How the Gospel Goes to the Ends of the Earth
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Acts 1:8
Acts 12:25–13:3 – The Story of the Church: Living Into This Drama in the 21st Century
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost – July 25, 2021 (am)
You will have noticed that our passage this morning is quite short compared to other sections we’ve covered thus far, and it may even seem like we’ve cut it off too early, why stop at verse 3?
The reason is that this passage marks a monumental step is Luke’s retelling of the spread of the gospel. It is a watershed moment in the life of the early church. It is the birth of the missionary movement and as such, what happens in these few verses has much to teach us about how we as a church are to engage in the mission of God, to bring people from all nations, into his kingdom.
Recall with me Jesus’ words from Acts 1:8, the theme verse of this book, where Jesus saying to his disciples:
8 . . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The entirety of the book of Acts is Luke’s record of how these words of Jesus are being fulfilled.
Thus, we see in the first seven chapters of Acts the spread of the gospel first to the city of Jerusalem, through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and Peter’s sermon at Pentecost and the healing of a lame beggar at the hands of Peter and John and the faithful teaching and preaching of Christ by the apostles, both in the temple and from house to house (5:42). And the daily adding to souls to the church. Not to mention the ministry, testimony, and martyrdom of Stephen.
Then in Acts chapter 8, we begin to see the second stage of Jesus’ words being fulfilled as Christ is proclaimed in the regions around Jerusalem, the regions of Judea and Samaria with Philip and Peter and John all spreading the Word in Samaria, with Cornelius coming to Christ in Judea and the word of Christ reaching the surrounding regions, becoming established even in the Gentile city of Antioch.
And now, beginning in Acts 13, we the fulfillment of the third and final stage of Jesus’ words begins – the taking of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Transition: And it is here that I would like us to pause and to consider a question. A question we ought to have in our minds as we begin to study this passage and a question that ought to burn in our hearts as Jesus’ disciples. The question: How is the gospel going to go to the ends of the earth?
Stepping back for a moment from the context of the early church and looking at all of history, it’s clear that this is a question that has been answered over the centuries in many different ways. To greater and lesser effect, sometimes leading to the establishment of healthy churches and at other times actually leading to a greater suspicion about the gospel and hesitancy to follow Christ.
It is one whose answer can differ from church to church and from century to century and from pastor to pastor and missionary to missionary. And it is a question that we are still trying to answer today.
Let’s name a few ways that one might answer the question: “How will the gospel get to the ends of the earth?” just drawing from the last century or two.
We might say, the gospel will spread far and wide as the Lord raises up powerful evangelists like Billy Graham, who traveled the world speaking to tens of thousands of people at a time.
Or perhaps we’d say that the gospel will go to the nations as the Lord raises up frontier missionaries like Hudson Taylor or William Cary
Or we may look to pastors who powerfully communicate the need to go to unreached peoples regardless of the cost, pastors like John Piper who has woven the call to missions into numerous sermons and conference messages and books and through whom many have heard God’s call to go onto the mission field.[1]
Or we could turn to national missions conferences like the Urbana conference – Developed in partnership between InterVarsity Fellowship, Christian colleges, and key missiologists to “reinforce God’s call to service and missions” every three years for tens of thousands of college students.[2]
Or we might put our hope in missions movements like the Student Volunteer Movement which began in 1886 and inspired 100,000 students to volunteer to serve in missions over a 12 year span?[3]
Or we might put our chips on missionary training and sending agencies? Agencies that are dedicated to finding and mobilizing and training and supporting missionaries around the world.
Or, we could point to mission strategies, like the strategy of aiming missions at the 10-40 window or of defining, identifying, and sending missionaries to unreached people groups.
These are just some of the ways the modern church has answered the question: How will the gospel get to the ends of the earth?
And by God’s grace, God has undoubtably used each of these means to bring people to himself around the globe but are any of them better than others? Are some more worthy of our time and energy and support? Or . . . is there anything missing from this list?
This question of how we will get the gospel to the ends of the earth is the question we need to have in our minds this morning. It is the question Luke is addressing in our passage for today and, as I said before, it is a question that ought to occupy the regular thoughts and desires of every Christian!
For when Jesus said to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
He was not just speaking to those who were present but to the church as a whole.[4] This was not only their commission back then, but it is the commission that is upon the shoulders of every Christian up until today.
