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Acts 13:1-4
13:1 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger,1 Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
4 So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
[1] 13:1
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a Bible, I invite you to open to Acts chapter 13. In case you have forgotten, we are in the book of Acts. It's been 8 weeks. We're about halfway through the book. We began, I think, last April, maybe March.
Joel Brooks:Since it's been a while since we've been in the book of Acts, let me just kinda catch us back up to speed. Acts is the account of the resurrected and ascended Jesus, and all that He is continuing to do through his church. The gospel of Luke is all about Jesus, what he began to do, and acts is about what Jesus continues to do through his church and through the power of his spirit. If you remember, Christianity began essentially with 12 ordinary men. Men who despite being Jewish nobodies, turn the world upside down.
Joel Brooks:They came from an oppressed nation. They were not educated. They didn't go to Harvard. They didn't even go to the Jerusalem Community College. These were just really salt of the earth folk, and the Lord changed them, and the power of the resurrection came into their life, and they changed the world.
Joel Brooks:Christianity grew from this small group of misfits to overtaking the Roman Empire within just a few centuries. And you can read all about this in many historical documents. You can read about those events as they happen, but the how those events happened can only be found in the book of Acts. It's the account of God's spirit at work growing his church. And that's why we've been studying acts.
Joel Brooks:And so we begin again by reading acts chapter 13. Now they were in the church at Antioch, prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping and 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 fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia.
Joel Brooks:From there, they sailed to Cyprus. This is the word of the Lord. It's the word of the Lord. If you would pray with me. Father, the words that we just read are exciting words.
Joel Brooks:They're joyful words. If we were to be honest, they're little painful words, but ultimately, they're your words. And so we pray that through your spirit, your words would hit their mark in this place this morning. We pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but, Lord, your words would remain and they would change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. So Acts 13 is the turning point in the book of Acts. It's the hinge chapter, if you will. From this point on, the Apostle Paul is going to dominate the rest of the chapters. I would also say it's not a least bit and an exaggeration to say that the only reason we are here in this place, 2000 years later gathered as Christians is because of the words we just read.
Joel Brooks:It's the reason we are here. Through that time of of fasting and prayer, the Lord set aside Barnabas and Saul and sent them on this great missionary work that went throughout Asia Minor and through Europe establishing churches there, and Christianity spread across the globe resulting in us 2000 years later being here in this room as professing Christians. And can I just say that as we're studying this this passage of scripture, it is not an accident that we're looking at these 4 verses at this time? It's not an accident for when I set the preaching schedule like 6 months ago, so I knew we would be here. But it's not an accident that we are looking at this at this time in our church's history.
Joel Brooks:Because I think we're at a similar Antioch moment. The church at Antioch was a young church, younger than redeemer. We're just over 10 years old, but they were younger than us and they were flourishing. And if you remember, it was through a vision. The Lord gave gave Peter a vision telling him to go to Antioch, talk to Cornelius.
Joel Brooks:He went there and he he shared the gospel, and then Antioch had this Pentecost moment. The Holy Spirit descended and lives were changed. People confessing the lordship of Jesus. Peter, he just couldn't believe what was happening there, and he went back to Jerusalem to report to the apostles everything that was going on. And and they rejoiced at hearing what the spirit was doing in Antioch.
Joel Brooks:And then they said, we need we need to shepherd that and pastor that, and so they sent one of their best, Barnabas. And they sent Barnabas to Antioch to be the pastor of the church there. The fastest growing church in the world at the time. And things flourished under Barnabas's leadership, and the church kept exploding in growth. And so much so that Barnabas needed help and so in his mind, he he thought it just came to him.
Joel Brooks:Paul, Saul, He lives in Tarsus and Saul had been doing, you know, whatever in Tarsus for the last 9 to 10 years. We have no idea what Paul was doing. Likely he was just working as a tent maker, but Barnabas went and got him and brought him into full time ministry. And for the last 3 to 4 years, they had been the pastors and the teachers of this growing movement happening in Antioch. And now they're at this point in the life of their church where they begin asking, what's next?
Joel Brooks:What's next? I mean, where where do we go from here now that all these people are coming to know the Lord, now that all these people are getting involved in the church, what's next for us? Now they knew the general will of God. They knew that whatever the next was, it involved making disciples because Jesus, as He ascended, His very last commandment to them was go and make disciples of all men. Go go into the nations and make disciples.
