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5 Marks of a Missional Church
46 Plays3 months ago
In this sermon, Ridley Barron preached about the mission and growth of the early church in Antioch and the power of living a missional life. Drawing from Acts 11, he emphasized the necessity of aligning with the Holy Spirit, sending out the best missionaries, and adapting the gospel message to different cultures. With heartfelt stories from his missionary experiences, Barron challenged the congregation to support mission work financially, embrace diversity, and invest in discipleship for new believers. He also introduced practical steps, like the "Discover You" assessment, to help individuals identify their unique gifts for service. Urging the church to be interruptible and fully committed to sharing the gospel, Barron highlighted the importance of dynamic discipleship and genuine belief in the sovereignty and authority of God.
Timestamps:
00:00 Church's responsibility: Make disciples with love.
04:02 Sermon discussing the power of missional church.
08:22 Interpreting scripture in staff meetings for guidance.
13:14 Church must offer value before inviting congregation.
14:01 Paul intentionally engages diverse cultural groups for gospel.
17:26 Finding mission field in coaching baseball.
23:44 Addressing lack of education in faith discipleship.
25:33 Ensure one true gospel is taught, engage.
29:56 Antioch prioritized helping others, not hoarding supplies.
32:47 Seeking partnerships for global gospel outreach efforts.
35:18 Tithing properly shows God's priority in money.
40:13 Embracing the Holy Spirit, working together as Southern Baptists.
41:02 Church supports members to be missionaries worldwide.
45:26 Be willing to interrupt and share love.
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Transcript
Introduction and Upcoming Events
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Grove Hill. If I haven't had a chance to say hello to you, I'd love the honor of doing that later on. If you want to get your Bibles, turn to Acts chapter 11. We're going to be wrapping up Acts chapter 11 this morning as we continue to work our way through this incredible book. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Before we do that, while you're turning, I want to talk to you in just a couple of things. If if you notice, as you came onto the campus today already, we are beginning to make some changes in anticipation of the shift for next week. um You may have seen arrows that were drawn onto the the road, lines, chains, things of that nature. ah Come tonight, you'll get more details. We'll be sending out more details next week about those kinds of changes anticipating
00:00:44
Speaker
are preparing ourselves for the growth that continues to come our way we are very very blessed and so we want to be good stewards and continue to milk every inch of this building we can and every inch of our parking lot and if you've got some idea about how to build a two-story parking garage out here let us know we'll be happy to hear those words. um But yeah, just be aware of that, and like I said tonight, if you come at 5.30, you'll get some great ice cream, great fellowship, and further instructions about things that are going on in our church over the next few months.
Disappointment with Olympics and Church's Role
00:01:11
Speaker
ah Secondly, like most of you, I took the advantage of the opportunity to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics Friday evening.
00:01:20
Speaker
um And just kind of like most of you, um disappointed with the choices that were made by the French government in anticipation of that event and the carrying out of that event. I have watched with interest the responses of a lot of Christian leaders and other Christians across the country. Spent some time talking with my wife and and things of that nature and even spending some time praying and reflecting on it. And and I want to tell you where I've kind of landed with all this. um Why in the world are we shocked when people who don't know Jesus act like they don't know Jesus? I mean, the world doesn't know Jesus. And so they they can't act on things that they don't know. They can't understand the sacredness of that thing for those who are followers of Christ because they are not followers of Christ. ah Instantly when something like this happens, I feel like, unfortunately, the church wants to jump very quickly to say, who's to blame, who's to blame? Let me help you with that. It's our fault.
00:02:19
Speaker
It's our fault. Because as a church of Jesus Christ, if we were living and giving hope to the world like we have been commanded to do, then they would have something better to hold on to. And unfortunately for us, the church, big church, big C, has too long practiced a watered down version of the gospel. We have compromised in order to try to accommodate people. We have been afraid to speak and hold truth up for the world. And I don't for a second say we back off of talking about the truth and talking about the wrongness of what they did, but it's really not productive to talk about the wrongness of what they did without telling them the rightness that waits for them if they would just find Jesus.
Living a Missional Life
00:03:01
Speaker
And so as the church, our responsibility this morning and every morning since the beginning of time has always been this command from God that we are to go into the world and make disciples. You don't make disciples by screaming at them on social media.
00:03:16
Speaker
You won't make disciples by pointing the finger at people who have made choices that they're they're acting out of the only information they know. The good news is that Jesus has given some really clear instructions on this. The same Jesus that was mocked Friday night, several years earlier in his ministry stood on a mountain and he gave one of the most famous, probably the most famous sermon of all time and as part of that sermon he said, pray for those who persecute you. bless those who aren't like you, love your enemies. And if we really would love the world, I think we'd have much more response from the world to what we're offering than the hatred and the vitriol that we are throwing, again, out on social media. Great segue into today's sermon.
