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"Here as in Heaven."
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You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Ramin Razavi:Good morning. Good morning. It's good to be together. Jesus made a promise to us and he said that he would build his church. And looking around today, I think he's doing pretty well right here, don't you?
Ramin Razavi:He said he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. And for over two thousand years, that's what he's been doing. And we've been caught up in the story that God is writing here at Garden Church. And what we've been in is a series called Church on Fire. It's out of the book of Acts and what we've been seeing is the way that Jesus continued to build his church through ordinary people who simply gave their yes to him, who were filled by his spirit and carried the gospel all across the known world.
Ramin Razavi:And what's so powerful about the passage we're gonna look at today, Acts chapter 11 is this, is that Jesus begins by his grace to see his church leap over walls and boundaries that hadn't been crossed before. You start to see in Antioch, is the church we're gonna look at today, the first truly multicultural church. You have Jew and Gentile together in the same church. Because when Jesus builds his church, he builds it in a way and with a scope far beyond what you and I would imagine. And what he does in the in Antioch is this, is he helps us see that he's not simply building a church just to be a great church.
Ramin Razavi:A church that had all the programs and all the things in place to satiate the needs of the people. But when Jesus builds his church, he's catalyzing an apostolic movement that is designed to carry the gospel to the known world. And here's some news for us today. As Jesus is building Garden Church, he's not trying to build a church that's just a a great church with all of the preferred programs that you might have to meet the needs that you think you have for life. Jesus is building GARDEN CHURCH to invite us to be missional disciples who live for the revitalization of Southern California.
Ramin Razavi:That's what we're aiming for. We're not content just being a great church with all of the right things that you can roll up into and consume. Our mandate from heaven is to be a community of resilient disciples who live on mission for the revitalization of Southern California and we are not stopping, we are not ceasing until we see his glory fill Southern California the way the waters fill the sea. Are you with me? That's why we're here.
Ramin Razavi:And so this text that we're gonna be in together is a picture of how that was the heartbeat of Jesus from the very beginning because Jesus is the one building his church. And so let's go to Acts chapter 11 verse 19 through 30. We're gonna look at the text together. We're gonna unpack the dynamics that were present in Antioch. And then we're gonna trust the Holy Spirit to renew these realities in our day.
Ramin Razavi:Let me pray before you read the word. Holy Spirit, we just invite you now to come and to minister your word to your children, Lord. We just say, our hearts are hungry for you. You can go ahead and even just tell him your need for him right now. You don't need to be quiet in church.
Ramin Razavi:You can just tell him your need for him right now. How much you need him to speak to you. And so Lord we open ourselves to you and we pray that by the power of the Holy Spirit you would speak your living word to us in Jesus name, amen and amen. Acts chapter 11 verse 19. It says, now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch spreading the word only among the Jews.
Ramin Razavi:Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the church in Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
Ramin Razavi:Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.
Ramin Razavi:One of them named Agabus stood up and through the spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. This happened during the reign of Claudius. The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. This is the word of the Lord.
Ramin Razavi:Thanks be to God. Yeah. Thanks be to God. So the first dynamic I wanna look at is we see in the text, there are ordinary people that get empowered by Jesus to do extraordinary things. When you take a look at this text in the first paragraph, what you notice is that there is a bit of a bracket going on.
Ramin Razavi:The first part about the bracket is that they were scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was martyred. But by the end of, I believe it is verse 21, a great number of people are believing in the Lord. So if you follow this, their lives are getting completely wrecked and torn apart because one of their best friend has just been stoned to death in front of them. I don't know what your week was like, but I don't I'm not sure that it it touches on that level of drama. They they are torn apart by what just happened to their best friend.
Ramin Razavi:And by the end of the paragraph, we're over here, and you guys get the good side of the news. And what's going on over here is a great number of people are turning to the Lord. We've gotta understand what happened because they were scattered. We saw in acts seven and eight, Stephen was a potluck associate who when the spirit was moving and the church was growing so rapidly, got assigned the role of serving the widow some lunch. And the Stephen ended up preaching the gospel to the Sanhedrin, a group of 71 bearded and scowling men.