So how are we going to fulfill it? Let’s turn now to Acts and see how the Lord initiated it’s fulfillment in the early church.
Two Words:
The Points for this morning flow into one another to form an answer to our question, which is why they lack a certain grammatical completeness in and of themselves – my apologies to whoever might be tormented by this.
You may have noticed that the Apostle Paul is referred to as Saul throughout our passage. This is likely because he was still going by the Hebrew form of his name at this time and we will see that Luke begins to call him Paul, the Greek form of his name, just after our passage as he goes out on mission. So I will call him Saul throughout today’s message.
1. When a Local Church (v. 1)
Our passage begins by saying:
25 And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.
1 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
One of the first things we ought to realize when we study how God initiates the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth is that he does so through a local church.
The church in Antioch was the first Gentile church recorded by Luke and we know it had been founded a few years prior to our passage.
We know this because of what we read back in chapter 11 where we see that this church began as a result of the persecution of Christians that arose when Stephen was martyred back in chapter seven. A persecution that caused Christians to scatter out into the world – some of whom came to Antioch and preached about Jesus there.
We know that this church was strengthened by Barnabas, who was sent to them from the Jerusalem church, and by Saul, whom Barnabas went find in Tarsus to help him in this work. It was this local church that had been discipled and taught by Barnabas and Saul for a year Luke tells us, and in that brief year they developed a heart for the needs of other Christians, a sign of their spiritual maturity, causing them to send Barnabas and Saul back to Jerusalem to deliver the funds they had collected to provide relief to their brothers and sisters in Christ who were in the midst of a famine.
It is to this church and from this relief mission that Barnabas and Saul are returning in the final verse of chapter 12.
And the first thing Luke tells us about this church in chapter 13 is that it had added other men to its leadership team since we heard about it in Chapter 11. Apparently Barnabas and Saul had been busy raising up leaders and working themselves out of a job in the year they spent in Antioch. To Barnabas and Saul, the church has added three more leaders. And each of these names tells us something important about this church. These names tell us that the leadership of this church was quite diverse from its early days.
For Barnabas, we already know from earlier in Acts was a Jewish Levite who was from the island of Cyprus and Saul was a former Pharisee from Tarsus. Both would have been well versed in the Jewish law while also being well acquainted with Greek culture and customs. To them are added
Simeon, whose nickname of Niger, which means black, tells us that he was a man of dark skin, most likely having come from Africa
Lucius, which is a Latin name, indicating he was raised in Roman culture, who was from Cyrene, a town in Northern Africa
And Manaen – who Luke tells us was a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, that is the son of Herod the Great, the one who beheaded John the Baptist and sent Jesus back to Pilate, meaning he was probably a Jewish man from the upper class of society
Just this brief mention of these three men, in addition to Barnabas and Saul, tells us there was a diversity present in this early church that spanned cultures, countries of origin, religious upbringings, skin colors, and economic class. This diversity would have clearly puts on display the truth that the church of Jesus Christ is for people from all nations making this church the perfect launching ground for the first missionaries to take the gospel to the nations and the ends of the earth!
And while we could and should reflect on what the diversity in this early church means for our own church, the point I most want us to see this morning is the simple truth that God began the process of bringing the gospel to the nations through a local church.
Not primarily through a council of church leaders, or a movement among young Christians, or the strategizing of the apostles – but through a group of young believers gathered into a church in the city of Antioch.
And what Luke tells us about this local church, aside from the fact that they were diverse in their leadership, is that they had a holy hunger for God.
2. Has a Holy Hunger (v. 2a)
Moving on into verse 2, we read, “While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said . . .”
Luke tells us here that this church had set aside time to come together to worship God while also fasting, which means they were abstaining from food.
It is important that we understand that the practice of fasting in the Christian church is never done to earn God’s favor but rather to emphasize one’s need to hear from God. It is, as John Piper calls it, the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, “We need you God!” And it is the mark of a church that has a holy hunger for God to show up.
We don’t know if the church in Antioch was fasting to hear an answer to a particular question or simply longing for a deeper relationship with the Lord, but I don’t think it is unlikely that they were fasting to express their longing for the Lord to reveal how they, a young and diverse church made up mostly of Gentiles could participate in the spread of God’s kingdom to the nations.
