The church at Antioch, where believers were first called Christians, was characterized by its commitment to preaching the Word and its evangelistic outreach. This commitment, demonstrated through both public mass evangelism and individual lifestyle witness, was essential for the church's growth and marked it as distinct. Furthermore, the church was well-taught, with apostles like Paul and Barnabas dedicating a full year to instructing the disciples in the Scriptures through reasoned dialogue and clear exposition. The church's inclusivity, reaching out to both Jews and Greeks without barriers, and its reliance on full-time workers for spiritual needs, are presented as vital components of a successful and growing Christian community.
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I'm really glad that Paul took opportunity to introduce himself. I was planning on doing that if he didn't. Those of you who were at Corona's this past summer will remember in that opening ceremony where we brought in the eternal coffee grounds and lit that flame again that we had fifteen seconds of silence with Mary at my side. for Paul who was far, far away. This is the Paul sitting next to Mary who will make music together in the music department at Emanuel.
That's sweet. Have I embarrassed you yet? Close? Keep trying. We will. Acts chapter eleven, please. As we continue to look at this church where they first became known as Christians. The thing that initially is seen here is that the church was born out of persecution. The founders preached, having been persecuted for preaching the Word of God earlier on in Jerusalem.
The point is not that persecution is needed, but that rather the commitment that persecution demonstrates is needed if a church is to function. And beyond the basic principles or categories of faith, beyond those cardinal truths of salvation that are the faith once for all delivered to the saints, There are those other functioning dimensions of church practice to which the saints in Jerusalem and here in Antioch were committed, to which we must be committed as well, that mark us out as somewhat distinct.
Not only was the church at Antioch committed in the sense of being dedicated to the truth of living Christianity, They were a church that was marked by preaching or evangelism. In verse nineteen, preaching the word. Now there's more to that phrase and we'll elaborate on that directly, but preaching the word. In verse twenty, the concluding statement, preaching the Lord Jesus. There are two things.
characteristics that church planters say mark out successful churches and some will say one is more important than the other to have a successful growing church there must be numerical increase this through evangelism the church at Antioch was that kind of a church the other dimension that is frequently cited is that a successful, a growing church must have sound teaching. And we'll see that Antioch has that as well. These are not competitive concepts. They are supplementary.
For a church to be successful, there must be a commitment to the preaching of the word in an evangelistic sense. There must be concern for the law. Paul Little has been quoted earlier. He used to call the concept of witnessing and testifying and evangelism the sys of Christianity. And that's true. Nothing quite as exciting as sitting down with some person and bringing them from darkness to light.
And if you have a church that's characterized by individuals who are concerned for witnessing to the unsaved and bringing them to faith in Jesus Christ, there'll be little time for those petty little difficulties that we get involved in when all we have is you and me and a few others. Because there'll be such excitement and enthusiasm as new members are added to the body of Christ. And we'll be concerned with the growth of babies instead of with those little things that can be a source of irritation as we live in this rather isolated Christian ghetto called the church.
And we see that kind of outreach in the church at Antioch. I think we probably see it in two ways. As these men come into the city of Antioch, they go where the people are and they witness to them in some dimension of mass evangelism. I do not expect they rented an arena and had people come in, but they went where the people were, whether it be the marketplace or the forum or some such area where there could be testimony in a public kind of a way.
These were part of the people who turned the world upside down. and they witnessed in a public way. That is really the gift of evangelism. The ability to present the claims of Christianity, the message of salvation in such a way that a person will respond in faith. Not everybody has that kind of public, mass, out-front kind of spiritual gift. We need those in the assemblies. And I'm certain there are more of those that have the gift of evangelism than we generally think. I agree with Ross that evangelism, the evangelistic gift, has fallen into disuse in the assembly.
It is not one that is honored as it once was. Now it is teach, teach, teach, teach, and I'm off with that. That's my business, quote unquote. I'm for teaching, but it's not the only gift to be exercised. And there is the need for evangelism in the sense of the evangelistic gift where somebody in this room most certainly has that gift of evangelism. And the methodology to meet the masses in their community must be found so that the church can grow through new people being added through salvation. There is the other dimension of evangelism that touches us all.