Ramin Razavi:And throughout the old testament, he displayed to them that Jesus had always been trying to break through, but they didn't recognize the time of the spirit's coming. Heaven was opened, he got a real vision of Jesus. He happened to share this with them. They weren't very pleased with that and so they killed him. And what scripture says is that the church fanned out after that.
Ramin Razavi:They scattered. And what's so incredible to think about is this. Is it possible that the catalyzing events in our life that we interpret as scattering are actually divine gifts to send us where we would never go on our own? And if you think about it this way, what are the things that have felt like scattering in your story? Unexpected circumstances.
Ramin Razavi:Situations that you never wanted to happen to you. Things that may have been as severe as watching someone you care about pass away. Or maybe something inconsequential, but whatever it is, we experience this rhythm of feeling scattered very often. And the question we have to ask ourself and the question they ask is, God, it feels like scattering, but what's your purpose in the middle of this scattering? Yeah.
Ramin Razavi:What are you trying to accomplish? How are you trying to form me? What are you trying to change in me? Where are you trying to get my feet to go by kicking me out of comfortability and moving me into your will in a deeper way? And the way that we go about doing this practically, I wanna be practical today, is number one, you've gotta name.
Ramin Razavi:You have to name what has felt like scattering in your life. You gotta name it. It can't just be ambiguous. Number two, you've gotta grieve it. We're not a church that practices spiritual bypassing.
Ramin Razavi:Where it's like, you know what? I just wanna encourage you. God is good and he is good all the time. That's true, but if you're suffering, that doesn't help a whole lot. You gotta grieve the pain in your life.
Ramin Razavi:But then you've gotta begin to let Jesus into it. You gotta say, Jesus, what were you doing in the midst of this? How were you moving in what felt like scattering? How were you moving when everything felt like it was being torn apart? How were you present in the midst of my pain?
Ramin Razavi:Let me tell you, he was. He was forsaken, he was broken. There is no pain we experience that Jesus himself is not familiar with. We do not have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who is tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin. So what?
Ramin Razavi:We can boldly approach his throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need. This is the kind of high priest we have. So we let Jesus in and then here's the big thing, we allow him to heal us. And this can happen in a moment. We're gonna pray for this at the end of the service.
Ramin Razavi:This may take a decade. We're not in control on how fast the Holy Spirit heals. But we can submit to the healing work of the Holy Spirit. And finally, we can give our consent to say, God, though it's not what I asked for, if you say go, I will go. I will follow you.
Ramin Razavi:Because here's what's so powerful at the beginning of this text today is they did not let their pain, their grief or their fear keep them from living responsibly to the call of the Holy Spirit in our life. And that is the danger for so many of us in this room. We have gotten beat up by life, circumstances have been hard, the difficulty has set in, and it has been a painful journey. But in the midst of the painful journey, just like Jesus did with these disciples, he wants to heal you, he wants to restore you, and the powerfully wounded become powerful healers because grace flows in. That's how Jesus builds his church.
Ramin Razavi:So this group of unnamed disciples, I love that the New Testament calls them some of them. We would have loved their names. We didn't get their names. Nameless, faceless disciples. Some of them, this was not an official mission commission from the central church at Jerusalem.
Ramin Razavi:Go start a multicultural church down in Antioch, this great city, this cosmopolitan city where five cultures are converging. A city known for its sex worship at Daphne's Temple. A city known for its athleticism with its chariot racing. Why don't we intentionally send a mission down there and break through to the Gentiles? That wasn't their idea.
Ramin Razavi:These guys got there because they were running for their lives. And then when they got there, what does scripture say that they preached? They preached the good news about Jesus. What a potent message. And what does scripture say happened when they preached the good news about Jesus?
