Christ’s Vision for His Church

In recent, the last few months, as we've transitioned in the Church, I've had a lot of questions that put to me, and had to answer a lot of questions, many, multiple times. There's one question that came from someone that was intriguing and, I think, worthy of a sermon, and quite frankly, more even beyond it. Just one sermon. But it was a question that essentially came down to, and I'm paraphrasing it, the individual who's trying to figure out what's the difference between what... ...between you, Mr. McNeely, and others who want a different Church or a different type of governance or this or that, or have issues or philosophical issues or differences. And he says, what's the difference? And when that was put to me, I thought for a second, I said, well, you know, you could talk all day and still not give an answer. I said, what we've tried to do in the congregations in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis in 16 years is a pretty good example of something that, in terms of how I and others have envisioned God's Church to operate with a transparency, with an openness in many ways. And while not perfect, it was my answer. And I've been thinking about it since then. And when you come down to a vision of the Church, what should the Church be? What should the Church be? You can write all kinds of ideas into bylaws or a constitution and create certain governing structures. And you can have a good one and you can have a bad one. We've had different kinds. We've transitioned and united from a very hierarchical one-man type of rule, which basically we all grew up under, to one with a council of elders in at least an attempt to go to a more collegial, open approach toward the Church. But they're different. Both you could cite biblical precedents for and in principles. And yet you can still find issues and difficulties. And what I've come to conclude, and what we all should, I think, understand is that a vision for the Church, or how the Church should be, should grow out of a solid scriptural foundation. Not just one man's idea, or any group of men's ideas, or any denomination's ideas. Look at the Protestant evangelical world. You've got all kinds of governing structures from the very strict hierarchical approach of the Roman Catholic Church, to just wide open churches of the Protestant type, from congregational to Presbyterian style to cowboy style. My uncle goes to a Baptist church in southeast Missouri, and they call it the cowboy church. And I didn't want to go too far with him to find out exactly what he meant by that. I can only imagine what the cowboy church might be like. But as he was explaining a few things to me, since it's not your father's Baptist church, and more less traditional, more open than perhaps others might be. So you've got all kinds, is my point.

Scripture should give us our basis, and that is where it begins and where it ends.

I'd like to take us through a study this morning, more of a study than perhaps a sermon approach, to lay a foundation for some further discussion on this subject.

But the ideal that has been in my mind from the beginning of the United Church of God has been along the line of a particular church that we can see in the book of Acts.

And I'd like for you to turn to the book of Acts. As we know, the story of Acts is that of the church.

After Christ's death and resurrection and his final ascension, and the church that began on Pentecost in chapter 2, and it is the Acts of the apostles. It is the story of the church, such as Luke recorded it, and all these chapters for a brief period of time, several decades at least, giving us the idea of how the church developed and grew.

And we have the most complete record of the early years of the church of God from the book of Acts. And it's a fascinating study.

It is one that we should go back to time and time again. It should be read every year because it can energize you, it can inspire you, it can educate and enlighten us.

But there is a story of one church within the book of Acts, one congregation, I should say, that has always struck me as a church that you would serve well to emulate.

And in doing so, help us to understand a vision of the church. Whose vision of the church is most important? I'll leave that question for us to consider a little bit later.

Whose vision of the church is most important? In Acts 11, we begin to read about the church, the congregation of the church of God, in the city of Antioch.

Antioch was one of the major cities of the Roman world. It was on the coast of what is now southern Turkey or northern Syria. It was a major city. Some say it was probably the third largest city in the Roman Empire. It was a port city. It was a major gateway to the east. And if you were coming from the east to the west, it would have been a major port from which you would have gone, and continuing on to Greece and then to Rome. And it was there that we begin to read in chapter 11 of a church springing up in the early days of the church. Sometimes perhaps in the late 30s. The date is not important for us to consider at this particular time. But in verse 19 of Acts 11, we begin to read about it.

