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The Vision of the United Baptist Church is to be a praying, growing church that glorifies God and actively meets the spiritual and physical needs of our church members, the people of Ellsworth, Hancock County and beyond.
As who has more fun than we do. Nobody. Nobody has more fun than we do. This book that I'm holding here this morning is old. It. It was printed in 1845. And I want to read a little passage from it and then talk a little bit about that as we make our way to the sermon this morning.
In ancient times, it was no uncommon thing to see new and splendid cities rise upon the ruins of others. And sometimes the spoils of the earlier were appropriated to enrich and beautify the later. Previous to the recognition of the village church in Elsworth, a Baptist church had existed in town several years, never having prospered. It was disbanded in 1837, and some of its members united with others dismissed from the church in Surrey to constitute this village church, which then consisted of 29 members.
In the spring of this year, Edgar elder Allen Barrows entered upon his charge of their spiritual affairs. Unlike the old church, this has seen days of prosperity in the winter of 1838, this Zion was made to rise and shine, and the glory of God was upon it to the joy and encouragement of both pastor and people. This revival enlarged the church by 61, by baptism, and 18 by letter.
Their old and broken sanctuary was repaired and a flourishing Sabbath school established. The church prospers with 86 members. I read that years ago, trying to understand where we came from in the 1830s might have been 1830. A Baptist presence was in Ellsworth, Maine, and I believe it began on the corner of Pleasant Street and what we call Bridge Hill today, which used to be Court Street, because there was caught up there and that church didn't last.
And then the true history of our church is a little bit difficult to trace. But we do believe we have our origins here. And what I've just read to you, some of our records were burned in the house fire, so we don't have all those details. But anyway, I was reading that years ago, trying to understand where we come from, and I read that little piece about this church being constituted by members who'd been dismissed from the church in Surrey.
And I said, Great. Our church is founded by people who got kicked out of another church. Perfect. Well, one auspicious start. I misread that the first time because I thought Dismissed. Men, go away. We don't want you here anymore. As in, you're dismissed. But that's not what it meant. It's not what it means. The Baptist church in Ellsworth exist today because a church in Surrey sent some of its members to help form it.
Our father, as we come now to your word, to sit under it and to hear your voice speak to our hearts, lend our ears to your truth, ministered to us as only you can in Christ name we ask and pray. Amen. Several hundred miles from the birthplace of Christianity in the epicenter of the early church, some men from Cypress and Cyrene had been preaching the Lord Jesus, and the hand of God was upon them.
And as a result, many were coming to faith. And our passage for the day out of the Book of Acts tells us what happened when news of their evangelist success came to the Apostles. So we pick up the text in Acts Chapter 11, verse 22. The report of this this evangelistic success in Antioch came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to NGO.
You might recall from a previous time in our study through this book that something similar to this has already happened. Chapter eight, verse 14 when the Apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent to them Peter and John. So the Word of God was received in some area, and the Jerusalem Church sent Peter and John.
They went to pray for these new believers. They they went to see that they had received the Holy Spirit to welcome them to the family of God. And now the word of God in Antioch, several hundred miles north of Jerusalem, has been preached and has been received. And what does the church do? Verse 22 And they sent these three little words would be so easy to read over, don't you think, without ever giving them much thought at all, just a little history lesson here from Luke in this early church.
And yet they are profound words and they are worth a deeper look. These three words speak volumes and they since the very first church was ascending church, the very first church willingly dispatched its members to aid in evangelism and discipleship. Now, that makes sense. If we think it through, because it's fitting that the church who is formed by and whose purpose is to display the glory of God would be ascending church because its God.
Our God is a sending God. God sent His son into the world not to condemn it, but to save it. Galatians four four But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son. On a number of occasions Jesus spoke about being sent from the Father. One of those that we read about we find in Luke chapter four and in Luke, Chapter four.
Christ has gained some quick popularity. The crowds are great. They don't want him to leave. They don't want him to go. And yet he told them, this. Luke, Chapter four, verse 43. I must reach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose. Jesus was sent to preach the Kingdom of God.
And then in turn, Jesus sends His own disciples out to preach and to teach. We see this pattern emerging marked chapter three, verse 14, and he appointed 12, whom he also named Apostles. So they might be with him and he might send them out to preach. And of course, similarly, Jesus sends the modern church into the world, leaving us with the Great Commission, Go and make disciples.
We are a sent people. We have a sending God. Our God is a sending God. And yet this value of sending it does seem to have become less prominent in churches today or lost somewhere along the way. Maybe it just became buried under a bit of churchy debris. But churches today tend to be more revered and respected for how many people they attract as opposed to how many they deploy and how many they seat versus how many they send.