Ramin Razavi:The hand of the Lord was with them. Wouldn't that be a good reality to live with? Here's how you get the hand of the Lord behind your life. You start moving in concert with the will of God. The potency of their preaching came from the solidity of their relationship with Jesus that was forged in the fire.
Ramin Razavi:If you wanna have a potent outward life, get some solidity with Jesus inwardly. And the result of all this, which I love, is what? Great numbers of people believed. And if you caught this in the text, repetition matters in scripture. This happens three times in this passage.
Ramin Razavi:Great numbers of people believed. I mean, it's like Parker laying down the drumbeat at the anthem we're singing. Why? Because God's mission is a joyful, expansive mission. He is a joyful father longing to bring children into his home and reconcile them to himself again.
Ramin Razavi:God is a joyful God who is trying to restore us to the joy of heaven. There are great numbers of people being added to their number. And so this is how the passage gets started. Unnamed, faceless followers of Jesus. And I like to think about it this way.
Ramin Razavi:They were probably the interns to the potluck associates in app chapter six. They didn't even get to serve the stew. They cleaned the pots. They scattered and fanned out when one of their best friends got martyred in front of them. They let Jesus do the healing work.
Ramin Razavi:They showed up in a city that was known for its influence all over the world called the third city of the Roman Empire. And they preached what they had, which was Jesus is Lord. And the result of it, God's hand is with them and revival breaks out in Antioch. That's the first movement. God works through ordinary people empowered by his extraordinary grace to change the world.
Ramin Razavi:The next movement we see in the text is this, is that Jesus releases grace to strengthen the church through encouragement and empowerment. Jesus releases grace to strengthen the church through encouragement and empowerment. We're gonna be looking specifically now at verses 22 through 24. So reports of the awakening in Antioch drift back to the church in Jerusalem. It's about 300 miles away, so it would have taken a little bit of time in those days.
Ramin Razavi:Now, the mother church in Jerusalem had recently gotten reports that over in Joppa, the gospel had gone forward to Cornelius and his family. And now they're hearing that down in Antioch or up in Antioch, it's North Of Jerusalem actually, unnamed interns to the Potluck Associates are beginning to lead a revival in a major urban center. So this might be like if we heard all of a sudden, Chance and some of his, what we call the sons of thunder on the front row right here, the guys that help with the setup. Let's thank these guys every week. I'm I'm only half using this as an illustration because I actually think this could happen, is Darren and I get a text.
Ramin Razavi:They're like, hey, Chance and some of the Sons of Thunder were hanging out in Anaheim, and all of a sudden they started praying for people and the kingdom of God broke out. The church is being established. And we're like, well, we didn't send them to do that. And we're like, well, we better send somebody to check out. Well, let's send Slav because he's like really generous of spirit and we're gonna find out what's going on down there.
Ramin Razavi:That's what happened here. They're like, the gospel's breaking out. Jesus is building the church. Remember, that's his job, not ours. He's building the church.
Ramin Razavi:So let's send Barnabas to rock up to Antioch and figure out what's really going on there. Now, Barnabas is a fantastic choice for this mission. If you remember who Barnabas is, he first came on the scene in Acts chapter four. There was a major financial crisis in the church. All of these people had flooded Jerusalem.
Ramin Razavi:The spirit fell, Pentecost happened, the church is being established, and there are more people with needs than the resources that are available. And so they don't even need to do a year end giving moment because Barnabas can just recognize what God's doing. He sees what God's doing and he sells some land. Now, this is super significant because scripture tells us that Barnabas was not his actual name. His name is Joseph, which is not nearly as interesting as Barnabas.
Ramin Razavi:And he was a Levite from Cyprus. And if you know anything about being a Levite, that means you did not get land as an inheritance. So somehow along the family lineage, land came into Barnabas' story. That's like not living in generational wealth and getting to buy a house in Newport. You're like, yes.
Ramin Razavi:And then there's a bunch of people in the church that don't have food and you're like, the first thing I'm gonna do is sell the house. Who does that? Unless Jesus' grace has infected your heart and now you can't help but give away what you've received. So he does, he gives it away and I think this is so significant because they called him Barnabas, means son of encouragement. And you know you get a nickname when they really love you.