00:04:05
Speaker
which actually was planned several months ago, so once again, God amazes me the way he just keeps planning these things out. We're talking today about the power of the missional church. If you've been here any length of time, you've heard us talk about living a sent life, and somewhere along the way, you may have asked the question, okay, you talk about that all the time, but what does that mean? What does it mean to live a sent life? Well, the good news is if you stay awake for the next 30 minutes, we're gonna talk about it, and you're gonna walk out of here with a better understanding of what it means to be missional in your thinking.
00:04:37
Speaker
ah For too long the church in recent years has become an attractional kind of thing. well What I mean by that is that we have kind of built ourselves these nice little holy huddles and we put them inside fancy buildings and we dress them up with sweet events and fancy light shows and smoke and things of that nature and we say come enjoy what we're doing. Come be a part of what we're doing. And once again the world looks at us and goes I don't have a clue what you're doing. It makes no sense to me because if your job is to entertain me, Disney does that better. If your job is to keep me um informed, there's there's a whole social media that does ah a better job than then you do.
Antioch's Historical Significance
00:05:17
Speaker
If you want to keep me ah happy and delightful in a season of life, I can watch a movie at home or watch a concert on pay-per-view. I can do all those things without the church.
00:05:29
Speaker
But what they cannot do without the church is find the real meaning of life. And the problem is that we have buried the real meaning of life under all the fancy stuff that we've put out there and they can't find it. They can't find it. And so rather than an attractional model that says, I will build something, you come to it, I believe that the scripture is telling us that we should live a missional life, which is go live amongst them and show them what this looks like. Go show them what it means to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Go show them what a whole happy happy family looks like when they are all on the same page living for the same Savior. Go show them what it looks like for a brother or sister to take care of somebody else in need out of their own resources. This is what the Church of Jesus Christ should look like. Anybody on the same page with me here? Okay. I couldn't decide if you were asleep or deep in thought.
00:06:24
Speaker
We're going to trust that you're deep in thought. I want to start by reading this passage of Scripture, and I want to talk to you about some things that this church that we're going to be reading about today, what they did to be an effective, missional church. Now, um let me tell you a little bit about the situation, the setting of the story today. We're in Antioch. There are two different Antiochs that are most popular in scripture. One of them is Pisidian Antioch or Antioch of Pisidia. That is a little bit further north and west of the one we're talking about today. It is most popular because later in the book of Acts, it's where Paul and Barnabas go on their first missionary journey. It's one of the places they visit. The Antioch we're referring to today is actually at this point in the story, the third largest city in the Roman Empire with over 500,000 people living there.
00:07:09
Speaker
it's second only to Rome and Alexandria, Egypt. And as you can imagine, being such a large city that sits at the crossroads of three major highways at that day and age, it is a very diverse city. People from all over the Europe, Asia, Africa come to this place and they're part of what's going on there. A large part of the population at this point is even Jews who were dispersed during the persecution. And so um it's a not only diverse in the sense there's a lot of different cultural backgrounds, it's diverse in the fact that they are a very polytheistic culture. As you walk through the cities of Antioch at the time this is written, ah you would be probably embraced by a multitude of temples addressing different gods, a god for this and a god for that, many of them gods of the Greek empire that were brought forward into the Roman empire.
00:08:02
Speaker
So, there's a lot to understand about the culture in which this is going on. um Jerusalem, Jerusalem Church is the church that birthed the movement of Jesus Christ, but it's Antioch that really launched the church of Jesus Christ forward because of their heart for being a missional church.
Modern Church Challenges and Evangelism
00:08:22
Speaker
So follow along with me, we're gonna begin in verse 19 of chapter 11, and we'll see where the spirit takes us this morning. It says, now those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia,
00:08:36
Speaker
Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. um One of the things our staff does on a weekly basis at our staff meeting is we take the scripture for this week's sermon, the week ahead. We read through it again together ah for two purposes. Number one, it gives the staff a chance to kind of wrap their head around where we're going for the week.
00:09:12
Speaker
But it also gives us a chance to talk a little bit about the theme of the message. And this week, as I read this passage to them, I told them, I said, I cannot get tired of reading these phrases in scripture where it says, a large number believed, or the church was multiplied, or the church grew and increased in great number, those kinds of things. Those kinds of passages are all through the scripture. And as I kept thinking about it throughout the week, the thing that struck me is the same spirit that made this move of God work in the book of Acts is in our church today. And I'm afraid that many of us as Christians have taken this defeatist mentality that says, oh, we're a minority in the world, there's not very many of us, the world's against us. We kind of get an Eeyore kind of attitude, you know? Woe is us, nobody likes the donkey.