And it tells us here in verse 19 that, Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen. Remember Stephen? A few chapters back in the story of Acts. The deacon who overnight became a martyr. Among the original group of people ordained as a deacon in the church was Stephen. And Stephen goes out and he gives this very powerful sermon. And it gets in stoned. And it is there that in that story we first read of the apostle Paul.

Saul, actually, then an apostle. And he's holding the cloak of those who are throwing rocks at Stephen at his death. Who kneels at the very end, has a vision of the throne of God, and dies a martyr. That was a major event, you have to understand, in a small early church. One of their own, a leading member, being killed because he ran afoul of the religious authorities.

And it triggered a persecution of the church. The followers of Jesus Christ. What we would call the church of God. And there was a scattering. We look back and you read the story and you realize that that too was part of God's design. It had to have been because it basically uprooted the church out of Jerusalem and began to spread disciples and mixed up the pot a bit. Now God has interesting ways by which he works. Again, remember what he says in Isaiah, that my ways are not your ways.

My thoughts are not your thoughts. And how God operates and God works in his church, in our lives, with us, is not always according to the way we would think. Or we would do it. And in this case, the church was, they were kind of, they were all happy. They had great potlucks. And they were all just deliriously socializing there in Jerusalem. But they weren't taking the commission from Christ all that seriously and they hadn't gone to the world yet.

They were kind of just enjoying themselves. And it was largely a Jewish church. Okay? Well, that's not what God had in mind. That wasn't God's vision for the church. Just to be a Jerusalem-based only congregation of Jews who had now accepted Christ, removed themselves from Judaism, and worshipped Christ as the risen Lord.

He had something different in mind. And he began to work it by even allowing one of their own to die. That's another story to contemplate. And so there was a persecution and people were scattered. Well, as those people scattered, we read, they traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, the island of Cyprus, and Antioch, which would have been to the north of Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem. Preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.

Again, the church began in the synagogue. They would go and they had a common bond with the history of being Jews, being connected to the tribe of Judah and the history of Israel. The Sabbath, the Holy Days, all of that was a part of the connecting tissue at this time that allowed them to begin there. And it would have been easy just to stay there. And even in this time of scattering, there was the temptation just to stay among the Jews.

But again, God had something else in mind. In verse 20, some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus. Now, understand, the Hellenists is a name and a term for a Greek, which means a non-Jew, a Gentile. All right? And so here we begin to see again something beginning to develop. Keep in mind that it is in chapter 10, where we find Peter having gone to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, and having the vision that he did, and that knowledge, at least to him at that point of revelation, that the Gospel was to go to beyond the Jewish world, to the Gentiles, beyond the Israelite realm.

And so now we find what was taking place here. And they spoke to the Greeks. They found some who were interested. Now, you could, some of the commentaries speculate, well, maybe they were God-fears who had been associating with the synagogue. Maybe they were. Luke doesn't tell us all that, so it's speculation. It may have been that it was, it could just as well have been some Greeks who they just found in the marketplace, or in some other setting, and they began to talk to them about what had happened in Jerusalem with the death of Jesus Christ, His resurrection, and the understanding that this was the Messiah, this was the Son of God, this was the fulfillment of the Scriptures, this was the Son of God risen, He was to be worshipped, and He was going to return, and He was going to bring a kingdom that was going to transplant and replace all the kingdoms of the earth.

In other words, the gospel of the kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ.

So this would have been the message that they began to share with the people. And so in verse 21, they have some success. It says, The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. God began to bless their efforts, people began to respond to the message, they wanted to know more, to understand more, and pretty soon you had more than just a scattering of church members from these remote areas, now you had a viable congregation, a family here, a person, one single individual over here.

And then it began to grow from there, and you almost begin to see a multiplication of how a church develops and grows. And there was enough there that all of a sudden news of this eventually filtered back to Jerusalem. The news of these things in verse 22 came to the heirs of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. Jerusalem was at this point within the story here, you wouldn't hesitate to call it the headquarters church, or the home office church, or it was the center of the church, it was just by natural gravitational impact.

