Be One of THEM (Acts #14)

Kids, I want to ask you a question. How many of you have ever said to your mom or dad, “Watch this! Look at me!”

Lots of hands. And for the ones who didn’t raise a hand, I suspect I could ask your parents and they’d confirm it.

Here’s what I want you to know: it’s fine that you’ve said that. Because “watch me, look at me” is just a way of saying I need to know you see me. I need to know I matter. I need to know I have value and I’m loved.

Everybody needs that. Adults too. We think we’re too mature to say “watch me” out loud, but we love it when someone walks up and says, “I noticed what you did — thank you.” That’s how God wired us. We were created for relationship with Him. He put His image in us, and He’s the one who says I love you, you have value.

But sometimes that need to be noticed goes haywire.

Two Ends of the Same Spectrum

Kids, do any of you have a classmate — we won’t pick on siblings — who says “watch me because I can do it better”? Take notice of me because I’m the greatest you’ll ever see. I’m the GOAT.

Sadly, there are adults who still do that.

Years ago, when my wife and I moved to Cedar Rapids and I started as a young adult pastor at a church that had never had a young adult ministry, I needed to get to know the young adults already there. So we held an open house, and about fifty of them came to our home.

I ended up in conversation with one guy — single, working as an engineer at a local aviation company, genuinely brilliant. The problem was that he knew he was brilliant and didn’t mind telling you. Wherever the conversation went, he had this remarkable talent for steering it back to how great he was. After fifteen or twenty minutes, I was tired.

But I’ve also known people at the opposite extreme — people convinced they aren’t good at anything. If the first guy was way out on the far end of the confidence spectrum, this person has fallen off it entirely. I’m no good at anything.

I’ve watched both extremes inside the church, in matters of faith.

I’ve known pastors so far out on the first end that even though they verbally say “the church is all about Jesus,” everything about their actions and attitudes says the church is actually about me. Their name is on the sign out front. Their photo dominates the website. Their social media pushes their books, their podcast, their sermons. What they’re really saying is: notice me, watch me — because I need to know I have value.

And I’ve known people on the other end who say, “Well, I’m not a celebrity pastor. I’m not an evangelist. I’m not a missionary. God must not be able to use me at all.”

Today’s story helps both of them.

It helps the person who’s a little too confident in their gifts, because the people we’re about to meet do something extraordinary — and we don’t know a single one of their names. They’re completely anonymous, because it wasn’t about them.

And it helps the person convinced God can’t use them, because these were ordinary, average people. Nothing special. And God did something staggering through them.

Where We Are in Acts

Open to Acts 11.

A quick recap. In Acts 10 we meet Cornelius, a Roman centurion — fairly high up in the imperial army — and a God-fearer. He wasn’t a Jew and he didn’t know about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but he knew there was a God and he sought to worship and pray to Him. One day while he’s praying, God tells him to send men to Joppa and ask for a man named Peter.

Meanwhile Peter is on a rooftop having his own strange vision. He assumes it’s because he’s hungry, and only later realizes God was telling him to go with these men to Cornelius’s house.

This was a big deal. Peter was a Jew. Cornelius was a Gentile. Jewish people might be perfectly polite to Gentiles, but they didn’t enter their homes and they didn’t worship with them. Yet Peter realizes God wants him to walk in and preach the gospel — and Cornelius believes. He becomes the first Gentile convert, the first person to grasp that Jesus’s death wasn’t only for the Jewish people but for Gentiles too.

Which is exactly what Jesus said would happen. Back in Acts 1:8 He said that when the Holy Spirit came, they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem and Judea are heavily Jewish. Samaria was half Jewish, half Gentile. And “the ends of the earth” is a great many Gentiles.

We’ve watched it unfold. The first chapters are all Jerusalem. Then it leaks into Judea. In chapter 8, Philip goes to Samaria. And now we’re watching it head toward the ends of the earth.

Pick it up at Acts 11:19:

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Why Antioch Mattered

Verse 19 shows the gospel spreading to three places — Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. And once Luke mentions Antioch, that’s where the story stays.