00:10:06
Speaker
right but oh So we kind of get behind the eight ball and we're going oh ah you know we're we're fighting as a minority. blah bla Are we as great a minority as the church was? It started with 11 men. Do you think that the culture is really that different than it was back then? They were sacrificing their children literally to God's. they were doing incredibly sexually immoral things as part of their worship. So do you really think that it was really that much different back then as it is now? Or is this is this because we as the world had bought into the lie that somehow our God's not as strong as he was 2000 years ago? Because I believe it's the latter.
00:10:47
Speaker
i believe is the church that we believe to a certain extent but it comes with all kinds of connotations of ah but there's exceptions here and exceptions here and maybe over in the West he's not as good as he is in the East and you know those kinds of things and we forget that the same God who blew up the church in the Mid-East and in 0 AD 33 AD whenever the year was he's the same God who could blow up this church and spread it all over this country. And if we've been praying for the state of Tennessee to be a different state this month, if we genuinely have been praying that prayer, then we should believe it's gonna happen. We should believe that our governor's gonna be a stronger believer. We should believe that our legislator is gonna act more on our behalf. We should believe that there's gonna be a new freedom of the spirit to move in our churches.
00:11:34
Speaker
I'm not sure we're there yet.
00:11:38
Speaker
So I want us to keep looking at the scripture. I want us to keep digging into this. But guys, be reminded that the same spirit who who raised Jesus from the dead, the same spirit who spread the church all over the Middle East, the same church who took 11 men and now turns them into over 2 billion believers in Jesus Christ on this planet, he's still working on our behalf. Verse 22, it says, news about them reached the church church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts. For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and large numbers of people were added to the Lord. There it is again.
00:12:18
Speaker
Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and they taught large numbers. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. In those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and predicted by the spirit that there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world. This took place during the reign of Claudius. Each of the disciples, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea. They did this, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul.
00:12:58
Speaker
So like I said, pulling from this story, I wanna talk to you a little bit this morning about five marks of a mission church that we see carried out by this church in Antioch. I believe these are our marching orders. And when I say our, I'm not talking about universal church, that's probably true, but I'm telling you as the shepherd of this congregation, this is who we want to be. This is who we want to be as a congregation, all right? I don't want to keep building things here to say, hey, y'all come and join us because they have no reason to come and join us until we offer them something worth joining. And the only way we can offer them something worth joining is to go out there and show them what that looks like.
00:13:33
Speaker
to take it to them, to be a part of their world, to help them understand in their culture how this fits who they are and where they are challenged in their lives and in their relationships. So the first thing we see that the Church of Antioch did very well was this effective evangelism, okay? Effective evangelism. They were all about sharing the name of Jesus wherever they went. As you notice in the story, it says right off the bat that these Jews who had been dispersed because of the persecution, they were pretty much ministering only to the Jews. They were only talking to other Jewish believers. And then these guys come along from another place and they come and they bring the gospel intentionally to people who were at that point described as Gentiles.
00:14:14
Speaker
Gentiles. This is in effect what peter was i mean excuse me Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 9 22 when he said, I want to be come weak in order to win the weak, I have become all things to all people so that I might by every possible means win some. This was Paul saying, hey, I want to be that kind of person who is engaging the people where they are, embracing where they are in their hurt and in their pain, and meeting them in their place of need. Effectively engaging the culture was the key to their effectiveness. Too many times in the church today, we create what I like to call holy huddles.
00:14:53
Speaker
Right? We get in our little groups because you look like me, you act like me, you vote like me, you eat the same food I do and so we're gonna be over here and we're in our little holy huddle and because we have our eyes focused inward, we miss on what's going on in the world. We miss the pain that's all around us. We miss the loneliness of the people we work with. We miss the dissatisfaction that people are expressing in their lives and it's time that we got our eyes off of ourselves and off of our little groups and turned it towards the world because that's where Jesus' heart is. Secondly, He talked about i talked about gospel clarity here in effective angels. What does that mean very simply? It is putting the gospel in terms where people can understand it where they are. You remember these are Jews who were teaching Gentiles. And because they were very aware and were letting the Holy Spirit guide their conversations, they knew that going into a bunch of Gentiles and talking about the Messiah who was the hope of Israel would have absolutely no meaning in them.
00:15:51
Speaker
Number one, we're not Israelites, we're not Jews, we don't know what it means to have a Messiah. So they borrowed a word from their own culture to use to explain it to them. It is the Greek word kyrios. Kyrios means Lord. It was a word that they literally were using up and down the main street of Antioch because every temple you went to, there was a Lord. And that conversation was being had. So these guys were able to use that word and say, hey, you're looking for a Lord, we know the Lord. You're looking for a God who can help you in your situation. We know the one true God. Let us introduce you to him. And oh, by the way, he's not a statue that stands on ah on a pedestal over here. He's not something you have to um have to kind of imagine in your head. He came and lived as flesh and blood among us and died for us. No other God has ever done that.