That's where it all began. This was where the larger concentration of people were. This is where the apostles were at least based, and it was, if you will, want to look at it in the sense of it was the, I hate to even use the word, mother of church. That's not a good term to use either, but that's where it all began. And so things were being administered from Jerusalem.

And the news that came out, and they decided to send Barnabas. Now, Barnabas has already been introduced to us because we find him earlier in the story of Acts, having been the one to kind of take the apostle Paul under his wing, and basically see the value and the worth of this former persecutor of the church, and that he had changed, and he'd kind of become his mentor and his champion or sponsor among the group.

Barnabas is a very interesting individual to study, his relationship with Paul, but the type of person that he was, a very named means encourager. But Barnabas had the type of personality that was ideal for this type of mission, to go from Jerusalem down to Antioch to check out what's going on. Kind of, you know, he's delegated to go find out what's going on down there. It's unorthodox. It's not according to the policy manual for those that love policies. I have notebooks that thick of policies. Okay? Policies are good. You need policies.

But sometimes God doesn't work by policy. In this case, it was, he was against policy. He was going outside what the humans thought should be done. And they, somebody, maybe God's spirit through individuals, they had the wisdom say, let's send Barnabas.

He's the one to go down and look into this. Barnabas was an individual that probably could think outside the box, or discern where God was working. If he could discern something good in Paul, where others would have wanted to have just banned him and say, you know, he's of no use to us, Barnabas saw good and they sent him. So he went to Antioch in verse 23. It says, when he came and had seen the grace of God, in other words, he'd seen God's hand at work. He had seen that this was of God. God's spirit, God's grace, God's involvement was here.

He was glad. He walked into their midst. He sized it up after a few days, a Sabbath or two, talking with people, listening to some of the Hellenists, some of the Greeks who had become part of the fellowship, seeing that indeed these people were beginning, their minds were being opened. I mean, this is what you have to understand. He saw when it says he saw the grace of God and was glad.

He began to see minds accepting the truth. And to accept the truth of a man who had been crucified, ignominiously, according to the Roman method of execution, and now was raised, these people, these Hellenists, were not first-hand witnesses of that. They were taking that for by faith. Maybe some of these were witnesses. But they were taking that story and they were believing it. That required then, as it does now, and even more so then because of the, again, just the immediacy of the times, that required a miracle of God.

And this is what Barnabas saw. And so it says he encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord. He conducted meetings. He would have spoken in their Sabbath services. He would have encouraged those that were the original ones from Cyprus and Cyrene that had got it all going to continue.

And to do what you're doing, it's working. It says in verse 24 that, For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. And so the church began to grow. Again, the multiplication effort of contacts among people is interesting to always understand in terms of church growth.

At some point, you have to have an individual or a point of contact of the message reaching out to people. Through a magazine, through, you know, use our own terms today, radio, television, internet, some type of a piece of introduction into the system of teaching that is the gospel that begins to work with people. Someone is a first or takes the step in a city, within a family, among a group of people. And this happens. You get a few people. In this case, you have some people who began to engage one-on-one and no doubt verbally preach the gospel.

And told what had happened. They told the story. And they did it in such a way that they grabbed their interest. They believed it. God's Spirit was working among some. They probably had more misses than they had hits. But people came. And then, as you begin to get a few people, those few people, new ones, they tell others. Or they have someone in their family they bring with them.

And this is how the church began to grow and how many people were added to the Lord. Our own history shows that. It's how you can kind of extrapolate this back 2,000 years to understand how the church in Antioch grew because of what we can see in our own case. Look, how many of you are in the church because of someone else? Okay. Your mate, a family member, a parent. You know, I raised my hand on that one. It was my mother. She was the only one in our town for the longest time. She thought it was her and Mr. Armstrong between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean.

