Sunday, June 9, 2024 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Let's go to the

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Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before You today and we give

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You praise. We give You thanks. We honor You. You are our

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Creator. You are our Provider. Everything is according to Your sovereign will.

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And You graciously reveal Yourself to us in Your Son and by Your Spirit.

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That we would know You and worship You. That we would rejoice in Your truth.

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You have made us in Your image. That we may live by Your Word.

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So we pray today that You would nourish us. That You would encourage us.

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That You would fashion us after the likeness of Your Son, Jesus Christ.

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The one with whom You are well pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your

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Bibles and turn with me to Acts. The book of Acts, chapter 14. And we will be reading verses 19 -28 this morning.

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Acts chapter 14, verses 19 -28.

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In this last portion of Paul and Barnabas' missionary journey, we are seeing the extremity to which

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Paul and Barnabas went both in terms of distance and in terms of faithfulness.

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What they had to go through, not just where they had to go to.

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And as we think about all that Paul and Barnabas have done so far to come to this point and to face these types of troubles and yet to continue on to catch our attention and make us ask the question, why?

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Why would they continue? And even ask the question, how? How could they possibly continue despite all of this?

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Makes us think about the priority of making disciples. That it was worth the trouble.

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Worth the risk. Worth the lost relationships. Worth all the time.

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Worth the physical suffering. Even worth laying down one's life to make disciples.

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We are told in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 -20,

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Jesus came to his disciples and said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And lo,

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I am with you, even to the end of the age. And this mandate is repeated more than once in the

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New Testament. Clarity about what our main objective should be. What we ought to be about.

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With all manner of assurances that God would equip us because of his

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Son and by his Spirit to do that which he has called us to do. To make disciples. And as I think about the storyline in the book of Acts, I was thinking of a great way to summarize everything that has happened thus far.

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And thinking about a way to speak to that which is still on the horizon in the book of Acts.

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As we are at the midway point of the whole book. And Mark chapter 16, verses 19 and 20, serves as a wonderful summary of the book of Acts.

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This is what it says. So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, that was the

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Great Commission, he was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

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What do we hear all the time in the book of Acts? Jesus is Lord. He ascended to the right hand of the

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Father. He is reigning. He is the King. The acts of the apostles are really the acts of the risen

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Lord Jesus Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit. In verse 20 of Mark 16,

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And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs.

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Amen. That's an excellent summary of the book of Acts. Everything that we've looked at so far and anticipation of what's to come in the latter half of the book of Acts.

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Well, I invite you to stand with me as we read God's Holy Word. Acts chapter 14, verses 19 through 28.

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This is the word of the Lord. Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there, and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned

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Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city.

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And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying,

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We must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God. So when they had appointed elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the

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Lord in whom they had believed. And after they had passed through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.

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Now when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Adaliah. From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed.

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Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them and that he had opened the door of faith to the

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Gentiles. So they stayed there a long time with the disciples. This is the word of the

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Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Have you ever noticed in the parables that Jesus told that the folks who made excuses never fared well?

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Think about the disciples listening in to Jesus. The crowds listening to Jesus, thinking about the parables that he tells.

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In his stories that he tells, those who make excuses, they just never end up well, do they?

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One might say, Oh, the Master has a long time coming. I'm just going to do whatever I want. Someone may say,

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Well, I deserved more. I worked more. Others worked less. Someone might say,

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The Master is unfair. But none of those characters in Jesus' stories did so well, did they?

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Making excuses is not very Christian. Making disciples, on the other hand, is very

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Christian. We can't say we didn't know. We can't say we weren't told.

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We can't say we weren't ready. These excuses, they don't hold water. There are no excuses that can survive the grace of Jesus Christ.

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No excuses that can survive the grace of Jesus Christ. Consider Paul. If anybody had an excuse to pack it in and go home, it was

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Paul. I mean, he was on the run. They kicked him out of Antioch at Pisidia.

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They kicked him out of the entire region of Pisidia. He goes to Pamphylia, and he gets chased out of Iconium.

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Death threats, plots against his life. He travels days, journeys away.

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He comes to Lystra. He gets there, and he's trying to preach the gospel. And instead of hostility, he finds a bunch of Gentiles who think he's some sort of God.