00:16:42
Speaker
And because of that, they were able to speak with gospel clarity so that the people of that culture could understand it. If you're gonna reach the people around you that God is sending you to, you have to know the culture, the interest, the knowledge with which you are addressing people.
Celebrity Christianity vs. True Service
00:16:58
Speaker
Let me give you an example. I'm not an outdoorsman, okay? I love the outdoors. Don't confuse me. I love to go for a good hike. I love every now and then to fish. I've got one good guy in this church named Pat Robertson's that's been trying for four years to make me become a deer hunter. And I said to him, Pat, I love you, but I'm 57 years old. If I haven't shot a deer by now, I'm not gonna start. So, what'd you say?
00:17:26
Speaker
I'm missing out, okay. So I have somebody else lobbying for me to be a deer hunter. So here's here's the thing, understanding who you are, understanding your unique giftings and capabilities, God has given every single follower of Christ your own mission field. You just gotta figure out where it is. You wanna know where mine is? It's at the ball field. For the last two years I've coached Little League Baseball right over here and had an opportunity to minister to families and little boys and introduce them to my faith. This spring I will be helping to coach the junior high baseball team here at Forrest Junior High School because I'll have the opportunity to engage those boys and introduce them to the Jesus that I believe in. I can't tell you how to skin a deer, I can tell you how to fill the infield ball.
00:18:15
Speaker
Every single one of us have those talents and those gifts. Now, we're doing something new here. I'm going to throw it out there for you, this little promo. It's called Discover You. You've heard about Discover Us, which is our new member class. Discover You is now available for you to use. It is a place where you can go take three assessments online for free. They take about 10 minutes, and through those assessments, you learn your talents, your skills, and your giftings and your passions. And then when you get that back, you get that feedback, you go, oh, there's no way I should be working in the children's ministry. i am That is not my field.
00:18:52
Speaker
But man, I have a real proclivity for doing things technical. I should be back there in the AV booth. I should be back there helping those guys out. Or I don't need to be with those children. It's a little bit early for me to be testing my patients. So I need to go test my patients with the youth and being there and work with them. Or I need to be leading adult Bible studies. This is why we're doing these Men and Women's Leadership Academies. Again, trying to help you find your gifting because it is not a question of if, It's a question of where you should be serving the kingdom. I also talk about personal anonymity. Personal anonymity. We don't have the ability, oops sorry I went too far. We do not have the ability to
00:19:36
Speaker
tell you the names of any of these guys in the story. It just says some guys came from a particular place, they came in, they started started sharing the gospel with the Gentiles. This is really, really important for us to understand because we live in an age where celebrity Christianity has been overused and overworked. We we have somehow bought into the idea that nobody Christians don't matter. And when I mean nobody Christians, I mean guys like you and I. People like you and I who haven't written books or done Bible study series, we haven't launched big campaigns, we don't have big followings on social media, we're just the ordinary Joes and Joettes. Or Joannas, maybe that's a better one. I don't even know what a Joette is. But anyway, we're just ordinary people. Listen, there is no limit to what can be done when people don't care who gets the credit.
00:20:29
Speaker
And so what we need is is servants who say, here's who I am, here's what I have to offer, put me in coach, wherever you wanna use me. Put me in wherever you want me to serve. I don't have to be upfront. I don't have to have my name called out. I don't have to be a big celebrity. Here's why that's important. Because at this church, 99% of the time when you're looking for the worship leader, it's gonna be this young man behind this keyboard. We're not bringing in any big celebrities because big celebrities don't know you like he does. And this may break your heart, but on about 99% of the Sundays, I'm what you get when it comes to preaching. Why? Because I was called to be your shepherd, not Franklin Graham, not Steven Furtick, not Tim Keller, not any of those big names. You bring them in, what are you gonna get? You're gonna get one big crowd for a little bit of while, but they don't know you like I know you, because we live in the dirt here together.
00:21:25
Speaker
And so you, you have absolutely the exact same authority, power, and pull that Franklin Graham does. The difference is you've got more credibility with the people who live in your world. So when you go to them and talk about a personal savior, they're watching you. They see it. They don't care if you've ever written a book. They want to know if what you believe is really real to you. And that's the most powerful thing. The last thing here, God's sovereignty. Very simply put, they believe that God could do whatever God wants to do. God gets ready to turn out his spirit, God'll turn out his spirit. And God gets ready to heal somebody, God will heal somebody. They didn't pray conditionally to God, they prayed to God and said, God, you decide what needs to happen next.
