E 26
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We left off in the previous chapter with the following verse:
When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.” Acts 11:18
I want to begin this chapter with a short recap of the ‘empowering of the church’ on the day of Pentecost.
‘Pentecost’ did not happen all at once on a single day. The Pentecost empowerment of the church progressed by stages, as predicted by Jesus. Jesus had said that their ‘witnessing’ would spread through Jerusalem, then Judea, next it would encompass Samaria. The progression started with Jews in the city, Jews in the country ... and then to ‘half-Jews’, called Samaritans. The progression continued to a ‘Jewish’ Ethiopian visitor, returning to his home in Africa after his visit to Jerusalem,.
Then, most recently we read about Peter’s call to the first non-Jew. That was the last step in the progression of Pentecost. Jesus called it .. To the uttermost ends of the earth. This is the ‘stage’ of Pentecost that we are in today.
For the gospel to really have an effect ‘to the ends of the earth’, something major had to happen to the church at Jerusalem. It had quickly developed as the ‘place to be’ in the minds of Christians. People (Jews) from all over the known world visited Jerusalem once a year for the Jewish holiday of Pentecost.
On the day of the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the church, many of these visiting Jews became believers in Jesus as their Messiah, and shortly thereafter, moved permanently into Jerusalem.
This presented a problem. It began to look as if the church would never move out into all the world. But an event took place that God did not cause, but He used it to mobilize the church to a world-wide mission. That event was persecution. It scattered the church. God did not cause the persecution. A church deacon named Stephen preached to a group of unbelievers who resisted his message and soon formed a mob. Stephen was arrested and was given a chance to defend himself. His words were so convicting that the group turned hostile, dragged him from the courtroom and killed him.
When the Jewish ‘authorities’ came to understand that Stephen was not alone in his beliefs, their attack turned from Stephen to the church.
Here was the result.
11:19 ¶ Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.
This very negative event had positive results. The church was well on it's way to going into the whole world. But even in the positive result the writer has to clarify that the gospel was still not reaching to the gentiles. Old habits die hard and old Jewish traditions even harder. They did well to preach the word, but the word needed to get out to the gentile world as well. So we read, 11:20 But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus.
It was a start. Hellenists were Jews, but they were Greek speaking Jews. Hellenist Jews wanted to be less conspicuous to the Romans and Greeks, so by learning and speaking only Greek they hoped to ‘fit in’ with the rest of the people. Non Hellenist Jews often viewed the Hellenists with a degree of disdain. So this was a positive step that some of the ‘scattered Christians’ should move out of their comfort zone to share the gospel with them.
21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
The hand of the Lord was with them ... When the hand of God is ‘against’ a person or a country ... there is no hope of escaping it. When the hand of God is ‘with’ a person or a country ... the result is blessing upon blessing. Such is the case in verse 21. But notice this, we do not read, The hand of the Lord did everything for them.
What we see before us is a combination of human effort (that is, Christian human effort) and the blessing and interaction of God working clearly with them.
22 Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch.
We cannot help but notice that the church in Jerusalem, the apostles in particular, were, in a sense, a ‘watchdog’ group over the new developments of the scattered church. They saw themselves as responsible for the lives of the believers. What they were hearing sounded good to them. But they knew that these small groups would be very vulnerable to error.
We remember that these early disciples had no New Testament with all of its in-depth teaching at their disposal. They had their Old Testament ... plus Christ. They had heard Holy Spirit inspired messages through the apostles. But, being scattered all over the place, they had no single source of New Testament truth. Actually, the Holy Spirit was with them, and Truth was available to them. But the apostles wanted to be on the same page with them. As well, the scattered Christians may not have known how to rely on the Holy Spirit for teaching.
So Barnabas is sent north from Jerusalem to Antioch in Syria.
Here is what he found when he arrived.