Ramin Razavi:Do you ever get a nickname in a crowd they really love you? And they call him son of encouragement. Generosity is one of the strongest ways you can encourage. And and here's why. If if Barnabas didn't step in at that specific moment in the life of the church, it's possible all those people who had flooded to Jerusalem and experienced the spirit would have gone back home because they didn't eat food.
Ramin Razavi:And so his generosity came at a specific moment inspired by the Holy Spirit because he could see and recognize what God was doing. That happened the next time we meet Barnabas too. Because Saul has now been encountered by Jesus on the road and he begins to preach in different areas and he wants to go see the disciples. But the disciples are terrified of Saul. Why?
Ramin Razavi:Because he was killing and persecuting the church. So Barnabas goes and finds Saul. He's like, hey, tell me your story. Okay, got your story. I get it.
Ramin Razavi:Then he goes to the church in Jerusalem and is like, hey, I wanna put my reputation on the line to vouch for this guy's calling. And because of Barnabas' grace towards Saul, Saul gets included and gets sent back to Tarsus for his own protection and will get back to Saul later. But here's the thing about Barnabas and why he's called the son of encouragement. Encouragement begins by your capacity to recognize how the grace of God is moving in the lives of the people around you. It continues with you being willing to live with a responsive yes and releasing whatever it is you have to further the purposes of God.
Ramin Razavi:That's what encouragement begins with. That's good. Recognizing what God's doing. And so, they send their man Barnabas. And what did he do?
Ramin Razavi:Scripture says, when he arrived and saw what the grace of God was doing, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all of their hearts. I love that it says that he was glad. Because one of the things the Lord's been speaking to me over the last three, four years is as a leader, as a father, as a husband, in every space, I've I've been a very driven person most of my life. Some of you can relate. And what the Lord's been speaking to me is like, what does it mean to be present with delight not just driven with vision?
Ramin Razavi:Could you imagine this, this young church? They don't know what the heck they're doing. They didn't get the liturgy. This church is made up of likely Persians and Indians, Romans and people from the region that we now call China. Like this is an incredibly multicultural church combined with Torah keeping Jews who had two kitchens.
Ramin Razavi:It was messy. It was crazy. They didn't know how to do worship. They didn't know how to do any of the things that would have been a customary to the Jerusalem church. And Barnabas could have rolled in and been like, let me give you the doctrine.
Ramin Razavi:I've got some of the theology to dispense to you. I have got some of the alignment to bring to you. You know what he rolled in and was like, I am so excited to see what God's doing among you. You know why? Because encouragement is breathing life into people.
Ramin Razavi:And that's what Barnabas did. He saw what God was doing and he just began to breathe life into them. He was present with delight. This is the essence of encouragement, To come alongside someone, to companion someone, to exhort and to speak life. The word literally means to give heart.
Ramin Razavi:In Greek, the word is parakleo. It means to come alongside, to comfort, to exhort or to entreat someone forward. So encouragement is the ability to give support, to give confidence and to give hope and courage to someone else. I love this thought. Encouragement is the ability to recognize grace in seed form in someone else's life.
Ramin Razavi:That's good. And call it forward. Fertilize the seed that you say. Fan into flame what God was doing and they would have needed it. And so do we.
Ramin Razavi:We need it desperately. I knocked around with some statistical research this weekend. It was a blast. And what I found was this. Forty five percent of women today between the ages of 16 and 26 years old have a diagnosed case of anxiety or depression.
Ramin Razavi:Wow. Forty five percent. Seventy eight percent of men today don't have a close friend they can call in times of crisis. Orange County may look like it's doing just fine on the outside but it's broken. It's hurting.
Ramin Razavi:People are desperate. And just because we live in a community that can placate our needs and satiate our desires with every material thing possible does not mean that the ache of the soul for love, acceptance and encouragement that only comes from the Holy Spirit isn't as real here as it is in the center of Long Beach. It is just as real here. And so we as the church, we get this opportunity, and I just wanna say it, to like step into a Barnabas spirit. Does anybody wanna step into a Barnabas spirit today?