In which we are all in our own world. In those settings where we rub shoulders with the unsaved. To be that witness through style of life. Through vocalization where that opportunity is there. When anyone asks you a reason for the hope that is within you. That we respond in such a way. To adorn the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are all witnesses in that dimension. there then is the twofold impact of a church that is successful. Evangelistic outreach carried out by the evangelist in public, in mass kind of ways, and the individual testimony that we are all responsible to carry out.
And the two come together as I witness through life being a non-evangelist. As I witness through life through how I conduct myself, through character traits. And a person sees a difference and asks for the reason I witnessed to that person and put the whole gospel out at that point. He may not come across the line. Then is the opportunity to get that person in touch with the evangelist in the assembly who has a special gift of bringing a person across the line. bringing a person to the point of, yes, I believe that Christ died for my sins.
The church at Antioch was a soul-winning church. They preached the gospel. And since they, as groups, would be in the marketplace and were observed to be Christians, I am sure they not only preached it in a scheduled mass way, but also gossip. the gospel in their day-by-day experience. And we are called upon to do that. We swing from one side to the other in our thinking and I expect that enough has been said in recent years to talk about the lifestyle that we need to emphasize that a person will never be saved by observing a lifestyle.
That's just the foundation. They need to hear in straightforward terms that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, that He rose again. The lifestyle buys opportunity to say that, and we need to couple both of those. We need to be witnessing people. I expect that part of the problem of success in a local church is I think we may as well face this as we are too quiet about communicating the gospel clearly to the people that we know. And I could ask you the question, when was the last time you put out the gospel straight forward to someone?
And I would suggest that it would probably be a little bit embarrassing to go up and down the aisles and say, when was the last time you witnessed that clearly to someone that they knew that you were talking about salvation and sin and death and hell and trusting Christ for the work he did on Calvary. And I expect for many of us we have to reach a long way back into our history to figure out when we last talked to someone that clearly about salvation. And it's no wonder that people aren't saved now, at least in our circle. But out straight. Don't be ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
And I expect if the Apostle Paul had to write that, there's a tendency to be ashamed of it. We need to be witnesses. We need to be taught people. And the church at Antioch was well taught. We read in verse twenty-six. that when Barnabas found Saul or Paul, he brought him to Antioch, and it came to pass that for a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught many people. And the disciples were called Christians, first in Antioch.
I think these two things are generally the characteristics of growing churches. They are evangelistically oriented. They are well taught. Well taught in the Word of God. Here, talk for over a year by Paul and Barnabas. We'll comment on that directly as well, that year of teaching. Is the Word of God taught in our assembly? As a group, are we taught in the things of God? In another portion in Acts chapter seventeen, when the Apostle Paul is coming to the church at Thessalonica, witnessing at Thessalonica and evangelizing, after meeting with them, we read this concerning Scripture in verse two.
He reasons with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must need to have suffered and risen again from the dead. And that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. Paul in his teaching, according to this passage, and I'm sure it was characteristic of his ministry, did three things. He reasoned, he opened, and he alleged that King James has. The word is laid out in an orderly fashion. Scriptures. Three different dimensions of how the Apostle Paul ministered the Word of God.
And this, I am certain was his custom, I'm certain it's developed out of his ministry in Antioch and other churches in between. He reasons, first of all, that's the word for dialogue. goes back into the history of the Greek philosophers where they would ask questions and get answers back and forth from their students. Dialogue has two people, at least in view. It was not just a one-way street. The mind of the listener had to be engaged in that kind of teaching. And that's important.
Now that word didn't always mean that two people were talking. It came to mean a reasoned presentation. But it always meant that the speaker and the audience were involved in thinking together. That's the kind of teaching that Paul did. The mind was engaged. It was not simply fraught and and easy stories to listen to. The mind, the intellect, the senses were engaged so that there was a diligence, there was a concentration on the presentation, yes, on the reception of the message.
It's a two-way street. The second word that is set forth is the word for opening the Scriptures. to make it clear, to present it in a way that is understandable. And the third word involves an orderly thought pattern so that the concepts that are in Scripture can be understood. Do those words sound like easy words? They're not. And we need to understand that. The teaching of Scripture involves give and take involves concentration, involves a responsibility, can I say this, on the part of the audience as well as on the part of the speaker.