Joel Brooks:So so they knew that. That they were involved They were supposed to be involved in the great task of making disciples, but Jesus really didn't give them any details as to what that was supposed to look like. He didn't really give any specifics. Jesus wasn't ascending and as he was ascending saying, you know, go and make disciples, and and and do that by making a really big church, or do that by going to small group model, not the home you know, the Sunday school model. No.
Joel Brooks:He didn't leave all these programs and these strategies. He just said, make disciples. The Holy Spirit is gonna come upon you and empower you to do this. So the disciples, they were given this general command, but they had no idea of the specifics. What actually did that mean on a day to day basis?
Joel Brooks:How were they to fulfill this? And of course, this is true of most of our life. Most of our life we have We we know the general will of God, but it's the specifics that we're uncertain of. So we know the purpose of marriage, but you're not gonna find a chapter and verse that tells you who to marry. You're not gonna find, you know, looking through and find some verse that says, go to church, sit on the 5th row, the woman to your right is your wife.
Joel Brooks:It's not there. Some of you are counting the rows. And some of you are like, the relief. You're looking at the guy next to you, like it doesn't say that. But those verses don't exist.
Joel Brooks:The bible doesn't give us clear direction as to where we're supposed to work. It tells us generally that we're to do all work to his glory, but it doesn't give us our vocation. And so for the vast majority of, the decisions you make, you're not gonna find any scripture, any specific verse telling you exactly what to do. Should you marry? And if so, who should you marry?
Joel Brooks:What job should you take? Where should you live? Who should you invite to your dinner party? Should you homeschool? Should you adopt or foster?
Joel Brooks:If you get cancer, should you take chemo or should you go some alternative route? If you have aging parents who are getting dementia, do you take care of them yourself or do you put them in a home? I mean, from the small decisions to the really big weighty decisions, scripture does not give you that clear detailed route you're supposed to take. Just gives you the the general will of God and not the specifics. And the bible could have put all those things in there.
Joel Brooks:I mean the bible, you could have had God putting in there. You know, you were to only own 2 sets of shoes, 2 pairs of shoes, or you're supposed to give this exact amount of money to the church, this exact amount of money to the poor, this exact amount of money to a charity of your choice, could have laid that out there, but God chose not to do that. I think he chose not to do that for a number of reasons. I mean, for one your Bible is really long. I mean your Bibles it's already mine's 1300 pages here.
Joel Brooks:You would have had to add like another 10,000 pages if you were to go through the specifics of all of your life and let's be honest, none of us would have read it. But more than that, some of us would have tried to read that and we'd have been checking boxes. And our relationship with God would have been reduced down to, I I'm doing this check. I'm doing this check. I'm doing this check.
Joel Brooks:And that's not what a relationship looks like. God tells us generally what we're supposed to do through his Word. And then he's like, seek me on the details. Let's talk this through. And so this ever keeps us relating with him, trying to figure out, trying to find the things that please the Lord.
Joel Brooks:And that's where the church at Antioch is. Not this place where they need some direction. They've they've been growing rapidly. In chapter 11, three times every time the church of Antioch is mentioned, it's mentioned as growing. Rapidly growing.
Joel Brooks:And they're not just growing in numbers, they're growing in leadership. You've got Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Meneon and Saul. This is a diverse leadership. This is They represent 4 different ethnic groups from 3 different continents. And and Antioch was a a pretty diverse city, but but even for such a diverse city, what's happening here in the life of the church, it's remarkable.
Joel Brooks:This is the church that everyone would want to be a part of. I mean, wouldn't you? Would you wanna be a part of a church like this? A growing church, a dynamic, diverse church, great preaching. And so where did they go from here?
Joel Brooks:Where is the Lord leading them? How can they keep making disciples? Should they send out missionaries? Should they plant churches? Should they build a bigger sanctuary?
Joel Brooks:Should they do all of those above? Should they just circle the wagons and really focus on on their own membership and really just try to raise up solid disciples there. This was a real church with real people working through these issues. And so what they decide to do in the absence of a clear command of the Lord is they decide to fast and to worship. I've heard it expressed this way.
Joel Brooks:When you don't know what to do, you know exactly what to do as Christians. When you don't know what to do, you know exactly what to do as Christians. You seek the Lord. You fast. You worship.
Joel Brooks:You adore him. And that's what these people do here. The leadership gathers together and they have a meeting. Now I'm just gonna say right now, if if you're one of those type a people, alright, you would have hated this meeting. Alright.