Pastors are frequently asked, How many do you have in worship? You get to know somebody, How big is your church? Rarely do they ask, How many missionaries have you sent? How many churches have you planted? A little church in Surrey that I just read about was responsible for planting for churches, not just elsewhere, but four churches from this little church in Surrey today.
The emphasis does seem to be on church size, on church growth. And any church should want to grow a church. It doesn't want to grow. It's got some problems. All we want to keep it just the way it is because it's nice and comfortable. Stop it. Church should want to grow. A church should desire to grow. That's an admirable desire.
That's a good thing, and we should work toward that. But let me ask again why do we want to grow the church? Why should we have a desire to grow the church? We should want to grow the church in order to equip more saints to follow Christ commissioning, go. That's why we should want to grow the church so that the church can replicate, so the church can send.
And if we don't do this, if we aren't ascending church to the degree that we don't do this in our descending church. And the church's aim is just to be more of a repository of ministry talent than a conduit of it. It is actually conceivable that building such a church could could run counter to building God's kingdom. If we're building it for our selves, it could run counter to God's kingdom.
Pastor and author David Platt in a in an address to Southeastern Seminary, shared ten exhortations for the church from Acts and his preaching, mostly from Acts 11 in Acts 13 his eighth exhortation in is this He says, Let's raise up and send out brothers and sisters from the context of the local church. This is part of what David Platt's getting out of Acts Chapter 11 and Acts Chapter 13.
Let's raise up and send out brothers and sisters from the context of the local church. Imagine, if you would, the local church as the wellspring of mission, the local church as the wellspring of mission. Now, look, denominations have their place, seminaries have their place, mission boards have their place. But imagine the local church, this church, as the wellspring of mission, the place where men and women are saved and where they are taught and where they learn about their gifting and are equipped for the service of ministry that they hear from the spirit in these walls, that they have their calling affirmed by this body or a body like ours.
And then they go and do what has been done for them. Imagine that. That's a scary thought for some of you, isn't it? We love our people. We don't want our people to go. We want our people to stay. We love our church. We joined it to belong to it. We didn't join it to leave it. We joined it because we want to be here, not because we want to be somewhere else.
All that makes sense. I get that. I understand that. But could we at least ask what is the Lord's will? Leave them in trouble with your will, do you? I don't trouble with mine. What is the Lord's will? What does he want for me? What does he want for us? And then my responding to his will. Or am I responding simply to my own?
And it doesn't mean that God's will in our own can't be the same. Don't get don't get me wrong here. It's lovely when that lines up, when the Lord's will is my will. That's, that's the zone. That's where you want to be. And that does happen. But what if they're not aligned? Whose will I follow? Christ gave his life, yielded to the father's will, tells us to do the same thing, to deny ourselves and to be self less.
So what is it that we would do for him? Or what are the limits of things that we wouldn't do for him? What would we be willing to give up for him? Could this church be a sending church? Would you be someone willing to be sent? And they sent a case could be made. And for all we know, some may even have made it that the fellowship in Jerusalem wasn't in a position to send anyone.
We think of the Jerusalem Church as a megachurch, having come through those first few chapters in the Book of Acts and is true thousands upon thousands upon thousands were added to that church, thousands daily. At times it was a phenomenon, for sure. It was growing like crazy, and there were all kinds of people involved in that church. And then came the martyrdom of Stephen.
And do you remember what happened after that? Actually, Chapter eight, verse one. And Saul approved of his execution. Steve is going to be killed for his faith. And Saul approved of it. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they will all scatter throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
So we have in these first few chapters of Acts, a picture of a church that grows exponentially with its members enjoying one another, having all things in common, finding great favor with people everywhere. This wonderful season of prosperity for this church is interrupted, though, by intense persecution and that intense persecutions and just about everybody scrambling in all sorts of directions.
So they've gone from harmony to disarray and in an alarmingly short period of time, could you imagine what it would have been like for you to be there to be that first century believer in this time? You're in Jerusalem? All of us, everybody loves you. Everybody thinks what's happening is great. All of a sudden you wake up one day and there's a target on your back and people don't care for you anymore or people like you.
And if they get a chance, they might kill you. And so this church, it flipped and they they had to leave. Many of them did, and found themselves in an exile of sorts. And they had to have been wondering what is going on? What kind of a choice have I made? Luke tells us that all scattered and we can take that I think is hyperbole.
Certainly some remained, but obviously a great many. The majority even didn't remain except the apostles. They stayed and we know that they continued to minister. So we can expect that the church was continuing to grow, not at that early rate, but still people are being added. But people are being added even as others are saddling up and heading to parts unknown.