That's what she thought. She was the only one because none of her friends were getting it. None of her friends in the Methodist Church understood. Her brothers didn't get it. And I used to sit and listen to my mom try to talk to my uncles on Sunday afternoon. And the argument that we go back and forth about religion, they weren't getting it. She thought she was the only one until she found out that there were others. But it's the one person and then through a family, through other contacts, people find out. They see an example. They hear about it. What do you do? Why are you off? Why aren't you coming to work on Saturdays? Where are you going every fall? What's this all about? Word them out. And over a period of several years, then, the Church grew. If we count up all the family connections, and you understand how the Church has grown in our own time, this is what was taking place then. But it had to begin with somebody. You have to have a preaching of the Gospel. You have to have that word going out. So anyway, Barnabas saw here was a work being done, the work of God. People were being added. And there was going to need to be some help. So what does he do? He departs for Tarsus in verse 25 to seek Saul, who was Paul. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year, they assembled with the Church and taught a great many people. Okay? So Barnabas goes off and says, I know who can be a help here. And this has been a few years since Saul's road to Damascus conversion. He finds him, in Tarsus, probably back to his old trade of mending tents, and he says, okay, time to come back into the full career, and let's go back to Antioch. It brings into Antioch, and for a year, then they begin to work with the Church, teaching and organizing. You could just imagine what would have been going on, maybe some small Bible studies, outline studies and preaching around the environs of Antioch, smaller communities. And the Church begins to grow and to develop in Antioch.

And we're told then the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. And then in verse 27, let's go on, we'll just get the overview of the story here. In these days, prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch. So there were people who had this gift of discerning and discernment and prophecy in a way, came to Antioch. One of them was named Agabus, who stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. And the commentaries pinpoint this about 45-46 AD, and they can pinpoint this with accuracy because of the reference Luke gives of it happening during this time. And they went from other historical accounts when this famine took place and throughout all of the world. And maybe it began in Egypt, the fact there's one commentary that says that Egypt was the grain bin, the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, the Roman world. That's why Egypt was so important in the days of Cleopatra and why they annexed it. The Nile flooded, and it was a very fertile area, and they provided the grain for the rest of the world, at least the Mediterranean world. And so there was a bad harvest about 45 AD, and this is when this is being referenced here. And so it took place. It was predicted. And in verse 29, they find that the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.

This they also did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. So they would have taken some time to have gathered up an offering of relief, and it would have been food, no doubt. For some reason they were able to garner some and send this to the members dwelling in Judea. So this kind of brings it to a close, in one part here in the story, of what is taking place in Antioch.

Now, let's skip down to verse 25 of chapter 12. Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they fulfilled their ministry. They took with them John, whose surname was Mark. Now, in the church that was at Antioch, verse 1 of chapter 13, there were certain prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manion, who had been brought up with Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now, separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

And they were sent out, it says in verse 4, by the Holy Spirit, and they were sent to Seleucia. I'm not going to go into how you understand this became known by God's Spirit. That would be another discussion for us. I don't want to focus on that today. But you have here the account of how they put together this first missionary or evangelistic trip taken by Paul and Barnabas, and the first of the travels, great travels of Paul, here in the story of Acts. Now, we're going to skip over to chapter 14, the intervening verses talk about this trip, and down in verse 24, chapter 14.

After they had passed through Pisidia, this is Paul and Barnabas, they came to Pamphylia. Actually, it's not Paul and Barnabas, it's Paul and Silas. They came to Pamphylia, and when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Italia, and from there they sailed to Antioch. So we just want to get back to verse 26 to complete the loop. They started in Antioch back in chapter 13, 3 and 4, where they were sent away.

They make their loop through what is Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, and they come back to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed. When they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.

So they stayed there a long time with the disciples. This brings us then to the conclusion of this first trip, and they came back to Antioch. And it gives us then a pretty good picture of this church in Antioch. This is the point of our discussion here this morning. What can we gain from this? Let's go back. Let's list five characteristics of this church in Antioch that we can glean from what we've just read. Again, keep in mind, we're not getting into the talk about the Holy Spirit and the intricacies of all of that, or Paul's evangelistic efforts or whatever.