Ramin Razavi:What would it be like if GARDEN CHURCH became known as a people of radical encouragement? It's like, man, I don't know who this guy is at my job, but every time he sees me just building me up. He heard that I like took my date on a wife. My wife on a date and my my wife, that'll come out eventually. And he just championed it.
Ramin Razavi:He heard I was coaching t ball for my son's team. He bought me a clipboard and some coaching shorts. I don't know if I wanna wear the coaching shorts, but the clipboard was helpful. What would that look like for us? I wanna be super practical once again.
Ramin Razavi:I wanna give you a couple ways. How do you encourage people? How do you speak life? Number one, be specific. Be specific, not just like, man, you're awesome.
Ramin Razavi:That doesn't help. I'm a just try this out real quick. Chase Cofer, I wanna encourage you, man. You have been such a good friend to me over the last six months. You genuinely care about me.
Ramin Razavi:When you ask questions, you take time to listen, and you want to invest in my life. I'm so grateful for you. That's specific encouragement. Number two, be honest about your encouragement. Don't lie to people.
Ramin Razavi:It doesn't help them long term. And don't exercise the Christian sin of toxic positivity. Like be honest about your encouragement with people. That's right. Number three, encourage directionally.
Ramin Razavi:Encourage directionally. Fernando, what I've loved about you is you came in here, you were kinda checking things out, unsure of everything, and now you're one of the strongest leaders in our pre service prayer. You're moving in a direction. I see what God's doing in your life. And number three, do it daily.
Ramin Razavi:I love what Hebrews says, encourage one another as long as it's called today. What a verse. Why? So you don't get hardened by sin's deceitfulness. I've experienced this in my life.
Ramin Razavi:You can lose your heart in a day and someone's words of encouragement carried by the Holy Spirit can restore your heart in a day. So don't let your brothers and sisters die because of a lack of encouragement. Encourage daily. And we get back to Parker's drumbeat here, what happens? A great number of people are brought to the Lord.
Ramin Razavi:Why? Because the most attractional church is a church built with joy and encouragement. People wanna know that Jesus is good. Life's hard enough. We don't have to get all sad and somber in church.
Ramin Razavi:We can acknowledge the pain, invite Jesus in, take a walk across the stage and just let Jesus be our healer. So it'd be enough if Barnabas rocking up did that, but Barnabas doesn't stop there. So verse 25, back to the text. They're in the midst of revival right now, this church. We've got double they added to their number.
Ramin Razavi:So I don't know what that is, Pastor Darren. Is that 3,000, 5,000? I don't know. We're pastors, we don't count very well anyway. The church keeps growing, but Barnabas doesn't stop there.
Ramin Razavi:The church is growing and instead of building a platform for himself, Barnabas leaves town in the middle of a church in revival and goes to find Saul a 100 miles away in Tarsus to invite him into the environment. Now, different historians are unsure of exactly how long this was since the last time we saw Saul. Some think it's up to seven years. But he has to go search for Saul in Antioch and when he or back home in Tarsus. And when he eventually finds Saul in Tarsus, he brings Saul back to Antioch to begin to teach and instruct the disciples in Antioch.
Ramin Razavi:What is Barnabas doing here? He's empowering Saul. So the church grows through encouragement, but the church also grows through empowerment. Because what the church was created by God to be is a destiny releasing environment. And instead of using the moment to build a platform for himself, Barnabas goes a 100 miles from Antioch and he did not have the find my friend app on the phone.
Ramin Razavi:It's not like, where is he? I mean, how do you even find people back then? Have you seen Saul? You know, he was the guy that saw Jesus on the road, tried to preach a gospel, almost got killed, got lowered out of a basket from a city. Have you seen him?