Dynamic Discipleship and Community
00:22:14
Speaker
And what happened was that God poured out His Spirit again and again and again and again. I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hand on this one, but I just gotta ask you, when you pray, do you really believe God can do what you're praying about? Do you really believe that God has authority over cancer? Do you really believe that God can fix your marriage where it's broken? Do you really believe that your family member who's fallen into addictions, to pornography, or has fallen into seasons of depression, do you really feel like God can deliver that? Let me ask you, do you really feel like God has authority over the Olympics right now? Then quit complaining and start praying. quit Quit wasting your time on social media, dogging people out, and pray to the God who controls these people, who has complete authority over them.
00:23:07
Speaker
That's how you change the world. The second thing they did, besides the effect of evangelism, is they had dynamic discipleship. What does that mean? Well, discipleship is incredibly important because it does no good to win somebody to Christ and then just leave them to their own devices. Back years ago, for those of you who've been around the Southern Baptist for a while, they used to do these big pushes. 70 million people by the year 1970. Any of y'all remember that? Okay, three of us. um But it was these big pushes and they were effective but what would happen is they would win people to Christ, they'd come in the front door, go through the baptismal order and head out the back door because nobody was discipling them. And I would argue that what happened is we created our own problem because people got saved, they never were educated about their faith and now they're parts of cults and other religions because they never got walked through the journey of what it means to be a disciple.
00:24:03
Speaker
One of the things we've started here at our church that I'm really excited about is if you've been baptized in the last three months, if you have not already, you will very shortly receive a phone call from one of our deacons, one of our staff, one of our elders, because we want to follow up with you and say, okay, where are you engaging? How are you making an adaptation to our congregation? How are you transitioning in? What can we do to help you with that? Where do you have questions? This is part of the reason why I say to you all the time, if you need to talk to us, set up an appointment. We don't want you just lingering out there by yourself. We want to engage you with the full gospel throughout every area of your life because that's what a true disciple looks like. It's not enough to just say, hey, Jesus is my Lord. It's about making Jesus Lord as you live it out every single day.
00:24:51
Speaker
And so we want to help you engage that. It requires accountability. You notice the first thing that this church did when Antioch started to grow and things started to happen, the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to check on him. Why? Because this little church in Antioch that was blowing up didn't have any apostolic authority in its congregation. These were all new believers. And so they sent people, Barnabas primarily, down to Antioch to say, hey, check on them. Make sure that what they're teaching is right and true and and good. Little side note, that's why when you guys get ready to start a new discipleship group or life group or Bible study, that we ask that you come to us and to the elders to get those things approved. Why? We don't want heresy in our church. We do not want people teaching anything but the one true gospel. That's why we brought Pastor John on staff because that's his responsibility. If he doesn't check it and approve it, I kick his rear end for not doing it right. No, I would never kick his rear end. He might beat me up.
00:25:50
Speaker
But the truth is he is responsible along with the elders of protecting what is taught in this church, what is what is being thrown to our people to make sure they're receiving the one true gospel over and over and over again. And if you're not being engaged right now, please, please call us, email us. Let us sit down with you and get you plugged in. These life groups may show up at the kickball thing next week. I don't care if you can kick a ball or not. Just show up next week, get introduced to some of these life groups and get plugged into real discipleship. Just this week, just this week, we had an incredible display of what a life group can do for a family when they're walking through a dark season. It was beautiful to me.
00:26:32
Speaker
I mean, I was checking in with what was going on. i was I had tabs on it, but man, I just turned it back over to their life group and they love this family well. I was so pleased with them. This is what it looks like. If you're a part of this church, the larger we get, the more important it is we stay small. So you need to be connecting with people. When when you're sick, your pastor's not gonna show up at your house. It's gonna be your life group. Not because I don't love you, it's because there were 606 of you here last week. I cannot keep up with all of you. I can't even remember the names of my four children and five grandchildren. I can't keep up with all of you. But your life group can. And your life group is there to walk through these journeys with you to help disciple
Generosity and Financial Stewardship
00:27:12
Speaker
you. I gotta move on. Encouragement is important here. Oh, I forgot to put up the words for you, I'm sorry. Encouragement is important here as well. Encouragement, all of us need a little encouragement, don't we? Need to be reminded.