We're just wanting to look at this church in Antioch. And again, just get a vision of a church that works, and a vision of a church or a congregation within the body of Christ to help us understand a very interesting church. In one sense, we know quite a bit about this group here in Antioch. Antioch is not mentioned as one of the seven churches of Revelation in chapters 2 and 3. It doesn't get a mention there. It did become a very prominent church then and continued on into that early part of church experience. But with what Luke is recording here, and some of the commentators speculate that Luke was from this city, from Antioch.

This was his home church, too. It's why we get such an intimate picture of it. That may be true. But there are five characteristics of this church we can look at.

Number one, let's notice, it was a prayerful church. Prayer was at the center in the heart of this church. In chapter 13, when they set aside Barnabas and Saul, it was done with prayer and with fasting and laying on of hands when a decision was made to separate these individuals for the work of God, to take the message to a larger audience.

It would have required staffing, funding, support for them to have done this. They would have had to have had a financial base from which to operate, and for their travels, food, and everything else for the period of time that they were gone. And the church here provided that.

But they were determined from a group of men, because verse 1 of chapter 13 gives us a list of a number of people beyond Barnabas and Saul. These individuals who are named here are obviously, they were prophets and teachers. They're labeled. It was a church with a lot of leadership. People had emerged in this environment in Antioch, and were capable people. So much so that you have a short list of people considered for this. God had one thing in mind that, you know, He had in mind who He was going to designate, and He revealed to them through their discussion.

It says that the Holy Spirit said how they came to know the will of God on this. It doesn't say that they heard a voice, or somebody necessarily had a vision. It may have been that as they discussed it, and others discussed, and they whittled down this short list to two, two names emerged as the ones that were logical to go. And over a period of several days or several weeks, as they prayed and as they fasted, it became obvious that it was Saul and Barnabas who were to be the ones to go and do this. But they came about this decision through prayer and through fasting, which are tools of Christian growth, Christian development, that the Bible speaks of from front to back, with many different examples and much that we glean in teaching about prayer and fasting throughout the Bible as a means of knowing the will of God.

Keep in mind that in this particular case, they didn't know who to sin. They hadn't predetermined it. We had a little dust-up about fasting in recent months because of, as part of the issues that have led to the crisis that we went through. Some felt that because we were changing our doctrine about fasting and the paper that was written and distributed and that we were watering, and because of all of this, decisions were made because of fasting. And this is one example, I think, that helps us to at least understand that the people here, the leadership in Antioch, they hadn't predetermined any decision about this.

The only thing they had determined was that there needed to be an expansion of evangelism, of preaching the Gospel. Who was not determined? Now, they had a short list, and as they prayed and fasted, they came to know what was the will of God. That's what you have to understand. The Holy Spirit is not a person. The Holy Spirit is the power of God. And it's telling us here that they did this to come to know the will of God.

That's why you fast. You don't fast to get God to back up and to agree to a predetermined decision that you've already made. As I repeatedly explain to people, if you want a Mercedes-Benz, you just have your heart set on a Mercedes-Benz.

Or let's really get fancy. A red Corvette, when you came zooming by me today on the way up the interstate. You want this red Corvette, $45,000. You want it so bad, you've got to have it. But you can't really afford it. Oh, the salesman tells you, well, you can... sure you can. And you've test-driven it off the lot.

And they... I just... Oh, you know, I've got to have that car. You've got this image of you setting in this Corvette with your sunglasses on, top down, going through the cornfields of Indiana.

And, Bob, I'm not tromping on your feet. You had an older Corvette. You could afford your Corvette.

And I've ridden through the cornfields of Indiana... or Ohio, in Bob's Corvette. The one he used to have. But the salesman talks you into the fact that you can have it, and you've got to have it. But you just don't know. But you go ahead and you buy it, and you drive it off the lot, and you park it in your driveway, and you've made a down payment on it. But then you think, oh, maybe I better see what God's will is. I'm going to fast about this. And so you pray and fast. 24 hours. Maybe even 48.