23 When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord. 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.
Barnabas is happy with what he found. No serious errors. He found people, a great number of people, excited over their new found faith in Jesus. But even as he encourages the people just ‘continue’ what you are doing ... and many more are added to their number. He sees a very big challenge ahead. So what does he do?
25 Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul.
Barnabas is a very remarkable person. He had lived on the isle of Cyprus as a Jew. He happened to be in Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost. While he was there he heard the preaching of Peter and the other disciples after the Holy Spirit came down and empowered the church, and he accepted the message ... the message that Jesus was God in the flesh, who came to give His life for our sins. He heard that Jesus arose from the grave after three days and then, after another forty days, ascended up to heaven. He became a very excited believer. He went home, sold his property, returned to Jerusalem and gave all of the money to the apostles.
This started a new trend - the early church shared all of their possessions in common. They ate their meals together. As for sleeping accommodations, they would have moved in with families who had houses right in Jerusalem.
That is a little bit of who Barnabas was. Sometime later, Saul, the one who authorized the killing of Stephen for his preaching about Jesus, hears a voice from heaven and is directly turned about 180 degrees and attempts to join in with the Christians in Jerusalem. That did not work out so well. The Jerusalem Christians were afraid of him. They were suspicious, thinking that he was not a true convert to Christianity.
Barnabas is the one who tells Paul to go home to Tarsus and wait for the right time. No one other than Barnabas believed that Saul was a changed person.
So now it is the right time, and Barnabas, having been sent up to Antioch to see what kind of Christian activity was going on up there, sees a place where Saul could be useful. He makes the trip to Tarsus. He finds Saul.
This is so easy to read about, but this trip to Tarsus would have taken Barnabas quite a bit of time and effort. Tarsus is many miles from Antioch.
26 And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
The city of Antioch is quickly becoming a second ‘hub’ for Christianity. Jerusalem remained the original center and place of ‘authority’ regarding church development, but Antioch became the hub regarding outreach to the non-Jews, the gentiles.
As Luke writes here in the book of Acts, he gives no indications of the actual numbers of believers in the Antioch church, other than to say it was composed of a great many people. And we get the impression that it is growing rapidly. Perhaps it is in the hundreds. Maybe even in the thousands. Luke simply says, and taught a great many people.
Because ‘doing’ church was so different in those times, we need to take a moment to ‘get our heads around it.’ The early churches did not use church buildings at this time in history. The idea did not come about for another couple hundred years.
The Antioch church grew in terms of many smaller groups forming rapidly as people came to accept Jesus as the true Messiah. In order for Barnabas and Saul to teach them, it would be a matter of moving from group to group all through the week, every day of the week. Each small group would require a person to be the contact person. Whenever possible, that contact person would be a person with greater biblical knowledge and a heart committed to following God. Often these ‘contact’ people would be referred to as ‘Elders’. The elder in a house group would be more than just a contact person, he would also be their teacher.
If the Antioch church ever had a ‘main’ elder, in charge of all of the small groups we have no knowledge, but it makes sense. It was a common practice for all of the elders to come together for meetings to discuss ideas and how things were developing..1
The last part of verse 26 states, And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
Luke does not explain who it was who first called them that, or whether or not it was a good thing.
Some bible commentators say that perhaps the disciples named themselves Christian. Others believe it was a name given them by outsiders in the city. Some believe it was meant to be a derogatory name used to identify them as some kind of an ‘odd-ball’ group. But still other bible commentators say that it was neither a good thing or a bad thing and, understanding that the word ‘Christ’ means Messiah, that this new group had one main emphasis. That main emphasis was to announce and prove that Jesus is the Messiah. I personally believe that this should be the main emphasis of believers today.
For about a year Barnabas and Saul work at teaching this growing church in Antioch. New believers are being added at a steady rate. The need to teach is one thing. But the need to organize and train leaders would have been a great task. Each small group needed an ‘elder’, and each ‘elder’ needed to meet together, study together, pray together. Barnabas and Saul spent a year putting this all in place.