Whatever their intent, it was while they were worshipping and fasting that they heard from God.
3. They Hear God’s Call (v. 2b)
Verse 2 continues, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
Once again, we aren’t given the details of how they heard from God we only know that they heard from God.
It could be that while they were worshipping, one from among them heard an audible voice say, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul” and they stood up in the congregation and delivered what God had told them.
There are accounts of missionaries receiving their call in just this way.
Or it could be that one from among them spoke up and said, “I’ve been praying about our future as a church and how we could reach even more people for Christ and as I’ve been praying I can’t get the idea out of my head that we need to send Barnabus and Saul to go out and share everything they’ve taught us to others. And then perhaps there were a few who said, I didn’t want to presume I’d heard the Lord’s voice, but I’ve been having that exact same thought.
Or perhaps Ananias had mentioned to Saul how the Lord told him Saul was to be his chosen instrument to carry Christ’s name to the Gentiles and Saul had entrusted this prophecy to this local church and the Lord was impressing upon them all that now was the time to send Barnabas and Saul out to fulfill this word.
However the word was received, the point that stands out to me here is that it was the church to whom the Word was given. God didn’t come to Barnabas or to Saul and say, “Get up and get going. Now is the time to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.” He came to the church, while they were gathered in worship and fasting. It was then, as the church was expressing their holy hunger to hear from God, that the Holy Spirit showed up and spoke.
And what the Holy Spirit told this young church, this first recorded Gentile church in the ancient world, this diverse church located 300 miles away from the Jerusalem epicenter of the Jesus movement, was that it was time for them to commission their best men to bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth.
4. To Commission their Best (v. 3)
In verse 3 of our passage we read, Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
You will notice that the church, having received word from the Lord, is said to have fasted and prayed even more before laying their hands on Barnabas and Saul and sending them off. To me, this communicates that this church was one that valued the gift of discernment. They were a church that tested the spirits as John tells the church to do in 1 John 4. And it may also be that having received the word about Barnabas and Saul, they were now fasting and praying on their behalf, that their holy hunger for direction was now a holy hunger for protection and success for those God had called out on mission.
Now I’ve used the word commission in this point because the word translated in the ESV as “sent them off” has a fuller meaning to it than what we think of when we say we send someone off. When we send someone off, we shove them in the back of an uber or drop them at the doors of the terminal and while we may turn and wave at them as they drive down the street or walk into the airport, once they’re out of sight we head back to our home to carry on whatever it is that our day demands of us without giving too much thought to the one we’ve sent off.
But the word Luke uses here is a word that carries with it not only the idea of sending away but also the idea of setting free. Thus some translations[5] and some commentators[6] have argued that it would be better here to say that the church “let Barnabas and Saul go” rather than “sent them off”. I believe the sense of what is happening in the Antioch church here is captured all the more when we see that the very next verse tells us that it was the Holy Spirit who had sent them out. Add to this that when Barnabas and Saul return from their first missionary journey in Acts chapter 14, Luke tells us that they were returning to Antioch “where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.”
So if we are to properly understand what is happening in verse 3, I think we need to take all of this into account and say that while the church was sending off Barnabas and Saul, it was also, and in a deeper sense, the Holy Spirit that was sending them off. And thus the church’s sending was more of a letting go - but not like we let a bird go or a fish go to find its own way in the far reaching expanses of the sky or the ocean – but like we let a child go on that first day of kindergarten, out of our watchful care but into the watchful care of another, and we keep them in mind throughout the day and pray for them and eagerly look forward to seeing them again to hear how their day went – so also the church was letting Barnabas and Saul go out from them and into the mission God had called them on, while eagerly awaiting any word of their progress and a report upon their return, and entrusting God to lead them and empower them and care for them and use them for his glory.
That is what I mean when I use the word commissioning here. And there is no doubt that in commissioning these two to God’s calling, the church in Antioch was sending out their very best. For the earlier testimonies about Barnabas and the stories to come about Saul serve to confirm this.
We know from what we’ve seen in Luke already that Barnabas had already shown himself to be a man of generosity, selling a field and giving the proceeds to the apostles (4:36), and that he was a man who lived up to his name, which means “son of encouragement.” We also know he was a man of courage, being the first of the disciples to accept Saul when everyone else was still afraid of him, and to bring him to the apostles. We know Barnabas was recognized for his leadership too, for he was the chosen representative of the church in Jerusalem, sent to see what was happening in Antioch when word reached them that the gospel had gone there. Luke also tells us he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, and who was responsible for establishing this young church, not proudly taking the work all upon his own back but recognizing the need for other gifted leaders and humbly seeking out Saul to help him in this work.
