other traveling companions) must have had about such a travel plan. “So, let me get this straight… You want to go back through the towns where the people live who just formed a mob and thought they’d murdered you?” Just imagine that conversation! But, Luke doesn’t tell us anything about that, and we have a lot to cover, so we’re going to have to just press on.

In v22, Luke does tell us what Paul and Barnabas did in each one of those towns as they traveled back home. They “strengthen[ed] the souls of the disciples, encouraging [or “exhorting” (KJV)] them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations [or “persecutions” (NET) or “hardships” (NIV)] we must enter the kingdom of God” (v22). I want to note here two important points. One, “strengthening… the disciples” as an essential feature of the Great Commission. And two, the interplay between “tribulation” and “encouragement… to continue” as a basic expectation for Christian living.

First, the essential activity of “strengthening… the disciples” in the overarching task of participating in the Great Commission. The book of Acts is essentially the story of how the first disciples of Jesus Christ understood and obeyed the Great Commission. We’ve already noted the similarities between Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8… In both places, Jesus commissioned His disciples to bear witness to the gospel, calling sinners to repentance and faith. But, in Matthew 28, we read the expanded version of the commission, which includes “baptizing” new converts into fellowship with the existing disciples and also “teaching” all followers of Jesus how to live in obedience to Him (Matt. 28:19-20).

Up to this point in the book of Acts, the gospel had been proclaimed in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and now Paul and Barnabas were taking it to the ends of the earth (exactly as Jesus had commissioned His disciples to do; see Acts 1:8). Believers had been “baptized” and “added” to local churches (Acts 2:41, 47; 11:21-24), the number of “disciples” had “multiplied” (Acts 6:7, 9:31), and the church in Antioch had enough resource (including both teachers/leaders and finances) to “send off” Paul and Barnabas (two of their best teachers/leaders) as Christian missionaries to the Gentile world beyond Antioch (Acts 13:1-3). But is evangelism and conversion… increasing the number of baptisms and church members… Is that the end or ambition of missionary work? In other words, is the Great Commission only or even primarily about counting heads?

Some of you already know that the Evangelical movement in America over the last 150 years or so has seemingly become far more interested in numbers and far less interested in churches and souls. The Southern Baptist Convention is a perfect example of such an emphasis, and each year that I’ve attended the annual meeting of the SBC I’ve heard missionary and church evangelism reports that sound just like a corporate marketing department rattling off the stats from the last fiscal year. In the earliest days of the Southern Baptist Convention this was not so, but it didn’t take long before the national convention of cooperating Baptist churches became a massive numbers report.

At the second national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, which met in Charleston, SC, during the last weekend of May of 1849 (almost exactly 173 years ago), a few missionaries offered a report on their efforts among the people near Monrovia (the capital city of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa). They wrote,

“The church here… is moving onward, and is in a peaceable state at present, but like others she has had wars without and fightings within. Her present number is 44, besides two candidates for baptism. They have not as yet any permanent house for worship… The male members are 21 in number, including the old and decrepit ones; [and they] have made an effort to build, but I fear they will not be able to complete it for sometime. Brother Day has authorized me to pay towards it $100, but I wish the amount could be a little increased, so that I might have the house built speedily, as our present one is too small and incommodious…”[1]

Just 26 years later, at the annual meeting in 1875, the “Missionary Labor For The Year” was recorded,

“During the year, 51 Missionary Agents, have been under appointment… the result of whose labors is as follows: Weeks of labor performed, 1,810; Sermons and addresses made, 4,682; Religious visits to families, 5,679; Prayer and other Meetings attended, 2,363; Miles traveled in performance of labor, 78,170… Total Baptisms, 1,045… Pages of religious tracts distributed, 25,755… Number of Churches and Stations supplied by the Missionaries, 204.”[2]