Next we read about an incident that Luke includes and we will only discover its significance later on in the book of Acts. Luke says, 27 ¶ And in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch.
28 Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar.
29 Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.
30 This they also did, and sent it to the elders (in Jerusalem) by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
As Luke points out, the famine was not already happening, but the prophet, Agabus, predicted it. Luke tells us when it actually happened, in the days of Claudius Caesar.
So that leaves a few things unclear... did the disciples in Antioch take a collection immediately, and did Barnabas and Saul take it from Antioch to Jerusalem? Or, in this case, does Luke mean that disciples from this church and from the many ‘future’ churches that we will be reading about in Acts, contribute over a period of years to the great need that will happen in Jerusalem at the predicted time? Or did the collecting and delivering of the offering to Jerusalem start immediately with instructions for the Jerusalem church to set it aside for the coming famine?
We don’t have clear answers to these questions, but we will note that Saul, at a much later time, is still collecting for the Jerusalem church as he travels from church to church all throughout Asia minor.
Barnabas has really proven himself to be a remarkable person, as we read back in verse 24 For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.
He saw something in Saul when the others in Jerusalem did not. He gave wise counsel to Saul, telling him to ‘lay low’ for a while. Saul was not a person to want to ‘lay low’ for any length of time ... but he saw the wisdom in what Barnabas was suggesting, and he did it.
We would do well to recognize those within the church today with that kind of wisdom. Saul had a wonderful mentor to show him the ways of Christianity and to witness first hand a truly humble spirit. Did Saul learn from him? I believe so. The gentleness and yet firmness in which he later wrote many of our New Testament books shows a spirit that was very unlike the Saul that we first read about.
The church needs leaders like Saul ... but just as much, and perhaps even more, it needs people of quiet, steady faith, full of the Holy Spirit, who know when ‘It is time to call Saul’. In the body of Christ we need each other. We need both Saul’s and Barnabas’s and everyone in between.
When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.” Acts 11:18
I want to begin this chapter with a short recap of the ‘empowering of the church’ on the day of Pentecost.
‘Pentecost’ did not happen all at once on a single day. The Pentecost empowerment of the church progressed by stages, as predicted by Jesus. Jesus had said that their ‘witnessing’ would spread through Jerusalem, then Judea, next it would encompass Samaria. The progression started with Jews in the city, Jews in the country ... and then to ‘half-Jews’, called Samaritans. The progression continued to a ‘Jewish’ Ethiopian visitor, returning to his home in Africa after his visit to Jerusalem,.
Then, most recently we read about Peter’s call to the first non-Jew. That was the last step in the progression of Pentecost. Jesus called it .. To the uttermost ends of the earth. This is the ‘stage’ of Pentecost that we are in today.
For the gospel to really have an effect ‘to the ends of the earth’, something major had to happen to the church at Jerusalem. It had quickly developed as the ‘place to be’ in the minds of Christians. People (Jews) from all over the known world visited Jerusalem once a year for the Jewish holiday of Pentecost.
On the day of the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the church, many of these visiting Jews became believers in Jesus as their Messiah, and shortly thereafter, moved permanently into Jerusalem.
This presented a problem. It began to look as if the church would never move out into all the world. But an event took place that God did not cause, but He used it to mobilize the church to a world-wide mission. That event was persecution. It scattered the church. God did not cause the persecution. A church deacon named Stephen preached to a group of unbelievers who resisted his message and soon formed a mob. Stephen was arrested and was given a chance to defend himself. His words were so convicting that the group turned hostile, dragged him from the courtroom and killed him.
When the Jewish ‘authorities’ came to understand that Stephen was not alone in his beliefs, their attack turned from Stephen to the church.
Here was the result.
11:19 ¶ Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.
