WWUTT 2627 The Gospel Goes to Antioch (Acts 11:19-24)

After Stephen was martyred, there were Jewish Christians who went throughout the Roman Empire sharing the gospel. And by the providence of God, most people spoke a common language so that they could hear the gospel and be saved.

When we understand the text.

The Ministry Introduction and the Gospel’s Spread After Stephen

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Hey, once again, it's Pastor Gay.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come back to chapter 11. We read yesterday about Peter coming back to the Jews and reporting to them that the gospel has even gone out to the Gentiles and the Holy Spirit has fallen upon them.

Well, now we read in the latter half of chapter 11, how the gospel will truly go out to even more Gentiles beyond the regions of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Now we're heading out to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch.

So let me read to you from verses 19 to 30, hear the word of the Lord. So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen, made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone.

But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them and a large number who believed turned to the Lord.

Now the news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch, who, when he arrived and saw the grace of God, rejoiced and began to encourage them all with a purposeful heart to remain true to the Lord.

For he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith and a considerable crowd was brought to the Lord. And he left for Tarsus to search for Saul. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch.

And it happened that for an entire year, they met with the church and taught a considerable crowd. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Now, in those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them named Agabus, stood up and indicated by the spirit that there was going to be a great famine all over the world.

And this took place in the reign of Claudius. And as any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the service of the brothers living in Judea. And this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul to the elders.

And that's the remainder of chapter 11. Now, when we get to chapter 12, which we'll look at next time, I don't think we'll finish chapter 11 today. This will be between today and tomorrow. But then next week, Monday, when we come back to Acts and we're looking at chapter 12, we come back to Peter in the story.

So even though Paul gets mentioned and Paul is getting brought into the missionary work in the section that we're looking at today, it doesn't mean we're shifting from the action involving Peter now to the mission of Paul, which will be the rest of the book of Acts.

So remember, I had said to you at the beginning that we were kind of focusing on Peter for about the first half of Acts or close to it anyway. And then we shift to Paul after that, but we're not there yet.

We still have more to hear about Peter, which we'll get to next time. But for this last half of Acts 11, just as I said at the very beginning, we're witnessing now the gospel going out to the ends of the earth.

The Gospel Going to the Ends of the Earth

This is the start of the ends of the earth. The ends of the earth being everybody else that's outside of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. So those were the first three places where the gospel had gone.

Jesus had said at the beginning of Acts that you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That was where they were already. You're gonna go back into Jerusalem and you're gonna wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And we saw for several chapters there, the apostles were in Jerusalem sharing the gospel. Thousands of people are coming to Christ because of the miracles that are being done. And they believe in the gospel that is being preached.

They put their faith in Christ. They are baptized by the thousands. But then Stephen was persecuted and we see the gospel go out from there to Samaria and the rest of Judea. It was already spreading into Judea from the Jews that were there in Jerusalem, but now it's even going out to Samaria.

Because remember Philip, one of those deacons along with Stephen went up into Samaria and was preaching the gospel there. Peter came up there along with John and they performed many miracles and baptized and the Holy Spirit fell on them.

But we're still seeing mostly Jews or the closely associated Samaritans that are receiving the gospel. It's not until Peter comes into the household, the household of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. And he preaches to these Gentiles, Cornelius being a Roman centurion and all the rest of his home.

And they believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit had fallen upon them showing that they truly had this faith in Christ manifesting a miracle in them. They were speaking in tongues. And so Peter and the Jews who were with him, they witnessed this and they're astonished that the Holy Spirit has come even to Gentiles.

So what we have next, this isn't necessarily in chronological order. So it's not like what we read in chapter 10 with Peter preaching at Cornelius' home and then he goes to the Jews at the start of chapter 11 and reports back what he's witnessed.

The Jews are pushing back on Peter because they're like, you went into a Gentile's home and you ate with them. And then Peter reveals the vision to them and shows the Holy Spirit has come to them too.

So these Jews who are also Christians, they also rejoice in God seeing, okay, so the gospel is going not just to us, but even to the rest of the world. And what we see there in that first half of chapter 11, like we looked at yesterday, they rejoiced in this.

They glorified God. So Acts 11, 18, when they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God saying, well, then God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life. So the reaction that we see from these is not prejudice toward the Gentiles.

It's not bitterness toward God. Why are you saving them? What are you doing? I thought this was a special thing for us that you were calling your people back to you, but you're gonna save Gentiles too?

No, the reaction from the Jews is to praise God. Really? Really? The gospel is going to Gentiles also? God has granted to them also repentance that leads to life. And we've seen it before where Jews would become very jealous of Gentiles.