As the years passed, the Southern Baptist Convention has only become more of a statistics-reporting and numbers-centered cooperative. In the SBC report from 1900, the annual meeting included percentages (a 25% increase here and a 50% increase there). In the report from 1926, a new local Baptist association in Mexico was said to have employed a professional Evangelist, who had testified to 67 professions of faith in just the month of December. In 1950, the Home Mission Board reported that the SBC missionary efforts had resulted in 1 million baptisms since its beginning, in 1845. And (25 years later), in 1975, the Home Mission Board celebrated another “fruitful year in evangelism.” They reported, “For the fourth straight year the total number of baptisms exceeded 400,000.”[3]

Brothers and sisters, I believe this sort of numbers-focused success measurement is like a virus that destroys ordinary evangelism, church planting, and discipleship. Statistics-based measurements on the back end provoke commercial and pragmatic methods on the front end. This has taught generations of Evangelicals to think of evangelism as a program, of discipleship as separate from conversion, of missionaries and pastors as professional Christians, and of the ordinary means of grace as too slow and outdated. Many of us can attest to counting lots of heads over the years (i.e., baptisms, church members, decisions for Jesus), but now some of us wonder, “Where in the world are the souls of those heads we once counted?”

Paul and Barnabas weren’t interested in merely counting heads. They returned to the towns where they’d been at work, and they “strengthen[ed] the souls of the disciples” (v22). And this same sort of “strengthening” or “establishing” or “firming up” of “disciples” and “churches” is a constant refrain in the book of Acts. After the Jerusalem council (which we will study next Sunday, Lord willing), two messengers carried an important letter back to Antioch, and when they delivered it, they “encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words” (Acts 15:30-32). On Paul’s second missionary journey, he made a point to “return and visit the brothers in every city where [he had] proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are” (Acts 15:36). And, Luke says that when Paul went through those cities, he “strengthen[ed] the churches” (Acts 15:41, 16:5). And on Paul’s third missionary journey, he did exactly the same, going “from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples” (Acts 18:23).

Brothers and sisters, the missionary task (our task, as modern-day participants in the Great Commission) is not to simply track conversion statistics or church membership numbers or baptisms. We are to make great efforts to call sinners to repentance and faith, we are to celebrate the conversion of sinners and baptize new converts into our fellowship (or rejoice that they’ve joined another good church), and we are also to take great care in “strengthening” or “establishing” or “firming up” those sinners who have become fellow disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Minter house, we don’t simply count to make sure that we have 4 or more people at the dinner table. We look around to see if Micah and Malachi are there.

So should it be among the church. We aren’t after a numerical increase so much as we are aiming to see sinners converted and to edify our brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s why we have a slow and invasive membership process… That’s why we urge church members to have more meaningful relationships with one another… That’s why we have been minimizing our church schedule and teaching every church member to embrace a more natural and everyday practice of evangelism. These and many more practices are motivated by a love for fellow disciples and by a desire to see disciples strengthened… not merely counted on the annual church profile.

Second (my 2nd subpoint under the first main point), there is an apparent interplay between “tribulation” and “encouragement… to continue” throughout the New Testament, and I believe we should expect both in our everyday Christian living. In v22, Luke says that Paul and Barnabas “encourage[ed] them [i.e., the disciples] to continue in the faith,” and they said that it is “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Remember that these Christians were living in towns that had just exercised overt hostility against Paul and Barnabas. Christianity had no political protections, and there is no reason to think that Christians didn’t endure all kinds of religious, social, and economic affliction. And what was the apostolic word of encouragement? “Tribulation is to be expected, but you hang in there… continue trusting and following Christ.”

This sort of talk is common throughout the New Testament. Paul says in Romans 12, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation [or “affliction” or “distress”], be constant in prayer… Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Rom. 12:12, 14). Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33). And when the Apostle John began his prophetic letter to “the seven churches… in Asia,” he introduced himself as “your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus” (Rev. 1:4, 9).

Notice also in those verses I’ve just cited the connection between tribulation or affliction or distress and the call to endure. The Apostle Peter even says that it is a “gracious thing in the sight of God,” when “you do good and suffer for it [with] endurance” (1 Peter 2:19-20).