Antioch was an enormous city, roughly half a million people, and by most accounts the third largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria. It sat about three hundred miles north of Jerusalem.

If you’re a Jewish believer fleeing for your life because you’re convinced Jesus is the Messiah, Antioch looks like a good place to run. Three hundred miles on foot is a bit over two weeks of travel — far enough. And if someone from Jerusalem is determined enough to come all that way hunting you, there are half a million people to disappear into.

So it seemed safe. But when some of them arrived, they couldn’t help themselves. They talked about Jesus.

Verse 19 notes that most spoke only to Jews, which honestly makes sense. These were Jewish people who believed that a thoroughly Jewish Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. Naturally they’d bring that to their own people first.

But verse 20 says some of them couldn’t restrain it. They started talking about Jesus with non-Jews. And those people believed this outrageous story of a resurrection and started asking how they could follow Him too.

Let me spoil the ending: the church in Antioch became one of the most influential churches of its era. If a church like that existed today, it would be the one hosting the conferences. Its pastors would be writing the books. People would travel there to learn. It would be planting churches everywhere.

Three things made it remarkable. First, apart from perhaps the house church in Cornelius’s home, it was the first Gentile church. Second, verse 26 tells us the disciples were first called Christians there — a word that means “little Christs.” The believers in Antioch were living in such a way that outsiders looked at them and saw Jesus. That’s where we get our own language: live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved.

And third, Antioch became the first church to intentionally send missionaries. We’ve already seen missionary activity in Acts — Philip in Samaria, these unnamed believers in verses 19 and 20 — but all of it was driven by persecution. People were fleeing. Antioch didn’t wait for persecution. They deliberately sent people out, which we’ll see at the start of chapter 13.

Who Planted It?

So here’s my question: who started this enormously significant church?

Remember who wrote Acts. Luke — a physician. Doctors are detail-oriented, and that detail orientation is what made him such a fine historian. He gives us names constantly. We’re not even halfway through the book and we’ve already met Peter, Saul, Barnabas, Justus, Matthias, Ananias, Sapphira, Stephen, Philip. Setting aside genealogies, Acts is one of the most name-dense books in the Bible.

And yet for the founders of the church at Antioch, we get nothing. Just a pronoun.

Verse 20: “But there were some of them.” Verse 21: “And the hand of the Lord was with them.” Verse 23: Barnabas “exhorted them all to remain faithful.”

Who planted this church? Them.

I think Luke could have found those names if he’d wanted to. He’s meticulous everywhere else. Maybe he even knew them. But I believe it’s strategic that God doesn’t let us have them — because the omission does two things at once.

For the person who lives like it’s all about them, this is humbling. These people gave their lives to this work and received no credit whatsoever. They’re just them.

And for those of us who think I’m not good enough, God couldn’t use me — He used these thoroughly average people, who were only in Antioch because they were running for their lives, to help launch one of the most influential churches in history.

So I want you to be one of them. And since I’m a pastor, of course I have an acronym: T-H-E-M.

T — They Took the Mandate Personally

Jesus told His disciples in Acts 1:8 that when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

These people took that personally.

When Jesus said it on that mountain, He was speaking to His guys. But nobody thought it stopped with the twelve. A little later in chapter 1 we learn the number of followers was about a hundred and twenty — before Pentecost. It wasn’t only for them either. It applied to the three thousand added in chapter 2, and to those added day by day at the end of that chapter, and to the five thousand mentioned in chapter 4.

Which means the mandate belongs to anyone who follows Jesus. Including you. It’s what Matthew 28 says — go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded. And that word “go” can be translated as you are going.

These people couldn’t help themselves. Think about the absurdity: they fled Jerusalem to save their lives, and the thing that got them in trouble in the first place was talking about Jesus. Then they walk into a city of half a million people — and start talking about Jesus.