Sometimes the problem is not with the speaker, the problem is with the audience. Now it's easy enough for me to say that, isn't it? But I know as well as you that it's easy to sit down in a comfortable chair on a Saturday afternoon in this room and say, see you later. Easy enough to do that. It takes energy to concentrate and to go through the reasoning processes and to understand and wrestle with what is being said. Now I want to be very frank up front. One of the reasons it's hard to concentrate lots of time in our assembly meetings when the Word of God is being presented is because the speaker is flat out boring.
Is that true? It's true. I know why it's easy to listen to MacArthur. It's got something to say. Chuck's Window's got something to say. And sometimes behind these pulpits, be they made this year or seventy-five years ago, sometimes the folks that stand behind here have nothing to say. Because they don't know beans about the book to start with a lot of times. And it's their turn to speak, and they speak without knowing very much to say. And you and I know that two or three sentences in. This is going to be a long meeting.
Multiplicity of gifts. We'll comment on this down the line. Does not mean that everyone must have a turn at the pulpit. For a person to teach, he must know. He cannot teach what he does not know. And if we do not know Scripture to some extent or another, we're not going to be able to teach it. Now we may be sympathetic to those kind of speakers, and we may be warmed by their efforts, and we may empathize with them as they struggle. but we are not being taught in that kind of setting.
We need to be reminded that the men involved in the beginnings of the Brethren movement have something to say. Because they had studied Scripture, They had, in fact, in many instances studied Scripture in a formal way. They had, in fact, wrestled with original text, and I am not an original text cult-type person. They had paid their dues, and when men like Kelly and Darby and Grant and Macintosh and the rest of the early brethren spoke, they were speaking out of a wealth of biblical wisdom.
they were trained some of them trained in the seminaries of their day all of them trained one way or another in coming to understand scripture so that they could communicate it brilliant men well educated men who had something to say we started that way well taught people because the teachers knew that of which they spoke. And they could reason and open Scripture and lay it out in such a way that it would be understandable.
Now we need to ask ourselves those questions about the ministry that we receive. Is it laid out well? Is it well-reasons? Is it set forth in a logical, understandable way? Can I go away learning from that experience? Now, I want to suggest to you that life in the churches of evangelical Christianity is not geared in that direction presently. The preaching that is most popular is popular level preaching.
I want you to ask a question once in a while when you listen to some of the well-known preachers of our day. What did he tell me about Scripture in all of that? What do I better understand about the Word of God and about the God of the Word from all of that? It makes very little difference. when all is said and done that my father came and visited me at school when my mother ran over my dog in the driveway. You know, that's a nice little anecdote that makes us all cry, but it doesn't tell us beans about the Word of God.
And a lot of the popular preachers of our day tell nice stories that warm our souls that don't tell us anything about the Word of God. And we go out thinking we have been built up in our most holy faith, and we don't know any more about God than we knew when we went in. Now, it's a whole lot more fun to listen to that kind of preaching. It's a whole lot more entertaining to hear those funny stories, and I'm not opposed to funny stories, to hear those funny stories and nice little family-type things. Nice to hear all that. But is it taking scriptures, laying them out, reasoning, opening them up for us to understand?
Ask yourself that question. Do I know anything more about the Word of God now than I knew before? We find that there is a lot of light, frothy, entertaining kind of ministry that really isn't very edifying when all is said and done. What I am saying here is that we need to be well taught, but teaching is a two-way street, not a one-way street. There must be quality presentation by the teacher.
But there must be a concentration to learn by the people being taught. And I wonder if we really want that. I wonder if we get better attendance at films, movies, than we do at exegesis. I know the answer to that. We get better response to a ministry that touches me where I hurt than a careful explanation of the book of Malachi.
But the fact is, if I am to be a mature Christian, it is up to me to know Scripture. so that the Holy Spirit can take that scripture and apply it to my life in the varied situations of life that I come into day by day. There's no way any one person can package scripture so that all of us can get what we need as to the how-to of the application in a message approach. What I need to do is be able to master the book understanding what I'm saying when I say master the book.