And as for Saul, he is regarded by many to be the single greatest missionary in the history of the church and if you don’t know of his gift for the work of the kingdom, I’d just encourage you to keep coming back to hear this series in Acts and to read his letters recorded in the new testament and you will see just how powerfully God used him to build up the ancient church and continues to use him to build up our own church today.
And speaking of the rest of Acts and indeed the rest of the Bible, what we come to see as we read and study God’s Word is that this moment, this calling out and setting apart and commissioning of Barnabas and Saul was a watershed moment in the mission of God, the mission of bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth so that people from every tongue, tribe and nation might be saved.
5. And God’s Gospel Goes to the Ends of the Earth.
It is important for us to understand that while this was a key moment in the spread of the gospel, this is not the beginning of God’s mission to bring all nations into his kingdom. It is not as if God spent most of the Bible caring only about the chosen people of Israel only to decided later on he would invite others into his kingdom as well.
The mission of God throughout scripture has been to make Himself known and to save and redeem and garner worship from all his creatures, even to the ends of the earth.
We see this mission on display throughout Scripture in passages like
Genesis 12:3 where God tells Abram that “in him, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Or Isaiah 49:6 where God says that he will make Israel “a light for the nations, that [His] salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Or Psalm 67:5 where the Psalmist declares “Let the people praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!
Or John 12:32 where Jesus proclaims, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
And so when we read Acts 13 and hear the Holy Spirit tell the church in Antioch to, “Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” We can be sure that the work to which Barnabas and Saul are being called is this mission, it is God’s mission to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. And the same is true for anyone who is sent out into cross cultural missions, they are being sent out not on their mission, but on God’s, and yet, as we have seen in our passage today, God has chosen to accomplish His mission through the sending of missionaries to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.
And with that we step back from our passage and look at it as a whole and as we do, we see that Luke’s answer to the question, “How will the gospel go to the ends of the earth?” is that it goes “When a local church has a holy hunger and they hear God’s call to commission their best – that is how God’s gospel began its journey to the ends of the earth.”
That is what Luke teaches us in our passage today.
But now begins the hard work for those of us who hold this book in our hands two thousand years later.
Because it is evident from the scores of unreached people groups in the world today that the work of bringing the gospel to the nations, the work of going to the ends of the earth, is not finished. And this unfinished work is the responsibility of none other than the church of Jesus Christ, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to see to completion. It is the work that every Christian has been commissioned to and as such, It is the work that every church ought to have a holy hunger to see to completion. That much is clear.
But what isn’t always clear is the method by which we are to continue this work today and so that is what I’d like to speak to as we draw to a conclusion today.
How are we to participate in the spread the gospel to the ends of the earth today? Let me mention 3 ways I believe we should answer this question.
First, by realizing that this task belongs to all of us.
I’m not saying that all of us are called to be missionaries – but rather that missions is for everyone.
In Romans 10:14-15 Paul asks a series of illuminating questions on this topic when he says, “ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent?”
By God’s design, the gospel goes to the ends of the earth through missionaries who preach the gospel so that the lost might hear of Jesus and believe in his name. But in order for missionaries to go, they must first be sent.
What scripture calls us to be as Christians is either a sender or a goer, both are necessary and both are impossible without the other and both require a strong conviction that the taking of the gospel to the ends of the earth is up to us.
So what is your pulse when it comes to seeing God’s gospel reach the nations?
Do you consider this task to be your task? Do you see yourself as being commissioned by the Lord Jesus himself to participate in the work of making disciples of people from every nation? Or have you come to believe that such work belongs to others, to missionaries and sending agencies and missions conferences, and that your work in God’s mission is elsewhere?
If so, we need to work on correcting this. We need to see that God’s mission, a mission of which we are the beneficiaries, is a mission to save people from the ends of the earth, and that it is a mission he has entrusted to each and every member of his church, whether its as a sender or as a goer.
Second, we participate in this mission today by having a holy hunger for God to use us to accomplish his mission.