Why couldn’t they stop? Because this is what they treasured. They treasured Jesus. They treasured the gospel. They had heard His teaching. Some of them may have seen His miracles. They knew He died on a cross and lay in a tomb — and then the greatest miracle the world has ever seen occurred and He walked out alive. How could they possibly keep that to themselves?

You will always talk about what you treasure. You can’t help it. If you value football, you’ll talk about football. If you love Legos, everyone will hear about your latest build. If you love your job, or your family, that’s what comes out.

So the natural question is: what do you treasure?

Some of you know immediately. Others of you aren’t sure — you just go about your day. So here’s a diagnostic: who, what, or where gets your time, your money, your thoughts, your energy? Answer that honestly and you’ll have found your treasure.

H — The Hand of the Lord Was With Them

Verse 21: “And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.”

It struck me this week that Luke didn’t write “the presence of God was with them.” He could have. He didn’t write “the glory of the Lord was with them,” though it clearly was. He wrote the hand.

Hands work.

I think the Spirit inspired that word so we’d understand that the work of saving, redeeming, and rescuing is not on us. That’s God’s job. Your role is to be a tool in His hand. You share what God has done in you. You share the hope you have in Christ. You share what you actually know.

By all means study more — I hope you do, and I hope you figure out better ways to talk about it. But the pressure is off. Nobody comes to faith because you constructed the perfect argument. There are people who came to Christ through someone who could barely string a sentence together. And there are brilliant apologists who can lay out every reason the faith is true, and listeners walk away calling them fools.

You cannot save anyone. That is the work of God. But when you take the mandate personally, when you treasure Christ, when you give yourself wholly to Him — you create every opportunity for the hand of the Lord to be with you.

E — The Ears of Others Heard

Obviously the ears of the people in Antioch heard the gospel and believed. But there’s a second set of ears here.

Verse 22: “The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.”

Sit with that. Jerusalem is three hundred miles south — a two-week walk. They didn’t see it on a phone. Nobody called them. There was no morning paper from Antioch. Somebody walked for two weeks to tell them: you will not believe what’s happening up there. Just as Peter reported about Cornelius, now Gentiles are coming to Christ in Antioch.

So they send Barnabas to see it for himself. Because good news spreads.

When a new restaurant opens and the food is spectacular, word gets around. When an underdog team keeps winning through the playoffs, everybody knows. If an extended family member you haven’t seen in years won the lottery, that news would find you.

And bad news spreads too. Right now we’re saturated with news out of Israel and Gaza. For a year and a half we’ve heard about Russia and Ukraine. This week alone there was a devastating hurricane in Mexico and a mass shooting in Maine. Bad news travels fast.

So let me ask you: what news is spreading about you?

Is it the bad news — that you’re selfish, that you don’t seem to care, that you ignore people, that you’re wrapped up in your own thing, that all you do is talk about how great you are?

Or is it good news — how selfless you are, how you listen, how you care, how you serve, how you sacrifice?

These people in Antioch got named “Christians.” Little Christs. In our day that word has lost so much of its meaning that we generally don’t use it here. We ask a different question: are you living like Jesus lived and loving like Jesus loved?

If not — God’s mercies are new every morning. Today is a brand-new day to confess and say, “God, I want to give all of it to You.” Because news is spreading, and the ears of others will hear it.

M — Many Lives Were Changed

The obvious answer is the people of Antioch, and verse 21 confirms it.

But notice a second wave when Barnabas arrives. Verse 23: “When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose… And a great many people were added to the Lord.”

Which makes perfect sense, because he’s Barnabas. That wasn’t even his name — he was born Joseph. Barnabas was a nickname the apostles gave him meaning “son of encouragement.” Imagine living in such a way that people rename you after your best quality, so that you walk into a room and everyone brightens because you encourage them.

He arrives, starts encouraging the believers, and in the process shares the gospel again — and people on the fringes realize it’s true and put their faith in Jesus. The church roughly doubles.

Then Luke does something slightly odd. Back in chapter 2 he told us about three thousand and moved on. In chapter 4 he told us about five thousand and moved on. If he were keeping his pattern, he’d note the growth here and move along.