Ramin Razavi:He goes and somehow locates Saul and he brings him back and he basically gives away his ministry to Saul. Because here's what empowerment is, it's recognizing the grace of God at work in someone's life before anybody else has the courage to do it. We love champions. We love great leaders. We love heroes.
Ramin Razavi:We love a great pastor even. But here's the thing, who's willing to bet on them when they're still unproven? This was a tremendous risk for Barnabas. It could have gone really south. But here's what I think Barnabas was thinking about.
Ramin Razavi:When he met Saul the first time and got to know him, he likely heard from Saul. Hey, when Jesus met me on the road and said, why are you persecuting me Saul? He gave me a commission and he said, you're gonna be my chosen instrument to preach the gospel to who? The Gentiles. So here's Barnabas in a moment of divine opportunity and the first thing that I believe came to his mind is not what do I see in Saul from a human perspective, but what is the word of God that's been spoken over Saul's life.
Ramin Razavi:So what I'm gonna do is go find him and I'm just gonna fan the flame of God's call on Saul's life. I'm gonna recognize the grace in his life. I'm gonna respond with faith to what God's trying to do in Saul's life. And I'm gonna release him into the calling that God has given him. Come on.
Ramin Razavi:The church is meant to be a destiny releasing environment where we see the grace of God at work in one another, we respond with faith, and we release one another into the callings that God has given us to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. This is what the church is designed to be. And I love that what they teach about is Jesus. And how do we know that? Because scripture tells us at the end of verse 26 that for the first time in Antioch, the disciples are called Christians.
Ramin Razavi:And the word literally there met Christiani, which was similar to what they would call the people that followed Herod's teaching. They were Herodoni and they were Caesaroni's going on back then. And all this meant was that what was on your lips was the name that was put over your shoulders. So what this meant was that what was on the lips of the disciples at Antioch was not we got encouraged by Barnabas. You know, Saul rocked up and he he spoke life to us.
Ramin Razavi:Saul instructed us. What they knew was Jesus and so what they spoke was Jesus. And we talk about this a lot at Garden Church, but our heart, our prayer is to be a Jesus church where our identity is not associated with a brand or a leader but is associated with the risen Lord himself because Jesus is the one who's building his church. And so they get called Christians for the first time. As as we've talked about at Garden a lot, I think they were doing the Jesus stuff which is ordinary people empowered by the Holy Spirit bringing the kingdom of God wherever they go.
Ramin Razavi:And once again, come on Parker, help me out on this one. What happened? Great numbers of people. God just keeps expanding the church. And so by all means, this is an incredibly thriving church.
Ramin Razavi:And truthfully, if I was in charge of it, leading it, I may have thought like now is the time to set in place some good sustainable rhythms. I need to figure out what our strategy's gonna be and how our financing's gonna work and we gotta get some ministries lined up and it's it's time to organize. We've been through rapid growth and expansion and the s curve is seeming to peak and now it's gonna plateau as all organizational behavior will tell you and they probably didn't have that information. And we need to just let it stabilize for a while. But that's not how Jesus builds his church.
Ramin Razavi:Because what happens next in this last portion of the text is that Jesus releases even more grace to the church to compel it towards sacrificial mission. So right when you think like, oh, this is just getting good. This is, oh, the worship, I like it. And it was amazing today. Oh, the community, I love the community.
Ramin Razavi:I'm in one of the courses. The course is amazing. Oh, I just joined a house church. Amazing, we love that you joined a house church. But here's the thing, Jesus wants to release you to sacrificial mission.
Ramin Razavi:His purpose for you is not community. His purpose for you is mission. John Piper said it brilliantly this way. He said, God does not give a mission to his church. God has always had a mission and temporarily he's raising up a church to complete it.
Ramin Razavi:And that's the mindset we have to get in. And that's the mindset Jesus kept them in. He released his gifts to compel this young church to sacrificial mission. In verse 27, during this time, so in the midst of this awakening, you've got Barnabas giving a seminar over here. You got Saul doing the disciple class discipleship class over here.