00:27:25
Speaker
Hey, you can do this. Hey, your God is good. Hey, this God can walk this journey with you. Hey, we're here for you. We're not gonna let you walk this journey alone. Hey, we believe in you. Sometimes I need to hear that. Do you need to hear that sometimes? Every single Sunday morning, my sweet wife, before I come up on the stage, pulls me over, but leans in my ah ear and says, I believe in you. You big sexy, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
00:27:59
Speaker
Moving on. Instruction. Instruction. Gotta have good instruction. Hey, at a time when we're growing faster than we ever have been, we really need some people to step up who can lead Bible studies for us. We need people who can step up and engage people with the gospel on a comfortable level. We need people to volunteer. We've got 23, I think, life groups this fall. We need more. We need more, why? Because people are coming in and we gotta have a place to put them. And the last thing that me or Johnny, the one wanted to tell them is to say, hey, we would love to put you in a life group, we just don't have space for you. Man, that's an awful feeling. What does it take to lead a life group? Good evening, we're glad you're here. Find a seat, I'll get you some water. That's about all it really takes. It really does.
00:28:52
Speaker
If you need anything beyond that, we'll help you with it. But it's more about you getting together and talking about the ah the Christian life together. It's talk about you looking at the word and reading the word and pulling out of the word what the Holy Spirit leads you to. It's not because there's some theological genius in the room. All right. Third thing we see here is merciful ministry. Remember the story that says that Agabus, this prophet, shows up and he says, hey, there's going to be a ah famine. Well, his prophecy comes true. In 45 AD, there is a massive flooding of the Nile River in Egypt, which destroys most of the crops in that area, which means in the Roman Empire, you're either starving or you're paying exorbitant fees just to make a loaf of bread.
00:29:36
Speaker
But what's really cool about this, it says that the minute this prophecy was made there in the church at Antioch, they started looking for ways to bless the church in Jerusalem. They didn't turn their attention on themselves, they turned their attention on their brothers and sisters who needed help. So first of all, their ministry was selfless. Their ministry was selfless. It wasn't about them, it wasn't about trying to provide for themselves. The famine hadn't even taken place yet, and they're asking the question, what do we do to send relief? Antioch was more concerned with helping others than hoarding supplies for their own hardship. Can I just say that to you again? This is gonna make me like really on the fringe of being your favorite pastor this morning. and But why is it that every time we see something, some prophecy that's being fulfilled, that the first thing we do as a church is we start stocking up MREs and going, it's the end of the world. And the world is still going on with their lives going well, it hasn't happened yet and you've been predicting it for 2,000 years.
00:30:36
Speaker
By the way, if the world really is coming to an end the way the Bible describes it, your MREs are not going to keep you alive. Your fresh jars of water, not gonna matter, okay? So quit wasting your time on that, because if you really think the end of the world's gonna be happening this Friday, then you just should be spending Monday through Thursday finding the lost people in your life and telling them about Jesus, not stocking up your food.
00:31:03
Speaker
I told you I wasn't gonna make me popular. Because some of you got massive amounts of stored stuff up. So I'm coming to your house for supper this week. We're gonna start eating up all those stores and we're gonna get back to the real reason that the church exists and that is to tell the world about Jesus. Not to be the bugle sounding the word, hey, the end of the world's coming. Trump got shot in the ear. It's prophetic. No, that's pathetic. It's got nothing to do with the end of time. What's got to do with the end of time is this, Jesus wins. And we need to be getting as many people as we can onto the winning side.
00:31:45
Speaker
They also were very generous. Now, you know I'm not gonna put a phrase up there like that without having a conversation about giving. Let me tell you where we are as a church. We're good, but we're not great.
00:32:03
Speaker
We're solid, but we should be better than that. As your pastor, I dream of a day, literally, I'm not exaggerating, I dream of a day when every single Sunday, 52 weeks out of the year, our offering time is a video showing another mission team coming back home. 52 mission trips a year. Even more if you wanna get on them. Now, in order for that to take place, what's gotta happen? You gotta have people who are willing to go and people who are willing to give. If I had a million dollars right now, feel free to write the check, but if I had a million dollars right now, I don't know that I'd build the building. I'd look for as many partnerships as I could to get the gospel out of here. At a time when we are talking with a church plant in Denver,
00:32:58
Speaker
working on a church plant in Lewisburg, already anticipating more mission trips to Guatemala next year, the possibility of a mission project somewhere in ah Israel or in the Gaza Strip in the next year or so, depending on how quickly we can move on that. At a time when we're talking about planting churches wherever God takes us and sending out missionaries wherever we can, we should not be sitting on our wallets. I got two amens out of that. Now, Let me be really, really transparent with you. Every year at this time, one of the things we do, Chris will tell you, he's he's been here since the very beginning. Every year we do the same thing. We pull up the list of every eligible man who can be a deacon in our church, because it's time to start nominating for new deacons this year. We pull up that list, and the first thing we do is we send it to our treasurer who takes a look at it and confirms whether or not these guys are giving to the church, because if you're not giving, you're not serving our church. You're definitely not leading our church.