So always in church, even keeping pace, probably not. I just read last week an article from Tom Rayner says the average church needs to bring in 32 new people a year if it's just going to stay on par. 32 Well in our eyes a lot of people just to stay even in the church and Jerusalem is not the great big, powerful mega church that it once was.
It wasn't a place of what anyone would call stable functioning. It wasn't all buttoned up, wasn't running like clockwork. It wasn't even in what most people would consider to be a position of strength, which, again, often be the prerequisite the churches might have before being willing to commission its members for service somewhere else. We need to make sure that we're all set before we give anything up.
We need to make sure that we're all good before we give anything to anyone else. We start talking about the church, the way we talk about foreign policy. We get to look out for ourselves first, that that idea is filled for us in the church with the illusion of good intentions. We convince ourselves that we are willing to take radical steps when the time is right, only when the time is right.
We convince ourselves that we will follow Jesus. But first, do you remember those stories when people are saying they want to follow Jesus and Jesus says, Come and follow me, Master, I would. But first let me first let me do this first, let me do that. You know, those people never did follow him. He gave them an opportunity to follow him.
And they said, I want to and I will. But first and they didn't. And he moved on. Opportunity lost. Listen, Beloved. At First Church, Jerusalem had insisted on the prerequisite of stable functioning before releasing aid. No help would have arrived to form and lead the church in Antioch, which went on itself to be a sending church. But that's getting ahead of the story now, my point is this The Jerusalem Fellowship was dealing with its own struggles and uncertainties.
By the way, that's normal church struggles and uncertainties is normal because it's part of the human condition. And the Jerusalem church was dealing with its own struggles and uncertainties at the time and still they sent I think there is a lesson here for us, for the modern church, for the United Baptist Church of Ellsworth, Maine, that even in its infancy, the Jerusalem Assembly understood its obligation to raise up people, to go to advance God's kingdom by serving others, making disciples beyond its immediate flock and location and personal benefit.
The very first church was a sending church. They had what some would call a kingdom mindset. They weren't concerned primarily for themselves, but for the Kingdom of God. They love the kingdom and love the idea of expanding the rule in the reign of God. That's what kingdom means, right? When Jesus says, Seek first my kingdom and all these things that you're worried about will be added on to you.
What he's saying is seek first. My rule and my reign. That's what the Kingdom of God is. This first church in Jerusalem had a kingdom mindset. They were concerned primarily about expanding the rule in the reign of King Jesus, much more than they loved their own comfort and even more than they loved their own lives. And they sent.
Who did? They said they sent Barnabas. I want to say right up front, the Jerusalem church didn't just send anyone. They needed to rummage around in the closet and say, Let's see if we can find a dud that we don't want to deal with anyway. Send them on up to Antioch. They they didn't look and say, Well, we've got the varsity team here and we can't afford any starters off of that crew.
So let's send them the Benchwarmers from the JV team. And that way we're good and we can say we've done something. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. They sent of their best. They sent Barnabas. Who is Barnabas. Well, well we first come to read about Barnabas in Acts chapter four, verse 36, and we see by descent that he is a Jew, a Levite, and yet by birth he comes from outside of Israel.
He comes from an island known as Cyprus. And Luke introduces Barnabas in Acts four early as it is a contrast, an anti Judas figure because Barnabas, if you recall the story at all, sells a field for money to give to others, whereas Judas betrayed Jesus to get money to buy a field. So we find that Barnabas shows up right away as an anti Judas contrast.
The early disciples would have seen this probably clearer or easier than we would have, and Barnabas showed true devotion to Jesus and true devotion to his church, unlike Judas by selling that field. And then he laid the proceeds of it at the Apostles feet. And there's a simple way to say this is that what Luke is trying to help us see early on is that Barnabas is a true disciple of Jesus.
He just he is a true follower of Christ. He would give Jesus anything. Also in chapter four, we see that Barnabas is an encourager, and I think that's got to be an essential ingredient in in ministry, in church. Planting his name means son of encouragement. And so here we know right away Jerusalem didn't send a critic. They sent a friend and they might have I'm going to guess they were properly interested to know if this movement of God in Antioch is truly a movement of God.
Somebody has to go out there and and scope it out. But they did not send a skeptic. They did not send a fault finder in the passage that Mike read when Barnabas got there and saw what was going on, he was glad he wasn't envious. He wasn't he wasn't going to set limits on it. He was just plain glad they sent an encourager.
They sent somebody who sees and highlights the good. That's Barnabas, and we find him again in chapter nine briefly here, figuratively standing in the corner of Saul. And there was a good deal of concern about Saul in those days. Remember it, he was the one who was persecuting the church. He was the one who was attacking the church.