Friends, I’m not saying that any Christian in his or her right mind should welcome affliction or distress. But I am saying that Christians ought to expect tribulation in this world… and Christians ought to prepare themselves to endure tribulation with courage and with hope… because no one makes it to the final glorious destination without traveling the hard road of affliction.

Acts 14:22 says, “through many tribulations [or “persecutions” (NET) or “hardships” (NIV)] we must enter the kingdom of God.” I can’t say what shape my tribulations or hardships will take, but I can know that I will face them. How can I… how are you preparing yourself to endure tribulation? And how might you help another Christian endure with courage and hope?

2. Fulfilling the Mission (v23-26)

The mission which Paul and Barnabas had been sent to accomplish was gospel-proclamation far beyond anywhere that had heard the gospel before. But the gospel has an effect… it always has an effect. Some people hear the gospel and reject it, as with those Jews and Gentiles who persecuted Paul and Barnabas. Some people hear the gospel and believe it, as with those sinners who had become disciples in Lystra, in Iconium, and in Antioch. But conversion isn’t the only effect of the gospel. In fact, conversion itself (i.e., becoming a disciple) means more than simply responding positively to the gospel.

The gospel creates churches, and churches are shaped by the very commission to make disciples which we’ve been talking so much about already today. Look with me at v23. As Paul and Barnabas traveled back toward home, they visited the disciples in each of the towns, but in v23 the disciples aren’t called disciples… they are called “churches.” And in each of the churches, Paul and Barnabas either “appointed” or helped the congregations themselves to “appoint” leaders or “elders.” And this was the last work Paul and Barnabas did on their return trip, so that when they arrived back in Antioch of Syria Luke could write (in v26) that they had “fulfilled” the “work” which God and the church in Antioch had sent them out to do.

Some of you already know that you should be bracing yourselves, and the rest of you may have no idea what’s about to be coming at you, but this is the sort of stuff (ecclesiology and polity) that fuels my tank. I’m not your mom’s or your grand-dad’s Baptist… I’m the sort of Baptist that your great-great-grandparents would recognize. I’m the kind of Baptist who knows that Presbyterians weren’t the first ones to discover the term “elder” and who knows that there’ve always been Baptists who believed every church would do well to have more than one elder.

There is so much we might do to gain understanding and to apply what we see here in this passage, but I’m going to limit myself today to highlighting 2 important observations: (1) every church needs elders; and (2) elders are appointed to the role or office.

First, every church needs elders. The Bible teaches us (and our passage today affirms) that you can have a church without elders. Luke called the assemblies or groups of disciples in the towns of Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch “churches” (v23), and later on Paul assigned Titus with the job of “appointing elders” among the churches of Crete (Titus 1:5). But a church without elders is a “disordered” church, to use the language of Titus 1:5 and also of Christian theologians throughout history.

The essence of a church is its members, those believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who voluntarily and sincerely covenant together to love Christ and to love one another in the way Christ has commanded in His word. And the signs which Christ has given to local churches as distinguishing marks (i.e., the way a church and the world around knows who is among the membership) are baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The mission of the local church is the Great Commission – to make disciples by baptizing new converts into the visible kingdom of Christ and by teaching one another to obey all that Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18-20). Ultimately, this mission is the responsibility of the church, the collective members which form the whole body (Eph. 4:15-16). But Christ has given local churches the good gift of shepherd-teachers (i.e, elders or pastors), so that the members might be equipped for the work of this ministry (Eph. 4:11-12).

Therefore, the church without elders – qualified men who teach the Scriptures, explain biblical truth, help apply God’s word, and live as examples of godliness – is a church that is unhealthy, disordered, and deprived of the very means by which Christ has designed His disciples to grow in spiritual maturity. To say it positively, the church with biblical leadership (i.e., elders) is ordered according to the biblical command, is poised to enjoy greater health and vitality, and is better equipped to persevere in a world shot through with sin and error.