00:33:58
Speaker
This year, out of 100 plus men who are eligible to serve, we had to pull out one out of every four guys because they don't give to the church.
00:34:10
Speaker
Now, here's why that matters. If last week, just last week, everybody in this church who came to Sunday morning had given just 10 more dollars, we'd have had over $6,000 last week extra to do something with it.
00:34:28
Speaker
A statistic I read yesterday, Ricky and I were having a conversation with Barbara on email. If the Christian church in America would just do the very minimum of a tithe, the Christian church would have over $140 million dollars a year extra to do missions and ministry with.
00:34:50
Speaker
So what does this mean? Well, it means first of all, wives, you need to go sit down with your husbands and say, hey, I know you're the leader of our church, but if we're not given, we gotta get that fixed. Because they'll listen to you before they'll listen to me. Husbands, you need to go sit down and look at your wife and say, hey, I've done a poor job of leading us in this area. I gotta quit throwing $5 at Jesus thinking he's gonna be okay with that, and I've got to be serious about this. So we're gonna start tithing. If you read scripture carefully, the tithe is the first 10%, not what's left over at the end. Because inevitably somebody will look at me and go, well, we'll take a look at our budget and we'll see what bills we've got to pay this month, and that's not how it works. If you want money to pay your bills at the end of the month, you give Jesus what he deserves at the front of the month.
00:35:41
Speaker
Some of you have taken advantage of modern technology. And you went five years ago and you put in $100 a week, give every week. And you're still giving $100 a week even though you've gotten pay raise, bonuses, all kinds of stuff. You need to just go back and look at it and go, am I truly tithing the way I should? Okay, you know I don't talk about this a whole lot, primarily because I get tired of the glares when I'm doing it. But you know I'm going to talk about it because it's the command of Christ.
00:36:13
Speaker
And if you need an explanation as to why, call me, come sit down with me, let me walk you through scripture. There is a heretical teaching going through the church in America today, really isn't in most churches in other parts of the world, but there's heretical teaching here that when Jesus came, he did away with the tithe. And I can show you one passage of scripture that proves that he did not.
00:36:40
Speaker
I hope you understand this. If we were all tithing the way we should here at this church, then we wouldn't have to hesitate when somebody came to me and said, hey, I've got a great idea for a ministry and we can reach dozens of people in this community with it.
Diversity and Missionary Work
00:36:55
Speaker
or And this is happening more and more. I would love to to tell you example after example, but we don't do it because of privacy reasons. We wouldn't have to hesitate when a family comes to us and said, hey, my husband lost his job last week. We're gonna be kicked out this week if we don't get our our rent taken care of.
00:37:13
Speaker
We wouldn't have to hesitate when somebody came to us and said, hey, we got a group of people having a Bible study over here in Shelbyville. We're ready to launch a church. Could you come along inside and sign us to support us? We wouldn't think twice.
00:37:32
Speaker
Thank you. That's what I was waiting on, I can move on. All right, fourthly, multicultural leadership and membership. What does that mean? It means that the leadership of that church was very diverse just like that church was. Now, there's a problem here in Chapel Hill, Tennessee. We're very monochrome. What I mean by that? We're a bunch of white people, okay? Chapel Hill is mostly white people. right As we're looking around us, does that mean that we're not doing our job to reach diverse minorities? No, let me prove it to you. How many of you are native-born Chapel Hillians? There's our minority. We're working with them right now, teaching to them, reaching them. okay No, the the reality is our doors are open to anybody who wants to come.
00:38:23
Speaker
We want everybody to feel comfortable in coming in here to be embraced by the love of this congregation, to be embraced by the love of Jesus. But we are diverse nonetheless, even though our melanin and our skin all looks basically the same, we are a diverse group because some of you came from California, some of you came from Michigan, some of you came from Minnesota, some of you are Catholic, some of you are Presbyterian, some of you don't know what you are. We just come from a wide diverse group And so two things about that you need to hear. Number one, we wanna minister to whoever Jesus brings our way. If he plops a family here from Lebanon, right here in our midst, we, not Tennessee, the one in the Middle East. If he plops a family of people from Lebanon right here in the Middle East congregation, I want them to know that they are gonna be loved and taken care of. I can't do much to speak their language, but I am gonna speak the language of Jesus to them. And I trust that you will as well.
00:39:22
Speaker
But the other thing that you need to understand is that diversity in the eyes of God is a really beautiful thing.
00:39:30
Speaker
He's not the God of the white man. He's the God of every man. Every woman, every child. And so we want to reflect that as we go to the world. We got to get our eyes off of this idea that God came and died for the Western church. He didn't. We were the last ones to arrive on the scene. There were churches all over the world before we ever got involved.