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And so they try to offer sacrifices to him. Like, Oh, great. If I'm not getting chased,

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I'm getting worshipped. This whole thing is just a mess. And then the Jews, who were days' journey away, marshaled resources and came marching all the way to Lystra just for the opportunity to kill

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Paul. If anybody had an excuse. Paul had already, by this point, done more than a vast majority of the saints.

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Gone more, seen more, said more, done more. And he just got stoned and left for dead.

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Body battered, bruised. He could have said,

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Well, my cup is full. I've got no regrets.

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I gave it all. I'm going to go ahead and pack it in. Making disciples in the name of Jesus Christ is our utmost priority.

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Making disciples is what we're called to do, not excuses. And we are to make disciples by faith and by hope and by love.

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We went through this entire passage last time and considered the aspect of faith. The faith by which we make disciples is, first particular, it's very well defined in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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It's also personal, something that we actually do have to believe and entrust ourselves to Him.

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And a powerful faith, one that gets past the hurdles and crosses finish lines.

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We are also, in making disciples of Christ by the power of Christ, we are to make disciples by hope.

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Hope. It's not just a matter of holding on, knuckles turning white, refusing to let go of the essentials of the faith, refusing to deny

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Christ despite what may come. It's not simply knowing the gospel and being clear on the gospel.

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These are all essential matters of faith in making disciples, but we also are to make disciples by hope.

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Hope. If faith is the light by which we see things clearly, hope is the movement of our orbit.

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The planet in revolution around the sun keeps moving, keeps progressing, keeps spinning.

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Hope is a confident expectation. And we find in our passage a stalwart hope, a stated hope, and a satisfied hope.

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In verses 19 through 21, again, think about Paul and Barnabas, what occurs and their response.

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Verse 19, then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there. These are the same Jews who got angry, who plotted against Paul, and now they are gathered together, come all the way to Lystra, and look, they persuade the multitudes.

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And these are the same multitudes who had, some time earlier, had tried to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas because they thought that they were gods.

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And now they're being persuaded by Jews, who are the most anti -idolatrous kinds of folk you could ever think of.

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They hated idols, they hated idolatry, and now they're working with these

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Gentiles in Lystra. They persuade the multitudes, and they stoned

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Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead.

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However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city.

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And the next day, he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. Now notice that he went back into the city, and then you think, well, he'd have to have some place to convalesce, try to recover.

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But the very next day, and this is just a miracle of God, that he was able to survive this stoning and even the next day be able to travel, they head off to Derbe.

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And you say, well, that's probably wise, Paul. You need to get out of Lystra. You need to get even further away from Antioch and Iconium and Lystra, and go to Derbe.

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Shake the dust off your feet off of that place, and you just go on to Derbe and preach the gospel there.

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Greener pastures over there. But then we read verse 21. And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch.

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Now what kind of mindset do you have to have to go back?

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I think it would be absolute folly for Paul to go back to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch if his hope were not tethered and anchored to Jesus Christ.

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This would make no sense. What value system can make sense of this?

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Except that wherein Christ has the preeminence. Where Christ is supreme.

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Think about Paul. Paul the Apostle and his calling.

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Back in Acts chapter 9, we have Paul being confronted by Jesus Christ.

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And Paul is, or his name goes by Saul of Tarsus at this time. And Jesus sends one of his servants,

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Ananias, to go to Saul of Tarsus, who has been confronted by Jesus Christ.

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And in verses 15 and 16 of Acts chapter 9, the Lord said to Ananias, Go, for he, talking about Saul, he is a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before Gentiles, before nations, before kings, and the children of Israel.

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For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. This was

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Paul's calling. He was supposed to go do these things. This is what God wanted him to do.

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This was the scope of his ministry, according to the grace that God would supply to him.

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And, therefore, he was to expect this, all part of the program. In chapter 13, verses 2 and 3, we read about Saul and Barnabas being commissioned to go out and do this very thing.

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So as these folks were ministering to the Lord at Antioch of Syria, verse 2, as they ministered to the

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Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which

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I have called them. And having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

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So Saul was told by Christ, this is what you are supposed to do.

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And then Saul and Barnabas here are commissioned by the church in Antioch, and they pray over them.

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The Holy Spirit sends them out. And so they are commissioned by the church to go. And so he has all this momentum behind him as he goes out.

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And then things go wrong. Things go sideways.

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People get angry. They start plotting to kill you. And Paul keeps just going on.

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He has a hope because what was it? This was the work that Christ gave to him to do.