But master the book so that when I come into this situation of life, the Holy Spirit can say, here's the part of the Bible that has the principle that relates to that problem. When I come into another area, the Holy Spirit can say, here's the part of the Bible that you know that covers that problem. And spiritual maturity comes when I can have such an understanding of Scripture that the Holy Spirit can bring to mind those principles that apply at any of the varied experiences of life that will be different for every one of us, every day of our lives. Can I take scripture and apply it to life? I can't do that in a vacuum of knowledge.
We must be well taught. And that is a two-way street. It involves quality, platform, ministry. which was characteristic of the assemblies in the beginning. And it involves quality audience participation, which likewise was characteristic of the assemblies at the beginning. We probably have failed to some degree in both of those areas, both in the presentation and in the reception. of the teaching of the Word of God. The bottom line in these two items, a growing solid church is evangelistically oriented and it is well taught.
We notice as well in this church situation that the church was inclusive I didn't finish either of the statements concerning preaching. Let's finish those in verse nineteen it says, Originally they preached the word to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene who when they were come to Antioch spoke unto the Greeks preaching the Lord Jesus. Now there is some debate as to who these Greeks were. Some will say they're Hellenized Jews, that is Jews who had taken up the Greek way of life as opposed to the Orthodox Jew.
And the Orthodox Jew would have very little to do with the Hellenized Jew until here. Or it may be that these were Romans of the Gentile world. In either case, those who were involved in reaching out in the assembly at Antioch, were inclusive of all ethnic backgrounds. They were not exclusive. They were inclusive. There were no barriers between race. There were no barriers between rich and poor. There were no barriers between professional and working class.
They were inclusive, reaching out. into a community and bringing all sorts of people into the body of Christ. Now that is awkward. It is uncomfortable to have to relate to people of different backgrounds, of different nationalities, of different languages, of different cultures. It's hard to know how to respond. It's hard to know how to reach out to them. It's embarrassing. but it's part of Christianity. And this church crossed those natural lines that marked one group all from another group.
You need to be able to do that in assembly life as well. I hope never to live in an assembly life where it is comfortable. That's deadly. to be in such routine and be so much like the person sitting next to me that there's never a challenge, never an ability to adjust or question what I'm doing. One of the things we fall into is that trap of doing things the same way with the same people year after year after year. And there is no change. That's very comfortable.
It's habitual. But I'm not sure it's Christian. reach out into new barriers. I remember Ted saying on one occasion on the ball field up at Carunas, how many generations do you have to be before you can play ball? Good question, didn't it? Good question. Are there ins and outs? Part of the real group, part that aren't quite real, the Church of God is inclusive.
At break time, in between meetings, make it a point to talk to another segment of the assembly instead of the same three or four that's always there. Have you ever seen visitors come in and they stand there wondering who they're going to talk to? And nobody does. That happens. And it's because of this, you're not part of a mentality. It's uncomfortable to reach out. It was uncomfortable for these people to cross that line to either the Hellenized Jews or to the Greeks.
But they were inclusive in their outlook. and we need to be as well to be able to have people come and feel welcome who have some different ideas who do things that are not the same things that we're accustomed to doing doesn't mean we have to do the same but there must be latitude so that God's people can be comfortable with us as we come to witness in this world. They were an inclusive group.
This group of Christians at Antioch, in addition to being inclusive, had individuals with them who gave their full time to the needs of the church at Antioch. Full-time Christian worker at the church at Antioch. In fact, two of them, perhaps more than that. As I talked to Elders, one of the things that elders regularly tell me is they just don't have enough time to do the work.
I think that's true. They don't have enough time. We expect an elder to be able to work as forty or fifty hours to be a good father and husband and likewise carry on all the responsibilities of overseeing the local church. And what that normally amounts to is that we force them into a setting where they can only take care of problems in the local church. Normal pastoral visitation, normal individual teaching, getting to know where a person's coming from. Those things we never have time for. It's problems dealing with this problem or that problem or another problem.
The early church... here in Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament, and we'll support this a bit later, had people who spent all their time caring for the spiritual needs of a local church. Now, on some occasions, that would take the stance of elders. On other occasions, it would take the work of certain individuals as here in teaching and preaching and evangelizing. There is a latitude of involvement that tells us what the early church did was see that the job got done as it needed to be done.