In fact, the apostle Paul says in Romans 11, this is a chapter I just recently preached through in my church. Paul says one of the reasons why Gentiles are being saved by the gospel is to make Israel jealous because they already have this feeling of we're the chosen people of God.

But when they look and they see other people who have been brought to God through the hearing of the gospel, this is hopefully to make the Jews jealous seeing that it's come to Gentiles so that they will repent and they will turn to Christ and they will be grafted back into Christ as talked about there in Romans 11.

These Jews here are excited. They love hearing this report that has come from Peter. At first, they're a little skeptical and they're even rebuking of Peter. Why are you eating with these Gentiles? But then as Peter delivers this message to them, they rejoice seeing that the gospel is now going out to the world.

So what we have in 19 to 30 isn't necessarily the events that happen immediately after Peter's report back to those Jews. It's close, like it's happening pretty close to the same time, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're moving the action just to the next event that takes place.

Because what we read here in verse 19 is that those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch. Where, excuse me.

Well, where did we read about what happened to Stephen? That was in chapter seven. That was where we had the speech of Stephen and then he was dragged out of that place and he was stoned to death. And then after that happened to Stephen, then the Christians become scattered.

That starts out in chapter eight, but we haven't talked about that yet, or we haven't talked about that since rather, until we get here to chapter 11. So it's mentioned there in eight that the Christians are scattered because of the persecution that has occurred.

And so it's like Luke, who is the writer of Acts, brings us back into that action after everything else that we've read, including the conversion of Paul and Peter going to the house of Cornelius and you're seeing conversion that's happened to the Gentiles and so now this is being mentioned here.

So Peter going to the household of Cornelius was happening at the same time that this stuff was already taking place in Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch. So it's not like Peter saying to these Jews, well, the Holy Spirit has also come to these Gentiles, has now made them go, oh, well, okay then, let's go spread the gospel to the Gentiles.

It's more a narrative action. It's more a narrative decision that Luke has made in after talking about this explanation that Peter gave to the Jews that the reader would then hear from Luke going, yeah, so let me tell you about what else was going on elsewhere in the world, that the gospel was going to Gentiles.

However, when those Jews had gone back to their respective locations, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, et cetera, it says, the rest of verse 19, they spoke the word to no one except Jews alone. So it did begin first, this mission work after the persecution began first with Jews.

So it's Jews speaking to Jews. They didn't associate with Gentiles, remember. Peter has this vision of going to Gentiles and sharing the gospel. But he's like, I can't do that. Even says in the household of Cornelius, you know, it's not right for Jews to come into the homes of Gentiles, but the Lord has told me this is okay.

And the vision that was revealed to him is that he could eat whatever is put in front of him and not to call it unclean, which God has cleansed. And so when the Jews confronted him in Acts 11 .3, they said, you went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.

And so same thing is going on here with the Jews that returned back to their homes in Phoenician, Cyprus and Antioch. They are not associating with Gentiles because that means, well, then we'll be defiling ourselves.

We'll be eating their food and we cannot do that. So the distinction, the separation still exists there. It has not been yet revealed to them by the spirit that they should be speaking to Gentiles also.

The Gospel to the Greeks in Antioch

Verse 20, but there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus. Now this may very well have been public evangelism.

So whereas Peter is told by Christ to go into the home of Cornelius and share the gospel with those Gentiles in their own home, here, where it talks about some of the men of Cyprus and Cyrene, they come to Antioch, they begin speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus, that was public evangelism.

So they are going out with the gospel in public places and speaking to the Greeks because these are very Greek places. There would have been Jewish settlements there, but these are Greek locations where these Jews have gone back to.

Now, if you look at this on a map, you have Judea that is more toward the south. So Judea, right near where the Dead Sea is, south of the Sea of Galilee. So you have in between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea you've got Jerusalem in there.

So that whole region being Judea. Little bit to the southwest of there, you go through Gaza and on into Egypt. Remember, it was on the road to Gaza that the Holy Spirit had placed Philip to encounter the Ethiopian eunuch and share the gospel with him.

And the Ethiopian, of course, is gonna go back through Egypt and down to Ethiopia where he would even take the gospel back to his fellow countrymen, probably even Queen Candace, whom he was in the service of.

So that was a spread of the gospel is going to the southwest. When we read that about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, this is a spread of the gospel that's going to the northwest and straight to the north.

So you go out from Judea through Samaria to the north, past Galilee, you get into Phoenicia. And to the northwest, or even immediately to the west of Phoenicia, out in the Mediterranean Sea is the island of Cyprus.