God, is it your will that I keep this car that I've got out here in the driveway, and I've already signed a note for it? And you fast, and then you look out the window, and it's still there. It must be God's will. It must be God's will. That's the logic people apply to a lot of things about fasting, I've noticed, over the last few years.

You make a decision about a piece of land in Texas, put money down on it, and then you want to know what God's will is. It's just like buying a Corvette. You've got to have it. Fasting leads you to know the will of God. It leads you to be closer to God. It leads you to be humble.

You never fast to bend God to your will. You never fast to bend God to your predetermined decision that you've already made. That it makes a mockery of fasting. These people here didn't know who they were going to send, but it came to a point where they finally saw the will of God, and they sent out the right men. They were praying, fasting church. The church of the Bible, the church of a proper vision, is one that prays and fasts in a biblical way to know the will of God, to be close to God, to not be self-willed, and knows what it's all about in that way.

This church in Antioch was like that. The second characteristic of this church is they were a giving church. We read where they came across the need of the church in Jerusalem in chapter 11, verse 27 through 30. And they recognized that they were brothers, and they were willing to sacrifice some of what they had to provide a means to send food and help to that church. They were also a giving church, in the sense that they wanted to give the message of the gospel by even sending out a group of men to preach the gospel. That's another point. But they had a very giving attitude. Third characteristic of this church. This church in Antioch did not seem to have any class distinction.

Remember, it was a church that started to grow when Gentiles became a part of it. And some of the Jews began to preach to the Gentiles. And the Hellenists and those... So you have to understand, and this is a big subject, but the divide in this world, the ancient world between Jew and Gentile was a tremendous gulf. It was racial, it was ethnic, it was religious. And it was a tremendous gulf. The Jews would not sit at the same table with the Gentile. They lived in separate parts of town.

The Jews were intermingled in these cities, but they had their different social clubs, synagogues, and the Gentiles had their life. And for them to mix in a religious church setting and then to sit down even at the same potluck meal was a remarkable event. And this church seemed to break those barriers down. The reason you know this is because when you go back to Chapter 14 and 15, at the beginning of Chapter 15, after Paul comes back from this trip, they realize that there have been some men come down from Judea that taught the brethren, unless they're circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you can't be saved.

Verse 1 of Chapter 15. And this created the controversy that led to the Acts 15 conference where they decided this issue, this major issue. Now, we read about this in the book of Galatians Chapter 2, where Paul says he even withstood the apostle Peter to the face because Peter went to Antioch. And because of...it's interesting, we don't have time to get into all the reading of it here, but you get the picture.

I'll try to summarize it. The people were eating together at the same table. And Peter started to do it, but then there were some that didn't like it. And Peter gave in to the crowd that thought there ought to be a separation between Jews and Gentiles, and it created this division.

Paul challenged him on it. And all of this led...all of this is what led to the great council in Acts 15, where they basically said, no, a Gentile does not have to be circumcised to become a part of the faith. And that issue was settled. But the point is, if you understand that the issue began and grew out of the nature and the characteristic of the fellowship of the brethren at Antioch, that's where the issue rose that had to be settled, which tells you that they had it down until certain Jews came in and stirred the pot and dredged up some of those issues.

But they had made certain giant strides in breaking down those distinctions. And so they didn't have deep factions that divided the church, it seems. This is why they could do what they did. Be prayerful. Send out and support evangelistic efforts. The Jews and Gentiles met in Antioch on equal terms. They were at the same table and they had a respect for one another, which tells you that they got along and that they didn't let things divide them.

And this is to keep in mind a congregation. This is not the entire church. This was, again, just a congregation that worked. A congregation, an effective, viable congregation, cannot be divided by cliques, groups, interests, ages. A most effective congregation in the Church of God is going to work when everyone feels included, when there are no factions or cliques. You get three people together, as you know, you have four cliques sometimes. It's part of human nature.