Ramin Razavi:During this time, a prophet came down from Jerusalem, one of them named Agabus. And he stands up and through the spirit predicts that this famine is gonna incur. And as a result, the disciples, everyone each one of them gives as they were able. And this is so key because grace will always keep pushing us forward to live sacrificially on mission. This is what Jesus was doing.
Ramin Razavi:There is no invitation even given here. Did you catch that? Agabas comes and he said there's gonna be a famine in the Roman world and historians tell us there were some really terrible harvests during the time of Claudius, so we can verify this historically. And without any compelling invitation, this young church in Antioch gives sacrificially from what they have towards the mother church back in Jerusalem. Now, why would they have done that?
Ramin Razavi:Because the gospel that they believed was one of radical grace. And if you think about it, what did Jesus say when the pharisees were confronting him about letting a woman with a colored past wash his feet. He said, she's loving much. Why? She's been forgiven much.
Ramin Razavi:So you wanna unlock sacrificial generosity in your life? Get back to the fact that when you were dead in your sin and transgression, you weren't just a bad person, you were a dead person. When you were dead in your sin and transgression, Jesus on the cross bore the weight of your sin, your shame, and your guilt. He took it to the grave, and in the grave, he defeated victorious over the powers and principalities of death, and he rose to the newness of life so that through faith in him, you can be redeemed into a loving relationship with a God who's running down the driveway to give you the biggest hug you've ever imagined. And if you need your heart today to get opened up to the love of God again today, we're gonna give you a chance to do that because sacrificial mission always begins with an encounter with the God of radical grace.
Ramin Razavi:That's why they gave so generously. They knew their origin story. They were not an officially sanctioned church. Some guys started them, didn't have any famous names on the placards. I was just in Oxford University a few weeks ago and at a church there that was founded in 1200, they literally have all of the tombstones of the pastors out in the yard.
Ramin Razavi:I don't know if we wanna start doing that, Darren. That'd be weird. But your origin story influences your behavior today. And for some of us, we've we've felt this lukewarmness in our faith and we've tried and we've tried and we've tried to ignite the fire in our heart again through our own effort. And what Jesus wants to do today is ignite the fire of love for him and his mission in your heart again, not because of any effort on your own, but because you come back to where you began.
Ramin Razavi:That's what Paul would write in Colossians. He said, so then just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him. How did you receive him? Desperate. How do you walk in him?
Ramin Razavi:Desperate. And that's where mission is catalyzed. And so they're one family now, it said they decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters in Judea. And this they did by sending their gifts to the elders in Jerusalem by Barnabas and Saul. I think this moment forever marked the church in Antioch.
Ramin Razavi:They're probably about a year old at this point and they didn't hesitate one bit when God called them to give beyond what they felt comfortable giving. And so what did God recognize about them? This is a people surrendered to me. And so what did he do? He trusted them with more.
Ramin Razavi:What does Antioch become? The preeminent sending city for Paul as he goes forward. They send him and Barnabas. They send him and Silas. And why do you think God entrusted them with such a thing?
Ramin Razavi:He saw that they were gonna be faithful with what they had in their hands today. And so Paul or Saul at this point and Barnabas, they they they roll back up to Jerusalem. And I I just, in my own imagination, just love picturing the the apostles back in Jerusalem. And they're like, hey, I think that's Barnabas. Who's he got with him?
Ramin Razavi:Oh, man, that looks like that guy Saul who you vouched for. They're like, what the heck is that huge cart behind them? Oh, that's money. Like, resources. They're like, we sent Barnabas to check out what the grace of God was doing and Barnabas is returning with a cartload of resources to fuel the need that's coming for our church.
Ramin Razavi:This is the grace of God. Uses the small things to shame the wise. Uses the insignificant things to move mountains. This is the grace of God at work. Did they wanna know whether or not this was an authentic move of Jesus?
Ramin Razavi:Barnabas on the horizon with a cart full of money from a new church in Antioch to bless the mother church. That was a yes and amen. This was a move of God.
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