Joel Brooks:You would have it would have driven you absolutely insane. If you're the kind of person who likes to just jump in there and just like, we're gonna we're gonna get things done. I brought my list to go through. You would have been really frustrated. You would have shown up and be like, so what's happening at the elder meeting tonight?
Joel Brooks:We're just gonna take time to to really just adore Jesus. That's great. Now, but you know, don't we need don't we have to like really work on our space issues or whether we build or not? That probably be a good idea. We're just gonna adore Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Don't we really need to think through our home group ministry? I mean, I heard the First Baptist Tarsus down there has got a great ministry. We could go look at it, maybe bounce some ideas off one another. Yeah, that'd probably be a good idea, but we're really just going to adore Jesus. Don't we need to look at the budget and just see what we can afford for next year or not?
Joel Brooks:Yeah. We probably should do that, but we're just going to take time to just adore Jesus. Isn't Jesus good? I mean, we were dead in our sins, and Jesus made us alive in him. Let's just let's just take time to adore him.
Joel Brooks:That that would have just driven us type a people crazy doing this. Just taking time to waste before the Lord and worship and fast before him. Next Sunday is a pretty important Sunday, for me. It's probably not important to you guys so much. It is Super Bowl Sunday, but that's that's not why it's important.
Joel Brooks:Next week, for me, I'm gonna celebrate. It's my 20th year of full time ministry. Next Sunday will be. And so has I've been thinking through that and processing that and some of you are like, really? 20 years?
Joel Brooks:I know mom even my mom's surprised I made it this far. But she's just saying, really? But but it's it's made me very introspective and reflective as to what the Lord wants for my next 20 years, what he might want for this church. 20 years ago, I mean, ministry, it was pretty simple. It began with after the Lord was moving my wife and I away from the mission field and saying, we're gonna plant you here.
Joel Brooks:I want you to do college ministry. I was like, I'm not sure what that looks like. So I just went to the, to the visitor cards we gathered that day at church, found 4 college students and I just cold called them and said, It's Super Bowl Sunday. How about you come over to our house for dinner tonight? One of them is here, Stephanie Kling.
Joel Brooks:Still still here. And the Lord used that and just started a ministry And I've been so blessed over the last 20 years to be a part of, this doing the Lord's work full time. But as I think through the next 20 years and what I want that to look like for me and to look like for the church, I do have some concerns. The the concern is not that me or or the church will all of a sudden just start committing all these heresies. You know?
Joel Brooks:That's that's not it. You know? That will will throw out, you know, biblical sexual ethics or throw out the authority of God's word or, start baptizing babies. I just had to throw that out there. That I probably shouldn't have taken that one back.
Joel Brooks:Alright. We allow for membership those who've been baptized as infants. My but my fear is not, it really is not us committing some, theological heresy. My my concern is not it doesn't have anything to do with the structures of the church, how large we are as a church, or any of those things. My fear is that we could become a people who cease to adore Jesus, That I could become a person who ceases to adore him.
Joel Brooks:That could be theologically sound. We have every class. I mean, all these classes to offer. All these bible studies to offer. I mean, we Theologically, maybe we're rocks, but we have these, like, shriveled up hearts.
Joel Brooks:Or as, John would say in the book of Revelation, we have forsaken our first love. So that that's my concern. And so my mission for the next 20 years, unless y'all kick me out before then, but my mission for the next 20 years is really to make sure that we're a people who adore Jesus. That I'm a pastor who adores Jesus. That we take time to treasure Him in His gospel.
Joel Brooks:Never get over the fact, people, that we were dead in our sins, and Jesus made us alive in him. And we treasure that, and we savor that. We lose that. We lose everything. And so it's good for us to take these times of just adoration.
Joel Brooks:The adoration of Christ here is done through a time of worship and fasting. The word here used for worship is not the common word that is used for worship. It's an extremely rare word in the bible, in in the new testament. It is the only time this word worship is used in the book of acts. And in acts you find people worship all over the place, but this is the only time this unique word is used here.
Joel Brooks:It's secular meaning, meaning in Greek is simply to do public service without pay. In the old testament, this word means ministering and it would describe what the priest did in the temple, where they worshiped, they prayed, but they also did hard work, and it demanded sacrifice. That's how they worshiped. So when we read that these leaders in Antioch were gathering together and they were worshiping, we should not just picture them coming together, you know, singing songs. It was much more than that.