But to the degree a congregation of people can keep division, just internally, I'm not talking about splits like we've been through. I'm talking about just the way people treat one another. Everybody's invited. Everybody's a part of things. Everybody can sit down at the same table. They feel included.

This is the characteristic of this church in Antioch. And when that began to be disturbed, in this case, it led to even a church council, but it tells you that they had it down. God's people need to work toward being inclusive all the time. There are challenges that sometimes creep in our midst.

But I'll tell you, where people feel included, things can get done. There may be other problems, but things will get done. You don't find a book of the Bible like 1 Corinthians written to Antioch. There's no first Antioch.

And in 1 Corinthians, Paul said, some of you are Peter. Some of you are Paul. Some of you are of Apollos. Some of you are of Christ. He nailed the fact that there was a faction-ridden church in Corinth. That's not what we see in Antioch. They were not divided that way.

A fourth point about them is that they had a passion for evangelism. We've already covered this. They sent out Paul and Barnabas. They had a desire to see others hear the Gospel, which is a characteristic of the Church of God. Because it responds to the mission that Christ gave to preach the Gospel into all the world. To go and do it. Make disciples.

And there is this desire to reach beyond one's borders.

And in the case of Antioch, it was a settled place in these years where God could add growth.

God does not add growth to a congregation, to a church that cannot handle it in many different ways. There has to be a stability. There has to be a loving, nurturing environment. And that was here within Antioch.

A fifth characteristic that we can see from the story is that in Antioch, it says they were first called Christian. They were first called Christians in the city of Antioch back in chapter 11, verse 26. The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

Amongst some of those calling them Christians, that may not have always been the complementary term. But as we look at it, we can see what Luke is saying. There are references before this in Acts where they talk about the way. The church, the way of truth, it's called the way.

We've talked about that over the years and used to talk about that a great deal. The truth is a way of life, which it is. That's how they referred to it. This is the first reference we find to being called Christian. To this day, obviously, the follower of Christ is a Christian then.

But understanding what the word means can give us a little bit of understanding as to how this arose among these people in Antioch. The word Christian here, it means an inherent one who is an inherent to Christ, a follower of Christ. But you adhere like glue to a piece of paper, glue to wood. You adhere to Christ. You stick to Christ.

You try to get close to Christ as you can and emulate His example and adhere it to Jesus Christ. Which means that their talk, their way, their action was all about Christ. He was at the center of it. They were Christlike in their actions, talk, service.

And again, the story we get about them here is indeed that. They were doing what Christ said to do. They were doing what Christ did. They provided for people's needs, their own brother's needs. They spread the word. They weren't ashamed to talk about it. After all, that's how the church got started and how it began to grow among the Gentiles here. It's because a group of the Jews realized, hey, we can talk to others about this, not just our own people.

Which is what Jesus did when He talked to the woman at the well in Samaria. Another statement said He made. It said, go to the world. So they did all of this, and this is why they were called Christian here.

It's interesting, they weren't called Christian first in Jerusalem.

Not to say anything bad about the Christians there, the church there, but it happened in Antioch, according to Luke's account here. In this world, at this time, as the church developed, the church became a new class of people. We talked about Jews, talked about Gentiles. You had the pagan world and you had the Jewish world. They were completely different. The Jews had monotheism, one God.

The Gentiles had multiple gods, a whole different framework of life, a whole different dynamic. Life was cyclical. There were gods for this, goddesses for that. They were immoral in their stories of how they propagated and conducted themselves and fought in the stories of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. It was just a whole mythology. But that was their belief system. We read it today as interesting Greek and Roman literature and mythology. For these people, it was their reality. They actually believed there was an Apollo that rode the sun. They believed there was a Diana, the goddess of the hunt. In Ephesus, they had the great temple to her. They believed those stories. And Christians come along, and they believed, and a dead messiah crucified, risen after the third day, and resurrected, and at the throne of God and coming back to rule the world. That created a whole different group of people. Now, it took the Romans a while to figure it out that the Christians were not Jews. In the first few years of the Church, they thought they were. They couldn't separate the Jews from the Christians. Eventually, they did. The Jews got it real quick. They understood this new sect was a threat, was a problem, was different. That's why they began to persecute them. The average Gentile guy on the street, gal in the shopping mall, they didn't understand that necessarily. They had their own life. The Church, the Christians, were a different class of people that could be distinguished from the pagans and from the Jews to a critical mind. They couldn't hide, in other words. You began to worship Jesus Christ, talk about Him, and speak in His name, you stood out. You couldn't hide in that culture, in that society. And so, these people in Antioch lived their faith, talked their faith, breathed their faith.