00:39:54
Speaker
We've gotta be willing to go wherever God sends us without hesitation. Lastly, Spirit-directed church sent supportive missionaries. what What do I mean by that? Let me very quickly explain it. Number one, they prayed, they worship, they fasted with a sense of expectancy. They knew that God was up to something, so their priority was how do we stay in line with the Holy Spirit, so when the Holy Spirit speaks, we know what to do. they didn't They didn't do it because it was supposed to, or they didn't do it because it was somebody's great idea. They did it because they were in connection with the Holy Spirit at all times. Secondly,
00:40:32
Speaker
The Spirit and the congregation together affirmed the missionaries. What does that mean? That means they were working one and and one hand and the other. but We're working together to send out missionaries. At Southern Baptist, we work, we are Southern Baptist Church for those of you who don't know that. um Southern Baptist, we work together with thousands of other Southern Baptist Church across this country to send out over 4,500 different missionaries. to support all kinds of missions, efforts, and ministries, ah orphanages, hospitals, senior adult homes, all kinds of ministries going on. I love that, I'm thankful for that. But I would love to get to the point where we are sending our own missionaries to the world, supporting our people to go out, investing in our people who have been called
Conclusion and Prayer
00:41:13
Speaker
by God. Now, some of you might miss this point, so let me connect the dots for you. That means I believe some of you are being called to get out of here.
00:41:21
Speaker
Some of you are being called to go and be missionaries, maybe to a foreign culture and overseas, maybe to a foreign culture in downtown Nashville, maybe to a foreign culture in Lewisburg as part of a church plant. Okay, sorry I called them foreign, him but they're a little bit different. Maybe God's calling you to be the nurse next church plant group that goes to Unionville or Shelbyville or Memphis or Little Rock or wherever. But that happens because we are in line with the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit speaks to us, okay? Lastly, the church sent their very best on mission. They didn't send the leftovers.
00:42:08
Speaker
They didn't get together and vote and say, that Donny Morris guy? Man, we need to get him out of here. Send him out on mission. I had to pick on you, Donny. They didn't send the leftovers. They sent their very best. And as your pastor, as your shepherd, I want to train up the very best we've got to get him out of here. I want to reach the world for Jesus. I have to be honest, I've seen that video now three times that they showed at the offering of the Guatemala trip.
00:42:42
Speaker
Two places in that video tear me up. Actually, three. Well, probably 10, but three. Number one, the face of that beautiful little girl as she smiles at the camera. Thinking about the opportunity we have to change, not just her life, but her eternity.
00:43:07
Speaker
And I think about what I would be like if I was her dad, knowing that somebody in Chapel Hill, Tennessee cared enough to come tell my daughter about the gospel. Then there's that guy sitting on the bench who's reading the Bible for himself and he looks up and he breaks into this huge smile. Guys, we have the ability to change the world. to change their outcome, their outlook. we We have the ability to do that, but we've gotta quit settling. We've gotta quit settling. If you're gonna call Jesus Lord, then let him be Lord. You don't get to call him a Lord and then say, okay, here's the terms on which we're gonna operate.
00:43:50
Speaker
If you're gonna call Jesus Lord, he's gotta be Lord of your agenda, of your calendar, of your finances, your resources, your talents, your family. He's gotta be Lord of all of it. The third image that makes me cry is the joy in that man's heart when he got baptized. By the way, you'll probably hear this tonight, Kyle may kill me for breaking the secret here, but the God they baptized, that was their interpreter for the week. Talk about a divine appointment.
00:44:25
Speaker
i have I haven't heard this officially from their mouths with Jeremy in April. percent My understanding is over 250 people this week accepted Christ as part of it. It's amazing.
00:44:41
Speaker
So if you come tonight, act surprised when Kyle says that.
00:44:53
Speaker
ah Let me ask you to just think about something. What if the person you were closest to in your life were diagnosed with the most horrible disease you could think of and you walked with them through every second of that disease, the treatments, the attempts to heal them, all of those things. Watch them die and the day after they died you found out the doctor you've been going to had the cure. He just didn't have the time to give it to your child or your spouse. How outraged would you be? I know how I'd feel. You and I have the cure. It's the power of the Holy Spirit to change people's lives.
00:45:42
Speaker
And every single day we walk by people who need that cure, who need that treatment,
00:45:52
Speaker
Are you willing to be interruptible? Are you willing to have your goals, your agendas rearrange so that somebody else may get the treatment they need? Because if you want people to know Jesus, it's not gonna happen because you invite them to come to church here. It's gonna be because you invite them to come to Jesus out there.
00:46:16
Speaker
That's what it means to live sin. Will you pray with me?
00:46:24
Speaker
Father, we thank you again as always for your kindness, your goodness, your faithfulness, your love, your compassion, your tenderness.