And if you needed full-time elders, there were full-time elders. If you needed full-time teachers and evangelists to get that church going, there were full-time teachers and evangelists. That was the way it was at the beginning of the assembly movement too. There were individuals who were always involved in teaching, some of them independently wealthy, so that there would be no burden on the church. But they were involved in doing that full time, involved in planning churches full time, involved in teaching and ministering the word, involved in pastoral care.
full-time. That's the way we started. And someplace along the line we departed from that to a large extent. Elders who are full-time are as scarce as hen's teeth presently. And only recently in North America has there been a movement toward full-time worker connected with a given assembly. And in short, we have departed from a biblical pattern. We have departed from a pattern that was in place in the assembly movement at the beginning.
And gone to a setting in which many instances, many instances, the job is not getting done. Sometimes we will say to people, we don't have patterns. I hate to admit that. But it's true. And that's an overreaction. Here for a whole year you had an apostle and an assistant apostle, if you want to call Barnabas that, ministering to this church week in and week out. Wonderful experience. And you see prolonged stays by apostles and others.
and sometimes they settle down into one locality and they're there for the rest of the life ministering in that local church. That is not to deny a plurality of government. That's a different question altogether. Now one of the things that saddens me, and we'll be talking to the young people about this down the line, is that it is very difficult for a married couple, a young man to get involved in this kind of biblical full-time work in North America.
There are only so many schools where people can teach. I could start another mass that fast with fasting. It letters every week people wanting to teach in a mass, and some of them very qualified. But there are only so many schools that represent the assembly movement. In fact, there's only one. I'll give you the name of that again if you'd like. There are only so many slots for the teacher. And every year I have students say, Mr. Glock, I'd really like to get into youth work someplace. No place to go.
The stock and trade inces. that graduates of a mass, graduates of Dallas Seminary, yes, when they want to get involved in the Lord's work in a full-time way is you work for a while. You get out there and see what the real world is like, probably a decade. And then if your elders feel led, they'll approach you and ask you to get involved. And by that time, you've lost that person, I guarantee you. And they line up every year. saying I want to get involved and we're suspicious of that kind of person unless they turn our churches into some clergy laity system and we say oh no prove yourself prove that you can be laity first and then we'll make you our quasi clergy and we lose for that reason we lose people who would love to pour their lives into your young people And instead they pour it into something else.
We lose people who would love to teach the Word of God, who know something about it, who have in fact lived their lives already in an experiential way. And we don't give them opportunity to. Because we're suspicious of them, or can't trust them, or think they will make something of their job other than what is biblical. And we have so turned from a full-time worker position that is clear in the New Testament and clear in the history of the brethren movement to a standoffish attitude that says, no, you can't get involved.
Now, we don't have that same mentality on the mission field. We will commend a person to the mission field immediately as a young twenty-year-old And they go out and do a wonderful piece of work for God under the direction many times of a senior missionary. Carry out a great work and grow into spiritual maturity. And we'll do that year after year on the mission field and deny doing that year after year in North America. And I would suggest we're doing what's right on the mission field. We're doing what's wrong in North America.
I would love to see in a setting like a Minneapolis or Chicago where there are multiplicity of assemblies, a combination effort where there can be a youth worker who can spend this whole life relating to our young people. That would be wonderful. And there are people who are qualified to do that. You know some of those kind of people. I do too. And it could turn our young people on fire. for the Lord and for the things of God and for the assemblies as well. In combination effort, we could get teachers, we could have schools, we could have all sorts of teaching instruments where there could be home Bible studies and corporate functions from the various assemblies where, in fact, there could be solid systematic biblical teaching.
There are people out there who would love to do it. Well within the reach financially too, I might say. We don't take advantage of that. Successful churches around the country have schools that are flourishing throughout their weekly schedule. And we can do that too. The people are there. We have the courses to be able to pull that off that we would just not be afraid. of the full-time work. The early church had them. The early assembly had them.
And it gave us our strength. We need to take advantage of that presently, I think. And band together to see that we are taught, well taught, that we are evangelistically oriented because we have something to share with the world out there. this being implemented by full-time workers, not clergymen, full-time workers functioning in others. The rest of these thoughts have been somewhat thought-provoking, more than simply provoking.