Acts 11:19-26 “First Christians”
Two weeks ago we had or Kauai Association youth retreat up in Hanalei. We loaded up the church van with bedding and bananas. The bananas were donated by Ruth Cassel. We then sped once more around the island to the North Shore.
This reminds me of a story of a pastor who was also on his way to a youth retreat but on the mainland. It was a very long trip. But, as he was heading out there in the church van with youth in the back, he got stopped by the police. It seems that he was driving to slow.
The policeman sauntered up to the driver’s window of the church van and asked with harsh rhetorical tone, “Pastor, do you know how fast you were driving?”
The pastor responded that he may have been driving over the speed limit, but that was only because the speed limit was very low on that stretch of highway. After all, who could be expected to drive just thirty-two miles per hour on open country highway?!
The policeman looked at the pastor incredulously. “Sir, the posted speed limit is sixty-five miles per hour. Thirty-two is the highway number sign. You were driving too slow!” The pastor thanked the officer profusely. As the policeman turned to head back to his cruiser, he noticed that the children in the back of the van looked white as sheets and were visibly shaken. “Pastor, is there something wrong with the youth in your van?” he asked.
The pastor responded: “I’m not sure, they have been that way ever since we turned off Highway 206.”
This morning we come to a very exciting point in the Book of Acts and likewise in the history of the early church. As we have read, that because of the persecutions in Jerusalem there is a rapid spreading of the faith outward across the ancient world. We have already had the story of Philip going into Samaria and spreading the faith there. We have had the story of Philip then sharing faith with an Ethiopian Eunuch. We know also that Peter shared faith with Cornelius, a soldier from Italy. However, for the first time we see that the Christians have in great number spread the faith outside of the traditionally Jewish area of the Holy Land. This morning we have read that the church had spread to a town called Antioch. This is a town outside of Palestine, far to the north in fact in what is considered the country of Turkey today.
Indeed it is from this point that we see Christian communities popping up all over the ancient world. The expansion of the faith is profound, and yet we are not one hundred percent sure how this expansion is coming about. This last week I came home to see that in our bedroom the toilet paper from the bathroom roll on the wall had unrolled itself out of the bathroom door, had somehow crossed the bedroom, and was flapping steadily across the bed itself. How did that happen? It had been a windy day and somehow the wind was able to manipulate the paper across the room. When I saw that, I had to think to myself “Wow, I wonder how I can use that in a sermon?!” We do not know sometimes how faith spreads. . .it is but a secret of the Spirit!
We have read this morning that because new believers are already in Antioch that the apostle Barnabas goes there and seeks out Paul’s help in discipling the new converts there. Note that it is not the other way around. It is not that Paul and Barnabas went to Antioch to evangelize! The believers were already there.
When I consider how the faith spread in those days. I think of this phenomenon that happens in nature that when it rains in the desert ponds of water appear for a short time and in explicably those ponds of water will have fish in them. It didn’t rain fish did it? This is the miracle of God’s creation. And, it is almost as if Christianity spreads this way, too. All of the sudden, out of nowhere these Christians appear. This reminds me then how Jesus said that we are to be the “fishers of men!” That should read “people” of course. I think it therefore quite right that one of the symbols of Christianity be the fish!
Back to today’s scripture: These new believers appear in Antioch and Barnabas first goes there to see what is going on. He decides he needs help and goes to fetch Paul that they may bring in the catch together for the Lord. Those of you who have good study Bibles open right now will surely read the footnote that states that Barnabas’s name means what? “Son of encouragement.” We have already seen how it is that Barnabas had encouraged the believers in Jerusalem to accept Paul as a disciple. Barnabas should be recognized as one of those rare souls who always believes the best about other people and is ready to back up his belief with action and word. He is called by the Holy Spirit to go to Antioch to encourage the believers there.
Yes, once we become believers, that is not the end. We still need to feel that daily encouragement from other believers. James writes in the Book of Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” I think this language is great that we should in fact be “provoking one another to love.” We are to be, therefore, provocative in encouragement!
Before I run out of sermon time this morning, I have to share what is perhaps the most exciting part about our Scripture for this morning: It was in Antioch that the new believers there were for the first time called “Christians.” What that means is that up until that moment, those who believed were really Jews who were being converted and yet still considered themselves Jews. For the first time in Antioch, the believers were saying “We are not Jews but rather this new identity which is Christian.” “We identify ourselves with the very name of Christ Jesus!” The reason for this is quite simply that the town of Antioch was a Roman city with a predominantly Greek-speaking population.
Barnabas and Paul spent a year there. This was in fact Paul’s first ministry. This is where he learned all those things that he carried with him as an apostle to all of the other churches of that day. I believe it is in Antioch where Paul first realizes that Christ Jesus is really for all people and that this becomes the backbone of his theology. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, for instance, he writes in chapter 10:12-13, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: the same Lord is the Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For all who call on him shall be saved.”
As miraculous as this is that for the first time since Christ’s resurrection there is a ministry happening in a non-Jewish area of the ancient world, we cannot forget that this is in fact not the first time that a Greek has heard the name of Jesus or has been saved. Last year about this time, we heard from the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 5, about this man in the town of Gerasa who was demonized with a legion of demons. Jesus goes right to that place where he is after crossing the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. He tells the demons to leave the man. They enter into a herd of swine and drive themselves into the sea, thus destroying themselves.
Now, we have to realize that this man in Gerasa was a Greek-speaking man. Jesus went specifically to this Greek man in Gerasa. And at the end of that particular scripture in Mark we read (5:19-20) Jesus telling this man to “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” The Greek man now healed goes and proclaims in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. The Bible tells us that everyone was amazed.
What is though truly amazing is that twelve disciples are not sent out until the next chapter in the Gospel. That means verily that the Greek man who Jesus healed in Gerasa who then went back to those ten Greek cities known as the Decapolis area of Galilee was in fact, in historical fact, the first evangelist sent out by Jesus to spread the good news of salvation!
When we look at what is happening in Antioch with the Spirit of God working among the Greeks there, we see that this is the model of ministry that Christ himself has left us with. Jesus went first to the Greeks! The first evangelist was a non-Jew who went to a Greek area.
Well, what does that mean for us today? We get a lot of visitors here in Waimea, but honestly I have yet to meet one Greek! I love the Greek people and would love to meet one, but this hasn’t happened yet! I hope one day it will. This story of the church in Antioch is not about Greeks as much as about crossing cultural and ethnic boundaries with the message of hope of salvation. The story from Antioch is really that for the first time the people there did not identify so much as being Greek Antiochans as much as being for the first time “Christians.”
Recall in the Bible that every time somebody gets a name change, it means that God has touched their lives. Abram became Abraham. Sarai, Sarah. Simon, Peter. Saul, Paul. Antiochans, Christians. This is a sign that the Holy Spirit and Jesus has come to them. They are now more than anything else that can be said about them simply followers of Christ.
Be encouraged by the name that you carry. You are Christian! You follow Christ. The Holy Spirit has touched your lives. Amen.