He doesn’t. He wants us to see one more specific life change.

Verse 25: “So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch.”

You have to catch up on Saul’s story. On the road to Damascus he had the encounter that shattered everything he believed — there really was a Jesus, He really did die, He really did rise. So instead of arriving in Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus, he started inviting people to follow Him. Then he had to flee Damascus for his life and went back to Jerusalem.

And you can imagine how his former colleagues took it. Saul had been rising fast through the ranks of Judaism, well on his way to becoming a highly influential rabbi. For him to switch sides and join these Jesus people felt like the ultimate betrayal. So they decided he had to be eliminated — he was bad for the cause.

I’m reading between the lines here, but I suspect one of his old friends heard about the plot, still cared about him, didn’t understand a word of this Messiah business, and warned him anyway. Saul told others, they smuggled him out of Jerusalem at night, got him to Caesarea, and he went home to Tarsus.

Now Barnabas is standing in Antioch watching God do extraordinary things. He could have hurried back to Jerusalem with the report. He could have simply stayed, enjoyed it, and helped lead it.

Instead he heads for Tarsus. I don’t know whether he sailed or walked. All I know is he finds Saul and says, essentially, you have to come back with me. And they stay in Antioch for a full year.

Why? Because Antioch was fertile ground. It was the finest apprenticeship Saul could have had — an environment where he could serve, love, and disciple while being loved and discipled himself. Starting in chapter 13 we’ll watch how God uses him, but he needed this year first.

That’s one more life changed. And because of what God did in Saul in Antioch, he gets sent out, travels the known world, sees countless people come to faith, plants churches, and writes a substantial portion of the New Testament we’re still living on.

All because Barnabas went to Tarsus.

The Sunday School Teacher

Does the name Edward Kimball mean anything to you? It didn’t to me either.

He was born in Massachusetts in 1823. After high school he taught in public schools for a few years, then at twenty-three his name ended up on a carpet dealership. Carpet was a new and growing industry, and he made a good deal of money.

In the 1850s it would have been easy to be a decent man, run your business, attend church on Sunday, and call that a life. For Kimball that wasn’t enough. He took the mandate personally. So he served at his church — and he took the class nobody wanted: the rowdy teenage boys’ Sunday school class.

One Sunday there was a new kid. Kimball asked the class to turn to the Gospel of John, and this boy had no idea where John was. He opened his Bible to the front and started working through the table of contents, and the boys around him began to laugh.

Rather than embarrass him, Kimball simply handed over his own Bible, already open, and said, “Here — why don’t you stand up and read for us?”

That boy was so struck by the kindness that he came back the next week. And the next. For a year.

A year later Kimball stopped by the shoe store where the young man worked, and in the back of that store he shared the gospel with him — probably not for the first time. But this time it landed. The eighteen-year-old gave his life to Jesus right there.

Now you might say I’ve failed my own acronym, because that’s one life, not many.

Except that young man was D. L. Moody. He went on to become one of the greatest evangelists America has produced. It’s estimated he preached the gospel to more than a hundred million people — a record that stood until Billy Graham surpassed it more than a century later.

So yes: many lives were changed. All because a businessman decided to spend himself on a room of teenage boys, and one of them believed.

Kimball didn’t act like it was all about him. But he also refused to believe the lie that God couldn’t use him.

He was one of them.

Be One of Them

I want you to be one of them.

That means giving your life to Jesus and taking this mandate personally. It means praying and trusting that the hand of God will be with you. It means praying that the good news spreads, and praying that many lives will be changed.

Maybe it won’t be you who changes the many. Maybe you’ll be like Kimball and you’ll change one. But maybe the one you change is the one God uses to change the world.

God can do it. Will you give yourself to it?

Some of us like our lives. We like our schedules, our families, what we have — and it’s frightening to open those up. If that’s you, start smaller than surrender: God, I’m willing to be made willing.

And if you’ve been carrying the lie that you aren’t good enough, let it go. His image is in you and His Spirit is in you, which means He can do anything He wants in you and through you.