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This is the work that the Holy Spirit sent him out to do. There is a confidence here, a confident expectation that the work that Christ has begun, he is going to accomplish.

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So there is momentum there. There is movement there. In 2

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Corinthians 12, verses 9 -10, Paul clarifies his hope.

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His hope is not in his skills and his endurance and his ability to be a good traveler and his education from Gamaliel or his unique position within the church.

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What is the hope of Paul? 2 Corinthians 12, verses 9 -10.

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The Lord said to me, My grace is sufficient for you.

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My strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

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Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake.

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For when I am weak, then I am strong. When these things come upon him, when limitations are made evident, when the impossibilities become center in Paul's mind, when he is made most aware of his weakness, there is this chuckle that arises from hope that says,

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Watch this. Watch what happens next.

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Because the strength, the power of Christ is being made manifest in the weakness of Paul.

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A stalwart hope. Our orders are clear. Our assurances are abundant.

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God's grace is sufficient. A stalwart hope. But also a stated hope.

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Paul put it this way in verse 22. Now, remember, he's gone back to Lystra, back to Iconium, back to Antioch.

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He's going through the, every single one of these landing zones is hot, live fire, walking straight into it.

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And what does he have to say to the disciples? What does he have to say to the church members, to these places where he had planted churches and he's coming back to encourage them, still bearing the bruises, the marks of serving

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Christ on his body, and he walks back through there, and he has to say something to these

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Christians who are also facing like persecution against themselves. What does he say? He strengthens the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying,

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We must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God. It is not a bug.

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It's a feature, he says. Now, all throughout the gospels and throughout the book of Acts, we keep on hearing this phrase, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom.

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And it's very clear about how one enters in positionally into Christ who comes into the kingdom.

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It's by repentance and faith, the graces of God. Jesus said, If you wanted to come into the kingdom of heaven, you repent and believe in the gospel.

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Very clear. So Paul is not stating to these saints who are already Christians, who are already members of the church, baptized members of the church, pointing to the bruises on his own body.

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Recently, it had just been stoned. He's not saying to them, The only way to be saved, entering in positionally into Christ, is through your personal suffering.

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That you have to go through a whole lot of personal, toilsome, tragic kind of suffering in your own person before you are therefore made fit to come into heaven and be saved.

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That's the way the Roman Catholics read it. The essential nature of purgatory. You have to suffer and go through all these things personally before you're ever made fit and worthy to go to heaven.

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That's not what Paul is preaching. He's already a Christian. He's talking to those who are already Christians. And he's trying to explain to them why they're having a rough time.

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It's about time, the times in which they lived.

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He means, he's talking about the timely transition of the testaments.

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That's what he's talking about. He's talking about the timely transition of the testaments. It is a tumultuous time.

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The new covenant has come into effect. The body and blood of Jesus Christ. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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The new covenant has shown up. The Holy Spirit is indwelling the new covenant believers. All these prophecies concerning the

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Messiah are coming true right in front of everybody's eyes. And yet, at the same time, the old covenant is still chugging along.

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It's kind of like the times of David and Saul. There is Saul, the anointed king of Israel, and yet the prophet has told him that the

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Lord is tearing away the kingdom from you. You're still king, you're still the anointed king of Israel, but the Lord is tearing the kingdom away from you.

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And he's going to give that kingdom to another one, a man after his own heart, who will do his will. And so all of a sudden you have anointed king

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Saul, bitter, angry, jealous, envious, violent king Saul, who is disturbed by demons, and he hates

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David, and he's persecuting David, and he's chasing David everywhere David goes, because he knows the arrival of this new anointed means that his days are numbered.

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And that jealous, tumultuous period where Saul's kingdom is coming to an end and David's kingdom is starting is archetypal for what we're looking at here.

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The timely transition of the Testaments. Who are jealous? Who are envious? Who are violent? Who is pursuing who?

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It is the stewards of the old covenant who are angry at those who have come into the new covenant.

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They think it belongs to them, so they're chasing them down. They're angry. They're pushed along by violent impulses.

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And there's going to be a manifestation, a clarity, of who is reigning as king when the old covenant passes away.

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And this is what Paul is saying. We're in the entrance of the kingdom of heaven. Daniel 2 .44

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says, In the days of these kings, in the days of the Roman kings, the kingdom of heaven would come and be established. And so Paul is saying,

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Look, Jesus said it. The prophets said it. This is just the way it's going to be. And this entrance into the kingdom of heaven in these early days of the kingdom of heaven is just going to be tribulation and tumult.