And that's why they were called Christians first in Antioch. It's an interesting thing that Luke is telling us here. They were Christ-like in their actions. And they got that moniker first.

This is a vision from the Bible of a church that took things in their own hands, in one sense. These people didn't have to have permission to preach the gospel when they first were scattered. They had permission from God. And they did the work. And God blessed it. And then they knew what to do with it and act responsibly when it was all over with. They didn't go spinning off in a different direction with a different church from what was in Jerusalem.

They had the truth. They lived it. They preached it. And it is a vision of a church that works together. Let me turn to one scripture in Ephesians 4. This one scripture is really the visionary verse that Christ inspired to be written to describe his description, Christ's vision of what his church should be like. And I think we can overlay it across the story of the church of Antioch. In Ephesians 4 and verse 16, after he describes the roles of apostles and pastors and teachers, the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry in verse 12, the unity of the faith in verse 13, verse 14, that they'll be tossed to and fro.

Verse 15, speak the truth in love, grow up into all things unto him who is the head Christ. Verse 16, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. The whole body, the whole church, the whole congregation, the whole body, everyone involved, engaged, leadership emerging, an environment for growth, an environment where people are accepted, an environment where people don't feel excluded, an environment where people love one another, an environment where they're praying, where they're fasting in the right way, to be humbled, to draw close to God, reading the Word along with it, and then living the Word.

The whole body joined, knit together by what every joint supplies, by what everyone gives and provides to that according to the effective working by which every part does its share. It repeats the thought. Every part does its share because they can, because they're encouraged to do it, because the environment allows it, and it causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Verse 16, in one sense, really sums up everything that every other scripture, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 13, any other description from Paul's epistles about the church that we could withdraw from. Verse 16 seems to just compact it into one very, very strong visionary statement here of how it should work. And what's important to understand is this is Christ's vision. This is not a man's vision. This is not a church leadership vision. It's not a council of elders decision. It's not the pastor's vision.

It's not your vision. It's Christ's vision of the church, of how it should be, and how we should be working toward it. If we're not where we find in our evaluation, where we may fall short of that. Now, it's in the evaluation of that that we can go on and discuss this further, and will. This is just a Bible study type discussion here today, because I want to come back to this. But I want you to think about it. Why we talk about this on a last day of April, on a Sabbath morning, so I can fill time and check off another sermon given, put this on my monthly report, did my job, did my duty.

No. No. Because this is at the heart of it all. Somebody asked me a question a few months ago. What's the difference? What's your vision? I don't have a vision. Except out of this. And this is where we should all be aiming ourselves. And so I turn it back to you, and this is something for you to think about, and for us to discuss as a congregation.

How do we live up to this vision? Do we? In many ways we do. There's always room for growth. But this is the vision. This is Christ's vision. This is where He sees His church being, and He is in the midst of His church, we're told, in Revelation 1. And so let's think about that. Let's pray about that. Let's talk about that. And we will do that. Because that, in the end, is what's most important. Christ's vision for His church. So that He can work with it and bring it to this end, add to it by growth and development. If we do that, we will be fulfilling and aiming and filling in this mission.

So I will leave that with you this morning. Now it's this afternoon, which tells me it's time for me to quit. We'll come back to this, and we'll talk more about some of the specifics of how each individual member does its part in this.