And he had a reputation that he had earned for vigorously hurting the Christians. All of a sudden he's converted and some amazing conversion on the road to Damascus that did not include a horse that's making sure you check in with me. Now. He's a proponent of Christianity who wants to bring him in, Who wants to sidle up to Saul?
Well, it's Barnabas who comes alongside of him and presents him to the apostles and attempts to convince them and gives testimony there to how the Lord had met him and changed him on that road. And now here he is in Chapter 11, clearly a genuine, committed believer and an influential personality in the early church in verse 24, we see that he fulfills the qualifications of a good man.
According to Luke, he's the only man, I think, in the Bible that's ever described as a good man. That's how good Barnabas is. Luke tells us that he's full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, which is high praise because that's the same commendation given to Stephen, the first martyr, as we consider what God's Word has to say about Barnabas.
We see he is definitely the kind of person you want to have around your church. He's the kind of person you want to have in your fellowship. He's the kind of person you wish there were more of. He is devoted, he is generous, he is wise, he is winsome, he is respected. You want to hang on to a guy like Barnabas?
You want to replicate people like Barnabas. He's not the kind of fellow you want to lose if you're thinking is only for the welfare of your particular church. But he's exactly the kind of person you would send to help a fledgling church, a new church, and they sent Barnabas. Barnabas arrived in Antioch, and he preached a timely message of perseverance.
He lived in the real world. He had a grasp on what it meant to be a follower of Jesus and what that what that could cost a person, particularly in a hostile environment. It wouldn't be easy for these new converts in Antioch to stay the course. Starting is one thing, finishing well is another. You agree with that church starting is one thing, finishing well is another.
So the scripture tells us that he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with the steadfast purpose. Every season, Christian understands. As one writer, I read recently put it that a genuine decision for Jesus is itself only the first tiny bud of a life of fruit. The tender seed of faith must find good soil. The tender plant of faith must be nurtured and it must be protected.
And Jesus spoke about that in the parable of the Sower or the parable of the soils, however you remember it. He teaches just how hard it can be for the seed of the Gospel to take root in a person's life and grow to a place where actually he bears fruit. Then one who wants to follow Jesus will face real, true threats to faith and to life.
The enemy will try to pluck that seed away before it can even take hold. Remember the bird that comes down if the if that if the enemy who is Satan can just get that seed and pull it out before it can germinate, he wins. If the enemy is unsuccessful and faith begins to grow, it then may be undone by the heat of persecution, Jesus said, or choked out by the many cares, distractions, pressing issues of life.
Barnabas is sent to Antioch to do his best to see that that what has been planted by the spirit will be nurtured and protected and will continue to grow. And it was a good move. Sending Barnabas to Antioch paid off verse 24 and a great many people, they are were added to the Lord.
The ministry so fruitful in Antioch that Barnabas has to reach out to a friend of his name, Saul. And together they are going to stay in Antioch and they're going to disciple these new believers for over a year. The assembly grew and they matured to the point that they so resembled Jesus. It was in Antioch. They were first called Christians to so resembled Jesus that you can be called Christian Little Christ.
They came to resemble something else as well. They came to resemble the sending sacrificing church that sent them Barnabas picking up in verse 27 of Acts 11. Now, in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them named Agaba stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world.
This took place in the days of Claudius, so the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so sending sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. So see what has happened here in in a relatively short period of time under faithful teaching, the outpost at Antioch has come to take on the same character as as the church that first came to its aid, the church from Jerusalem.
That's what's happened here in a short period of time. The guess of the spirit are operational in their midst. The church is led by the Spirit of God. The people recognize their inherent connection to believers everywhere, not just in their own little pocket, not just in their own little corner of the world, but for believers everywhere. And they are compassion, knit and caring towards the plight of their fellow brothers and sisters.
And they are willing to act on faith. They responded with giving not to a famine, but to a famine that was prophesied. Did you catch that when you read it through or when you heard it? Not to a famine that is underway, but a famine that is coming. They are living by faith and they are generous with their resources and so they share what they have.
Very often when we hear the phrase what goes around comes around, we take it to mean something negative, don't we? And the principle is a biblical one. We reap what we so we do. But it works two ways as evil inherits evil. So charity begets charity. And in a turnaround in this text, then only God could orchestrate the church that was the recipient of Christian kindness becomes the sender of the same and the original sender of that kindness in its time of need receives it back.
Isn't God amazing? Isn't it amazing? Brothers and sisters let us never to be afraid to send, to sacrifice or to give our best to fulfill the purpose of God. That is exactly what God in Christ has done for us. And He deserves no less.