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That's what Paul is talking about. I take the time to explain this and try to encourage you because we are not to take from this that should we find ourselves in a healthy church with a loving family, with the

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Lord providing, and things at peace, the gospel progressing, and good things happening all around and our hearts full with joy and thanksgiving, please don't think that something has gone wrong.

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Amen? Don't think something has gone wrong. Paul is talking to that audience about what's going on in their time period.

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But also, if you find yourself in an age of persecution, if you find that family abandons you because of your faith in Jesus Christ, if you find that you suffer loss and are often called upon to defend the faith at risk to yourself, please don't think that something has gone wrong.

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God's grace is sufficient. God's grace is sufficient.

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There's a stated hope. Even as we look around at whatever situation we're in, we must always remember who is king, who is reigning, and what the plan is.

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Thirdly, it is a satisfied hope, and we see this in verses 23 through 28. Just notice how everything is wrapped up.

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And I want to make a few observations about these verses. So, when they had appointed elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the

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Lord in whom they had believed. And after they had passed through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.

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Those are like regions, like counties. They came to Pamphylia.

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Now, when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Adelaide. Those are two port cities down on the coast of the

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Mediterranean Sea. From there, they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed.

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Now, when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them and that He had opened the door of faith to the

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Gentiles. So, they stayed there a long time with the disciples. Now, Paul and Barnabas had gone through the

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Isle of Cyprus and preached the gospel from one end of the island to the other. They had sailed from there and went up to Perga, and they had traveled up into Antioch at Pisidia.

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They had gone over to Iconium and Lystra and Derbe, which means they were going through the region of Galatia. Remember the New Testament letter to the

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Galatians? It's this whole area. And it was not an easy trip.

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It was difficult. There were setbacks. There were problems.

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But when you read how the journey ended up, how it all came together in the end, we find

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Paul and Barnabas resting. You see them resting, right?

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They came back and reported how well God did. They came home, and they didn't talk about John Mark abandoning them at Perga.

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They came home, and they didn't talk about the persecutions of Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.

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They came home and talked about how good God did. Verse 27, they reported all that God had done with them and that He had opened the door of faith to the

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Gentiles. What a perspective! They came home to Antioch in Syria, to that large

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Christian gathering of Gentiles and Jews, a foremost church in this early church period, and they reported and said, there was an open door!

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I'm pretty sure you got chased out of several cities, and you got stoned, and there was all kinds of problems.

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But Paul says there was an open door. What does he mean?

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He means that the nations, the Gentiles, were being saved. They were being saved on the island of Cyprus.

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They were being saved on the Mediterranean coast. They were being saved throughout the mountains of Galatia. They were being saved in the highlands and the lowlands, on the seashore and on the islands.

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The nations were being saved. They were so excited to share that.

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And notice that they rested. They said, here's how good God did, and then they stayed there in Antioch a long time with the disciples.

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They weren't anxious and fretting. They weren't, well, we've got to go back and try to fix it because there's all sorts of problems.

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Things aren't coming together exactly right. There's a lot of challenges that they're going to face. They rested.

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They were satisfied. Why? Because, as we've already read, the new believers and the elders that were appointed and ordained in each church, they were all in Christ's hands.

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They were commended unto Christ. Paul and Barnabas are leaving. They say, we're leaving you, and we're leaving you in the hands of Jesus Christ.

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You're going to do great. That's hope. That's hope.

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And Paul and Barnabas could go home to Antioch and just rest. Because their hope was not in themselves.

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Their hope was not in the elders that they had ordained. Their hope was not in the church members and whether they were going to see things through.

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Their hope was in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ said,

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I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

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Let me ask you a question. In what kind of hope do you make disciples?

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In what kind of hope do you train children? In what kind of hope do you counsel your friends?

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In what kind of hope do you partner with others in the study of God's Word?

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When you read the Bible to someone, do you do so in hope? When you pray with somebody who is in need and in concern, do you pray in hope?

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When you take the Word of God and share it with somebody else because you've been reading and are blessed, or they're in need and you want to speak to their need according to the truth of God, do you do so in hope?

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What kind of hope do you come in? What hope do you leave them with?

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Because you're going to have to leave them with something. What hope do you leave them with?