Joel Brooks:This was a group coming together to sing, to pray, to serve, and to say, Lord, what's next? What would you like me to sacrifice? All for your glory. And they gather together for that and they accompany this time of worshiping with fasting. Now I did a little Google research on fasting and I was amazed.
Joel Brooks:It's all the rage now, that and juicing. Alright? Juicing or fasting, you know. There's all these articles on it. And and so I just clicked on a bunch of these articles, read about fasting and every one of them talks about the health benefits of fasting.
Joel Brooks:How it's good for your gut, you know. It's good for your body to to fast. But you would be hard pressed to find any modern articles, that talk about the spiritual benefits of fasting. There's a great spiritual benefit to fasting. It's when we come to the Lord and we say, we hunger for you more than we hunger for food.
Joel Brooks:We hunger for the bread of life and not just for bread. And this is what the church was doing. So picture this. They're showing their hunger, and they're coming. And they're saying, We worship you.
Joel Brooks:We want to serve you. What's next? What can we sacrifice in service and in worship to you? And then the Lord speaks. The Holy Spirit, he's comes upon them and he says, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work in which I've called them.
Joel Brooks:Luke doesn't tell how the holy spirit spoke. Bible's usually pretty vague on that as well. We don't know if it was through a prophet getting up and speaking or through, God speaking just quietly to somebody's heart and then the church affirming that. We don't really know. What we do know is they all knew that this was a word from the Lord, that they were to set apart Barnabas and Saul.
Joel Brooks:And I don't know what they hoping to hear in this moment as they gather together, but I can tell you this. I bet they were hoping it wasn't this. I can I can assure you they were hoping that that was not what the Holy Spirit was telling them to do? To send out from their midst their 2 best people. The 2 most indispensable people they had.
Joel Brooks:These were their best teachers. Their best leaders. The 2 people who had been faithfully serving and preaching and pastoring this great revival that God was doing there. These were the 2 pillars of the church. Certainly, God wouldn't be asking them to send away those 2.
Joel Brooks:I mean, why why would they ever want to do that? I mean, who's gonna take over the preaching if they go? Who's gonna take over the teaching? Who's gonna lead the small group ministry if they go? Who's gonna provide all the wisdom and the counsel that they give, not just to the members, but in the midst of these elder meetings?
Joel Brooks:Who's gonna do that? Things are gonna fall apart, aren't they, if we send out our best? Now, we have perfect hindsight as we're looking into this. You look back to that and you're like, that's a no brainer. I mean, God used that to change the world.
Joel Brooks:He used that one event to send the mount churches planted all over Asia Minor and Europe and spread all across the globe. No brainer. Paul on those missionary journeys, he would write a lot of the New Testament. I mean, come on. No brainer, but they didn't have the benefit of hindsight there, just obedience.
Joel Brooks:And this is gonna be a painful thing for them to do. I'm sure they had some questions. I'm sure they had quite a number of fears, And I know this because I feel this. I feel this. You need to hear it from me, that there is a great temptation for me, and I'm sure for all of us, to just try to hold on to this thing that the Lord is doing at Redeemer.
Joel Brooks:Just hold on. I mean, what he's doing here is beautiful. I look around this church right now and I see some amazing people that the Lord has brought here and they are doing extraordinary things. And in no way do I want any of you to leave, like there's just there's no way. Are you crazy?
Joel Brooks:Why would I want you to leave? Not only would that be, you know, a terrible pastoral decision because we leave all of these holes, all these vacancies and all these ministries, but personally it would just hurt. It would hurt my heart. 2 years ago, we we commissioned out one of our pastors, one of our lay elders also, some leaders, a team of people. We sent them out because we thought the Lord was directing us to do that, to go to Homewood and to Plant Grace Fellowship Church.
Joel Brooks:Doing that hurt our wallet and it hurt our hearts. It hurt both. It hurt our wallet, it hurt our hearts. Sending out people always begins with a heart exam. Always.
Joel Brooks:You have to take inventory of what's going on in your heart. So sending out people, it's it's a hard exam and sending out people is not going to help your bottom line ever. It's gonna hurt as you lose valuable people who are your valuable resources. And I wanna be real honest with you. When we sent out that team, it played on every one of my fears.