By holy hunger here, I’m referring to example set for us by the church in Antioch, the example of fasting as they worship and pray.
Very few things are important enough for us to cause us to miss eating a meal. And yet we see in our passage today that it is while the church was worshipping and fasting that God spoke to them and the first missionaries were sent out.
I believe this is teaching us that if we are to participate in God’s mission, we are to do so not first by joining a committee or by attending a conference or by developing a new strategy – but by skipping a meal and by gathering with other believers to say – we need you God! Show us how we might be used in your great mission!
Third, we participate in this mission by being seeing and committing ourself to the role of the local church in the accomplishment of God’s mission to reach the nations.
At the beginning of this message we explored ways that we’ve seen the gospel going out to the nations in the modern era, and I asked then the question – is anything missing from this list.
I wonder how many of us picked up the fact that what was missing from a list that included evangelists and conferences, pastors and movements, sending agencies and strategies was any mention of the local church.
If I were to have you see one thing from this morning’s message, it would be the way that God uses a local church to launch the world altering mission of bringing the gospel to the nations. This is an observation that is often overlooked in our day and age of missions agencies and missions strategies and missions movements. With so many efforts being made to reach the lost, efforts for which we should be profoundly thankful, we must fight to not lose the central role that the local church plays in bringing God’s gospel to the ends of the earth.
I believe there are a few ways that the role of the local church in missions can be lost:
One way is that we can come to see the missionary call too individualistically. That is to say, that we come to believe that when God needs someone he will tell them and then they will go. It is between them and God and the local church is lost in the process. But that isn’t what we see in Antioch is it. God spoke not to Barnabas and Saul but to the church. It wasn’t in answer to Barnabas and Saul’s holy hunger but in response to the holy hunger of the church. And God didn’t just tell Barnabas and Saul to go, rather he told the church to send them.
So today, missions ought to be a community project, one that is on all our hearts such that the hungering and the hearing and the calling and the sending are discerned within the local church community – not on one’s own.
Another way the role of the local church in mission can be lost is by misunderstanding the purpose of missions agencies. Missions agencies are to be parachurch organizations – that is they are to come alongside the church and help her in completing her work – but too often they get out in front of the church. People come to think that these agencies are really the ones responsible for the work of missions, so for the one who feels called to missions, the first step is not to meet with their local church leaders or to pray through this call with their small group but to find an agency that will send them.
One of the reasons this happens is that those who feel called to missions aren’t even members of a local church. They don’t have a church community or leaders to go to which only highlights the problem – for a missionaries ultimate aim ought to be to see local churches being planted among the lost and how can they do that if they don’t even know what it means to be part of a local church?
So we must understand that while missions agencies are a wonderful tool for mobilizing and sending and supporting missionaries they ought to be engaged only after engaging with one’s local church. And even after a missions agency is chosen, the local church ought to realize that this agency is there to support us in caring for our missionary, not to replace us.
It’s convictions such as these that has led us to write these words in our church constitution under our Global Outreach policy: Financial support will be limited to those persons, programs, ministries or mission agencies that are substantially in agreement with our doctrinal statement, positions and policies, as well as our strong views concerning the authority of and accountability to the local church.
But it is one thing to write it into our constitution and it’s another thing to live by this. And in order for us to live by this conviction that it is the role first and foremost of the local church to engage in and accomplish the work of missions, it must permeate not only our pastoral team or elder team but also our church family.
It is up to each of us see that the way the gospel will go to the ends of the earth is “When a local church has a holy hunger to hear from God and then is willing to commission their best – then God’s gospel will go to the ends of the earth.”
Let us pray that God would give us this heart and so use us to accomplish his mission.
________________________
Works Cited
MacDonald, William. Enjoying the Book of Acts. ECS Ministries: Dabuque, 1971.
Sills, M. David. The Missionary Call: Find Your Place in God’s Plan for the World. Moody Publishers: Chicago, 2008.
[1] Sills, 74-75.
[2] Sills, 73.
[3] Sills, 73.
[4] As is evidenced by the promise in the next verse where Jesus promises his presence with the audience to whom he is speaking until the end of the age, thus the audience must be an entity that will last until the end of the age – not simply the individuals present, but the church, the bride of Christ.
[5] NEB
[6] William MacDonald.
NEXT WEEK: Acts 13:4–12, Sent Out by the Holy Spirit