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What hope do you have that says something about the

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Savior Jesus Christ? How do you approach your discipleship? Please do so in hope. In particular, the hope of Jesus Christ.

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Well, we are to make disciples by faith. We are to make disciples by hope. And we are to make disciples by love.

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By love. Now, in this passage, we find that the saints just keep on gathering together.

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So there's a gathering love. We also find that the saints just get up and go. They go to new places.

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Or they go to old places. But they're always going. So it's a going love. And we also find that there are

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Jews, and there are Gentiles. But they all love one another because of who has saved them.

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So we find that it is a gospel love. First of all, it is a gathering love. Look at verse 20.

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And this is not a very auspicious gathering, but it does mean something. In verse 20, after Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city and left for dead, we find that the disciples gathered around him.

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Now, when somebody gets publicly executed, those who come to honor the publicly executed all receive the social bullseye on their back.

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But they don't care. They love Paul. And their brother was just publicly, unjustly, violently, apparently murdered, but God raised him back up.

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He didn't perish. And they wanted to be with him. Like the exhortation in Hebrews, remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them.

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Because the Christians who were put into prison had no clothing and had no food and had no water, no access to any kind of care for their personal needs.

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And so only the Christians would go to the Christians in the prison and give them what they needed that they would survive yet another night.

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But by doing so, they put a target on their back. Look, they gathered, even when it was incredibly risky to do so.

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The governing authority said, if you gather together, you might just die!

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And the Christians said, uh, it's okay. We'll still gather.

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We worship Jesus Christ, who has the keys of death and Hades. So they gathered together because they love

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Paul. Verse 23. So when they had appointed elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the

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Lord in whom they believed. They got together, the ordained elders in the church, they prayed together, they fasted together, they commended them to the

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Lord. This is what Christians do. They gather in love.

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Same thing in verses 27 through 28. Paul and Barnabas get back to town.

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They come back to Antioch, and then they gather the church together.

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Hey, we want to share how good God is and what He did. It's a gathering love.

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The disciples, you see, they keep on gathering for more discipling. It's a gathering love.

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Jew and Gentile devote themselves to one another's good in the right way, even if it costs them. They're gathering and gathering and gathering.

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Why gather? Paul continually points out the deficiencies of distance discipleship.

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How often in his letters is he writing to people whom he loves, and he's saying, man,

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I wish I was with you. Oh, this is just terrible. I'm making plans to come see you, or I would like to make plans to come see you.

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People risk their lives to send personal messengers back and forth between the churches or back and forth between Paul and prison and wherever the churches were.

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There was such a priority placed upon the gathering of the saints.

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We gather for Christian good. We gather for Christ's glory.

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Hebrews 10. Verses 24 -25 calls these

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Hebrews, these Jewish Christians who are thinking about going back to the old ways and finding it a little bit easier to operate and a little less persecution on their back, and so on.

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The temptation is what? To stay away from the Christians. To stay away from the gatherings.

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It's just easier that way. It's just too hard to gather together. Too many problems get caused.

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I think this is Paul preaching and Luke writing. Verse 23, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for He who promises is faithful.

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And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much the more as we see the day approaching.

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Did you hear it? Faith, love, hope. So essential that the gathering continues.

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Jesus said, By this all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another. And they're not ever going to see that love until they see the

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Christians together. Make disciples by love.

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And that means gathering. Gathering in more than one way to be sure, but there is a gathering that has to take place.

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And there has to be a going. Of course, we see Paul and Barnabas going. We see them going from Antioch of Syria to Antioch at Pisidia.

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We see them going all the way to Derbe and all the way back through strengthening disciples as they go.

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The apostles just keep going and they preach to sinners and they make more disciples.

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They encourage the saints. The going you see here is for the sake of gathering.

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They're going to gather with more saints. I'm going to go over there, but it's for the purpose of gathering as well.

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A love for Christ sustains our going. And then our love grows for those for whom

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Christ died and was raised. Now going is going to look different, but it's going to feel the same.

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Going looks different, but it feels the same. Going across the street to gospelize your neighbor, hey, good news,

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Jesus is risen from the dead and he's reigning as king. Have some cookies. Would you like to come over and have a meal with us sometime?

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Now that feeling of going across the street is the same feeling as going across the ocean.

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Looks different, feels the same. But what sustains going? What sustains the going of calling that family member with whom you are at odds, gospelizing your estranged relative?