Joel Brooks:I I don't I'm not a fearful person at all. I mean, if I'm going hiking out, you know, out west, I hope I run into a grizzly. Alright. You know, I'm just like, I I don't have those kind of fears. I was fearful when we were doing this.
Joel Brooks:I don't know if you remember those of you who were here 2 years ago when we were we were doing this and we brought in Joel Busby, who is a a kinder, better, more theologically sound preacher than I am. And we bring him in and, and then we we tell him, we want you to recruit. We want you to to get a team of people to move into a safer better part of town. And and if you remember when we did that, I left for 2 months. I took a sabbatical.
Joel Brooks:I took a sabbatical for a couple of reasons. At that time, right when we brought in Joel Busby, For starters, I didn't want Joel to feel my shadow. I didn't want him to feel me, like, breathing over his neck as he was preaching and trying to connect with all of these people, but the honest truth was it just hurt. It just hurt. It's a real sacrifice.
Joel Brooks:I didn't want him taking any of my people, but I knew for the glory of Jesus he needed to. So I'd go away for 2 months so he could preach. The the verse that keeps coming to my mind as we're going through this is John 12. If you remember the story, it's it's Mary, she comes to Jesus, She kneels down at his feet and she breaks open the perfume, this costly costly perfume and she wastes it there. And John is so good that he tells us, and the the fragrance filled the house.
Joel Brooks:It was her joy to do it, but it was a sacrifice. It's a joyful sacrifice. And her love expressed its way this, not showing how great she was, but how great her savior was. When we send people out instead of just circling the wagons, what we're saying is we don't think we as a church, Redeemer Community Church is great, we think our Lord and Savior is great. And we send people out, and we keep sending and we keep sending people out for the glory of His name.
Joel Brooks:Does it hurt? Yes. It hurts. But this is something the Lord has called us to do. I've heard that multiplication beats addition every time.
Joel Brooks:And when you send people out and you begin planting and planting other churches, the church multiplies rather than just adding numbers. This is a joyful cost that we have. This is what adoration of Jesus leads to. Joyful sacrifice, making much of Jesus. That perfume cost Mary a year's salary wasted at his feet, Pour it out with real joy.
Joel Brooks:So it's our delight, and it's our joy to sacrifice to the one that we love. And hear me. When the church here at Antioch made that sacrifice, the fragrance of their praise filled the entire earth. And what the church at Antioch is gonna discover is that they cannot out give God. And God has repeatedly shown that.
Joel Brooks:Every time we've taken steps, and we've made sacrifices, and we've and we've given, he has shown us that we cannot out give him. As a result of their worship, their fasting, their adoration, they're sending out their very best. They would become the largest church in the world for the next 1000 years. The church at Antioch will be the largest church in the world for a 1000 years. As they kept sending and sending.
Joel Brooks:Next week, I'm calling our church to a time of fasting and worship. We're gonna do that 24 hours leading up to this service. I'd ask the service whatever service you come to, if possible, you spend the 24 hours leading into it fasting. So you come to here, to worship hungry. We're also setting up across the street at 4th and Spring beginning, midnight on Saturday, a time of 24 hour prayer and fasting.
Joel Brooks:We'll have some of our musicians there leading it during this entire time. Friday. Sorry. Friday night at 12 going to Saturday night at 12. Thanks, Edmund.
Joel Brooks:You could sign up for time slots or you could just come to that. But hear me. I believe the holy spirit still speaks. He still speaks. And I believe that when we come and we adore Jesus, we just take time to savor Him, worship Him with these open hands, He lets us know how we can sacrificially give.
Joel Brooks:He leads us. My prayer is that next Sunday, God will call some of us to the mission field. He'll call some of us to leave. My hope is that He calls some of us to plant other churches. My hope is that he calls some of us to do some new endeavor.
Joel Brooks:And that he keeps doing it, and he keeps doing it, and he keeps doing it. All while we keep adoring our Lord and our savior. If you would, pray with me. Lord Jesus, we adore you. May we never get over the gospel.
Joel Brooks:By the gospel, I don't just mean the message. I mean, you, Jesus. May we never get over what You have done for us. You've resurrected us, and You've given us life, and we joyfully give you our life in return to do with as you will. Lord, we ask you would speak to us at our church in this specific time, that you would call certain people out.
Joel Brooks:And, lord, if we're not sent out, I pray we would be the ones who send out. Our ultimate goal and aim is that your glory will cover the entire earth, just like the waters cover the sea. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.