This very negative event had positive results. The church was well on it's way to going into the whole world. But even in the positive result the writer has to clarify that the gospel was still not reaching to the gentiles. Old habits die hard and old Jewish traditions even harder. They did well to preach the word, but the word needed to get out to the gentile world as well. So we read, 11:20 But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus.
It was a start. Hellenists were Jews, but they were Greek speaking Jews. Hellenist Jews wanted to be less conspicuous to the Romans and Greeks, so by learning and speaking only Greek they hoped to ‘fit in’ with the rest of the people. Non Hellenist Jews often viewed the Hellenists with a degree of disdain. So this was a positive step that some of the ‘scattered Christians’ should move out of their comfort zone to share the gospel with them.
21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
The hand of the Lord was with them ... When the hand of God is ‘against’ a person or a country ... there is no hope of escaping it. When the hand of God is ‘with’ a person or a country ... the result is blessing upon blessing. Such is the case in verse 21. But notice this, we do not read, The hand of the Lord did everything for them.
What we see before us is a combination of human effort (that is, Christian human effort) and the blessing and interaction of God working clearly with them.
22 Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch.
We cannot help but notice that the church in Jerusalem, the apostles in particular, were, in a sense, a ‘watchdog’ group over the new developments of the scattered church. They saw themselves as responsible for the lives of the believers. What they were hearing sounded good to them. But they knew that these small groups would be very vulnerable to error.
We remember that these early disciples had no New Testament with all of its in-depth teaching at their disposal. They had their Old Testament ... plus Christ. They had heard Holy Spirit inspired messages through the apostles. But, being scattered all over the place, they had no single source of New Testament truth. Actually, the Holy Spirit was with them, and Truth was available to them. But the apostles wanted to be on the same page with them. As well, the scattered Christians may not have known how to rely on the Holy Spirit for teaching.
So Barnabas is sent north from Jerusalem to Antioch in Syria.
Here is what he found when he arrived.
23 When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord. 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.
Barnabas is happy with what he found. No serious errors. He found people, a great number of people, excited over their new found faith in Jesus. But even as he encourages the people just ‘continue’ what you are doing ... and many more are added to their number. He sees a very big challenge ahead. So what does he do?
25 Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul.
Barnabas is a very remarkable person. He had lived on the isle of Cyprus as a Jew. He happened to be in Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost. While he was there he heard the preaching of Peter and the other disciples after the Holy Spirit came down and empowered the church, and he accepted the message ... the message that Jesus was God in the flesh, who came to give His life for our sins. He heard that Jesus arose from the grave after three days and then, after another forty days, ascended up to heaven. He became a very excited believer. He went home, sold his property, returned to Jerusalem and gave all of the money to the apostles.
This started a new trend - the early church shared all of their possessions in common. They ate their meals together. As for sleeping accommodations, they would have moved in with families who had houses right in Jerusalem.
That is a little bit of who Barnabas was. Sometime later, Saul, the one who authorized the killing of Stephen for his preaching about Jesus, hears a voice from heaven and is directly turned about 180 degrees and attempts to join in with the Christians in Jerusalem. That did not work out so well. The Jerusalem Christians were afraid of him. They were suspicious, thinking that he was not a true convert to Christianity.
Barnabas is the one who tells Paul to go home to Tarsus and wait for the right time. No one other than Barnabas believed that Saul was a changed person.
So now it is the right time, and Barnabas, having been sent up to Antioch to see what kind of Christian activity was going on up there, sees a place where Saul could be useful. He makes the trip to Tarsus. He finds Saul.
This is so easy to read about, but this trip to Tarsus would have taken Barnabas quite a bit of time and effort. Tarsus is many miles from Antioch.
26 And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
The city of Antioch is quickly becoming a second ‘hub’ for Christianity. Jerusalem remained the original center and place of ‘authority’ regarding church development, but Antioch became the hub regarding outreach to the non-Jews, the gentiles.