Brothers and sisters, praise God for the men Christ has raised up among us to serve as pastors/elders! Pray that God will sustain and grow the men who serve in this role right now (Barry, Brad, Clint, Josh, and me)! And pray that Christ will make us the kind of church that raises up more qualified men to serve as elders in the future… both among our own church and other churches.

Friends, if you are not a member of a church, then you should be! The local church is God’s method for making disciples, and if you don’t understand this, then ask me about it sometime. If you do understand your need for church membership, and you are looking for a church to join, then look for a church who takes this stuff seriously! Your soul can be edified by a church with music you don’t like or a church with a sub-optimal building or a church that doesn’t align with any number of your personal preferences. But your soul will suffer all sorts of loss if you settle among a church family with an unbiblical mission or practices.

Every Christian needs a church, and every church needs elders!

Second, elders are appointed to the role (or office). In v23 the English translation isn’t as clear as the Greek underneath, and the Greek isn’t specific on who exactly did the “appointing.” But let me walk us through this a bit, and hopefully we can all gain a little clarity.

The ESV (and all other modern English translations) uses the word “appoint,” whereas the KJV uses the word “ordain.” In either case it’s a third-person-plural form of the word, but it’s not clear if the “they” that did the appointing or ordaining was Paul and Barnabas or the churches. However, other NT passages help us to know that it is the churches themselves who are ultimately responsible for the kind of elders or pastors or teachers they have.

For example, Paul warned his young pastor friend Timothy that “people will not endure sound teaching, but… they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Tim. 4:3). In other words, congregations would welcome and listen to teachers or preachers that tell them what they want to hear. And though Paul charged Timothy with the responsibility of urging unqualified men “not to teach” (1 Tim. 1:3) among the church in Ephesus, Paul clearly laid blame for persistent false teaching on the congregations who paid the salaries and sat under the bad teachers. Paul said, “if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:6-9). The implication is that the congregation was to reject the false gospel and the one preaching it… either by pulling the bad preacher or by leaving the false church.

The word in our passage translated “appoint” or “ordain” gives us even more help as we try to wrap our heads around what this should look like on a practical level. The word literally means to stretch out the hand, and its common use was for the purpose of giving one’s vote in an assembly. It’s a word that indicates an election or vote by a show of hands.

Now, if we put all this together, harmonizing the principles we see in the New Testament as a whole, and taking into account the common usage of the word Luke used here, then we are likely to see (at least I am) that Baptists didn’t invent congregational voting as a way to mimic the democratic process of modern America. In fact, I think there’s a good case to be made that the democratic republic form of government actually took some of its principles and practices from congregational church polity (but that’s a discussion for another setting).

The point to be made here is that the elders of any local church must be “appointed” or “ordained” or “set apart” or “installed” to the office (v23). And the New Testament gives no indication that such an appointment should come from outside of the context of the specific local church in which the elder or elders are to serve. In other words, elders/pastors don’t appoint themselves, nor does any other church or organization (such as a denomination or a council or an association) impose elders/teachers/leaders on a given congregation. Elders are those men who “aspire” to the office (they want to take on this responsibility; 1 Tim. 3:1), those men who meet the qualifications for elders set down in Scripture (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:6-9), and those men who are “appointed” or “ordained” or “installed” by the members of the church family submits to their leadership.

Brothers and sisters, all of this is to argue that our church leadership and the process by which we form our church government or polity means to be regulated by Scripture. We are an elder-led congregational church, not because it’s practical or efficient (and it’s certainly not the most popular form of polity today), but we are an elder-led congregational church because we’re convinced that Christ has instructed us to be so.

In our passage this morning, we see that the missionary task was more than simply preaching the gospel and calling sinners to come out of unbelief and sin. The missionary task (i.e., the Great Commission) was and is calling sinners out of the world and into the kingdom of Christ, which is visible in the form of local churches. It was only after Paul and Barnabas had gone back into the towns where they’d seen sinners converted, and organized those disciples as rightly ordered churches (with qualified elders/pastors), that they finally “committed them [the churches]to the Lord in whom they had believed” (v23) and then left these fledgling churches behind to go on back home (v24-26).