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What sustains that going? It is not a love of self. It is not a love even for other people.

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It is a love for Jesus Christ that sustains that. A going love. And when we make disciples, let us make going disciples.

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Thirdly, this love is not only a gathering love and a going love, but a gospel love.

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Now in verse 22 we read that Paul and Barnabas strengthened the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying we must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God.

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All they've been preaching is the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom. So they're drawing their attention to putting their suffering in the context of the good news of the kingdom.

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Keeping the focus there. Verses 26 and 27. When Paul and Barnabas got home, they sailed to Antioch where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed.

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Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them and that he had opened the door of faith to the

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Gentiles. Remember, this is the Antioch. This is the Antioch where the saints were first called

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Christians. This is the Antioch which was split apart in a city -wide civil war between Gentiles and Jews.

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They were killing each other. The bloodbath got so bad that the Sanhedrin sent troops from Jerusalem up to Antioch to try to quell the violence.

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Even more blood was shed. And it was here at Antioch where the church first had a whole bunch of Gentiles and a whole bunch of Jews at the same time.

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And they were loving each other while their neighbors were planning on killing each other.

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This is the Antioch that when they had a whole bunch of Gentiles as part of this church and they heard that there was going to be a famine down in Judea and their

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Jewish brethren were going to be hard up for food. They were going to need help.

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And they gathered together offering. They gathered together supply. And they sent it by the hand of Saul and Barnabas down to bless their

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Jewish brothers. This is that Antioch. How is it that here in this third largest city in the

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Roman Empire where you have people of such different backgrounds that they can love one another in this way and even reach out to people who are different from them and to share love with them?

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It's a gospel love. It's a gospel love. It's about who Jesus Christ is, not about who we are.

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Whether in difficult mission fields of Galatia or at the home base in Antioch, the love of the saints centers on what

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Jesus Christ has done and what He continues to do. As we read in Sunday School in Ephesians chapter 2,

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He has broken down that middle wall of separation and He has made out of two one man, one body. It is because of the good news of Jesus Christ.

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It is because of His person and work. Because of His merits. Because of how pleased the Father is with the

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Son that we have fellowship. We are to love the saints and make disciples based on the good news of Jesus Christ.

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Now when we read through this passage, Acts 14, 19 -27, it wraps up a missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas.

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And all throughout we can see what we are to do, the ingredients of making disciples. We are to make disciples by faith, to make disciples by hope, to make disciples by love.

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Those are the triad of Christian virtues. Remember Paul writing,

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Now abide these three, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

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This triad of Christian virtues are not to be separated from one another and only one focused on at a time.

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They go together. Always together. Even though love is the greatest of them, they always must be together like a river.

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Faith is like the shape of that river, the banks, the curves of the river that gives it its shape, its distinctive shape.

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That is faith. Faith gives us our distinctive shape of who we are, what we believe, the boundaries of everything that we hold to.

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That's the shape of the river. That's faith. And hope, of course, a river that doesn't go anywhere is a lake or a pond or a puddle or maybe something called the

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Dead Sea. But hope is like that gravitational incline where the river is on the move.

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There is a current. There is movement. There is direction. We're heading someplace. We're heading to a place where the knowledge of the glory of God will cover the face of the earth as the waters cover the sea.

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We are heading to Jesus Christ, reigning until all of His enemies are placed as a footstool for His feet, and then

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He's going to come back to beat death. We are heading someplace, and it's a wonderful place.

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We have all this to look forward to. Hope is a direction, is a movement.

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But if you happen to find a very wide, very distinctly shaped feature in the ground that is slightly inclined, but there is no water, you have found yourself a ditch.

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Because the very first thing you think of when you think of a river is water.

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The very first thing you think of when you think of a river is water. Not its shape, not its incline.

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The very first thing you think of is water. And the very first thing you should think of when it comes to Christianity and making disciples and living as a

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Christian is what? Love. It's love. Now, these abide, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.

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Love is the defining characteristic of being a Christian. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another.

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And so let us make disciples by the grace of Jesus Christ. And let us remember the grace of Jesus Christ is a river of faith and hope and love.

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Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this day that you have given to us. We thank you for this priority that we find in your words so clearly exemplified in the life of your apostles.

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We are to make disciples. Make disciples by your grace and for your glory. We pray that you would help us to do that.