As Luke writes here in the book of Acts, he gives no indications of the actual numbers of believers in the Antioch church, other than to say it was composed of a great many people. And we get the impression that it is growing rapidly. Perhaps it is in the hundreds. Maybe even in the thousands. Luke simply says, and taught a great many people.
Because ‘doing’ church was so different in those times, we need to take a moment to ‘get our heads around it.’ The early churches did not use church buildings at this time in history. The idea did not come about for another couple hundred years.
The Antioch church grew in terms of many smaller groups forming rapidly as people came to accept Jesus as the true Messiah. In order for Barnabas and Saul to teach them, it would be a matter of moving from group to group all through the week, every day of the week. Each small group would require a person to be the contact person. Whenever possible, that contact person would be a person with greater biblical knowledge and a heart committed to following God. Often these ‘contact’ people would be referred to as ‘Elders’. The elder in a house group would be more than just a contact person, he would also be their teacher.
If the Antioch church ever had a ‘main’ elder, in charge of all of the small groups we have no knowledge, but it makes sense. It was a common practice for all of the elders to come together for meetings to discuss ideas and how things were developing..1
The last part of verse 26 states, And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
Luke does not explain who it was who first called them that, or whether or not it was a good thing.
Some bible commentators say that perhaps the disciples named themselves Christian. Others believe it was a name given them by outsiders in the city. Some believe it was meant to be a derogatory name used to identify them as some kind of an ‘odd-ball’ group. But still other bible commentators say that it was neither a good thing or a bad thing and, understanding that the word ‘Christ’ means Messiah, that this new group had one main emphasis. That main emphasis was to announce and prove that Jesus is the Messiah. I personally believe that this should be the main emphasis of believers today.
For about a year Barnabas and Saul work at teaching this growing church in Antioch. New believers are being added at a steady rate. The need to teach is one thing. But the need to organize and train leaders would have been a great task. Each small group needed an ‘elder’, and each ‘elder’ needed to meet together, study together, pray together. Barnabas and Saul spent a year putting this all in place.
Next we read about an incident that Luke includes and we will only discover its significance later on in the book of Acts. Luke says, 27 ¶ And in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch.
28 Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar.
29 Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.
30 This they also did, and sent it to the elders (in Jerusalem) by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
As Luke points out, the famine was not already happening, but the prophet, Agabus, predicted it. Luke tells us when it actually happened, in the days of Claudius Caesar.
So that leaves a few things unclear... did the disciples in Antioch take a collection immediately, and did Barnabas and Saul take it from Antioch to Jerusalem? Or, in this case, does Luke mean that disciples from this church and from the many ‘future’ churches that we will be reading about in Acts, contribute over a period of years to the great need that will happen in Jerusalem at the predicted time? Or did the collecting and delivering of the offering to Jerusalem start immediately with instructions for the Jerusalem church to set it aside for the coming famine?
We don’t have clear answers to these questions, but we will note that Saul, at a much later time, is still collecting for the Jerusalem church as he travels from church to church all throughout Asia minor.
Barnabas has really proven himself to be a remarkable person, as we read back in verse 24 For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.
He saw something in Saul when the others in Jerusalem did not. He gave wise counsel to Saul, telling him to ‘lay low’ for a while. Saul was not a person to want to ‘lay low’ for any length of time ... but he saw the wisdom in what Barnabas was suggesting, and he did it.
We would do well to recognize those within the church today with that kind of wisdom. Saul had a wonderful mentor to show him the ways of Christianity and to witness first hand a truly humble spirit. Did Saul learn from him? I believe so. The gentleness and yet firmness in which he later wrote many of our New Testament books shows a spirit that was very unlike the Saul that we first read about.
The church needs leaders like Saul ... but just as much, and perhaps even more, it needs people of quiet, steady faith, full of the Holy Spirit, who know when ‘It is time to call Saul’. In the body of Christ we need each other. We need both Saul’s and Barnabas’s and everyone in between.