In our own day, we want to continue that mission! We want to preach the gospel with the aim to persuade our own friends and family, so that they too might enter the visible kingdom of Christ. We want to invest our time, our treasure, and our talent in the Christian effort of seeing sinners converted and churches established and strengthened. We care more about how disciples of Christ and other churches are doing than we care about how many decisions were made for Christ or how many churches were planted in the last year. And we want to do our part in raising up godly men to lead and teach and live well as elders/pastors.

May God help us, and may He grant us much fruit from our efforts!

3. Celebrating the Work of God Together (v27-28)

These last two verses provide us with both an end to the story (at least this portion of the unfolding story of Acts) and a conclusion to my sermon. Notice the continued church-centered nature of the Great Commission, as embodied by Paul and Barnabas here, and also the joyful connection the church in Antioch of Syria shares with the churches in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia.

Verse 27 says that “they” (i.e., Paul and Barnabas) “arrived” back in Antioch of Syria, and the whole “church” gathered “together” to hear about “all that God had done” during their time away. And look at what Luke emphasized about the content of Paul’s and Barnabas’s missionary report. He tells us that they talked about “how [God] had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (v27). Remember that Paul and Barnabas had been chased by a mob, and that Paul had even been stoned nearly to death! But this was not what Luke was interested in recording… Luke tells us that the congregation in Antioch of Syria rejoiced to know that even more Gentiles had come to faith in Christ!

Brothers and sisters, are we glad to hear about how other churches in other places are growing because of sinners coming to faith in Jesus Christ? Do we celebrate when we hear stories of God’s work in other places and other churches? Are we more interested in the growth of Christ’s kingdom in the world than we are in the state of American politics or culture? When we hear about the hardships Christians are facing… or when we experience the shift of our own society (which is growing increasingly antagonistic to faithful Christianity)… do we have the energy and the perspective to still celebrate the advance of the gospel?

Friends, what does our weekly schedule say about where our interests are? What does our family budget say about our priorities? What do our daily conversations say about our hope? What does the content of our prayers say about the sort of things that most have our attention?

Conclusion

Consider these Christians in the first-century Roman empire. Where was their interest? Where was their hope? Where was their joy? It was in the unfolding plan of redemption, wherein the God of the universe had made peace with sinners through the work of His Son! It was in the missionary effort of proclaiming that good news to others who did not know it and who did not yet believe it! It was in the establishment of new churches and in the maturity of new disciples!

Consider the Christians who live today in lands that are unwelcoming to the gospel of Christ. Consider the Christians in China, who live under a regime of tyranny and total control. Consider the Christians of Afghanistan, who face religious opposition unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. Consider the Christians in Europe, who are considered ignorant, backward, and foolish.

Where is their interest? Where is their hope? Where is their joy? Shouldn’t we all – Christians of every nation and ethnicity – set our minds on the transcendent realities of God’s world? I believe we should. I think we would all do well to focus our attention and efforts (to whatever degree we can and with whatever skill and means we have) on the seemingly mundane tasks of talking regularly about the gospel, encouraging spiritual growth and strength among our fellow church members, raising up and developing local church elders, and praying for and working toward health and growth among other churches… until Christ comes to reveal all things as they truly are.

Footnotes

[1] J.C. Crane, “Proceedings of the Adjourned Meeting in Charleston of the Second Triennial Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Minutes (Charleston, SC: Southern Baptist Convention, May 23, 1849), http://media2.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/annuals/SBC_Annual_1849.pdf. [2] G.R. McCall and W.O. Tuggle, “Proceedings of the Twentieth Session of the Southern Baptists Convention,” Minutes (Charleston, SC: Citadel Square Baptist Church, May 6, 1875), http://media2.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/annuals/SBC_Annual_1875.pdf. [3] Clifton Allen, “Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention” (Miami Beach, FL, June 10, 1975), http://media2.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/annuals/SBC_Annual_1975.pdf.

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