And to the north of Phoenicia and to the northeast of Cyprus is the city of Antioch. So if you're looking at this on a map, it creates kind of a triangle. And this is showing the general region. What Luke is writing here in Acts 11 is showing the general region where the gospel goes after the scattering of the Jews following the death of Stephen.

So they're going into this area of Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. But speaking the word to no one but the Jews alone. However, some of them men of Cyprus and Cyrene came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks, also proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus.

Little bit about Antioch, because this becomes a pretty important city in some of the missionary things that happened in the book of Acts. The apostle Paul will go there. He will come back there. So Antioch was founded about 300 years before Christ by one of Alexander the Great's successors.

I can't remember his name, but I know it was one of his successors that founded the city and named it after his father, Antioch. And it sits on a river. It's actually not a coastal city. You might be able, when you look at a map, you might identify it as being a coastal city because of how close it is to the Mediterranean Sea, but it's really 20 miles inland, though along a river, so that would make the transportation of goods from like a port off of the Mediterranean up the river and into Antioch.

That would make it a little easier, but Antioch itself was not on the Mediterranean coast. Now, by the time the Roman Empire comes around, because remember, 300 years before Christ, you don't have the Roman Empire yet.

You have everything that Alexander the Great has conquered. By the time it comes into the Roman Empire, it's the third largest city in the empire. Only Rome and Alexandria are bigger. You've got nearly a million people that are in Antioch and the surrounding area.

I think in Antioch proper, it's about half a million, but you include everybody else around there, even those that would have lived and done business in the region between Antioch and the Mediterranean Sea, you're talking about a million people.

So this is a major commercial hub. It was at the intersection of a lot of different trade routes. You had diverse ethnic groups that would have been there. So we talk about this a lot with regards to Paul's missionary journeys to places like Ephesus and Corinth and Athens, because those definitely were major centers of trade, and there would have been a lot of ethnic diversity there, but this is definitely the case in Antioch also.

And the city that would have been the closest to Jerusalem. Again, with the exception of Alexandria, I guess, because that would be going in the direction of Egypt. So there in Antioch, there is a large Jewish community.

It is the capital of the Roman province of Syria. There's a blend of Greeks and Syrians, Jews, Romans, and many others. And the chief language spoken there would have been what? What is the language they were most likely speaking at Antioch?

Not most likely, it was. This was the chief language they spoke there. It was Greek. It was Koine Greek. Now, the Greek language was something that Alexander the Great had decided he wanted his entire empire speaking.

So he comes up with Koine Greek. And the Romans actually liked this so much. When they took over and built their empire, they loved what Alexander the Great was doing, trying to get the entire world to speak the same language that they went ahead and adopted it themselves.

So they continued to press reading and speaking in the Greek language, writing the Greek language. Though the Romans, what did they primarily speak? Do you remember? The Roman language would have been Latin.

So the Romans still spoke Latin, but they also spoke and wrote Greek. And a lot of the things that they were writing down and preserving in their history, the things they were encouraging other people within the empire to speak and deal in, all of that was Koine Greek.

Now, this is by the providence of God that the Greek language would be so prominent at that time so that you have a bunch of different people from a bunch of different backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, et cetera, that have come to a single place like Antioch, and yet all of them are able to hear and understand the gospel because it's spoken in Greek.

And you have these devout men who were Jews, but Christians, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, they come to Antioch, they begin speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus. That's what we have in verse 20.

And the hand of the Lord was with them and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. Now the news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem and they sent off Barnabas to Antioch. Remember, we've already met Barnabas.

He was in Acts chapter four as someone who was very revered by the apostles, who sold his land and he laid down his money at the feet of the apostles. Well, then what happened next was the story of Ananias and Sapphira, where they actually held back some of the money, but made it look like they laid all of the money that they made from the sell of their field at the feet of the apostles, but because they lied, the Holy Spirit struck them dead.

Barnabas is set in contrast to Ananias and Sapphira. As a faithful, truthful man, his name Barnabas means son of encouragement and he was a Cyprian by birth. That was what was said back in Acts 4 .36.

So where are we here? We're at Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch. So this is the very place where Barnabas is from. When the news comes to Jerusalem that Gentiles are hearing the gospel and the good news is being spread there, they send a guy that's native to the area.

Somebody that would have known the location better, would have been able to connect with these Jews. Maybe they knew who he was and he's able to relate to the Greeks that are there. The men, the apostles there at Jerusalem, they're probably thinking of this in terms of, who can we send who's gonna be able to associate with that people and those people will receive him when he comes.

And they thought it's gotta be Barnabas because he's from Cyprus. So he sent that way and verse 23, when he arrived and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with a purposeful heart to remain true to the Lord.

For he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith and a considerable crowd was brought to the Lord. Now we'll stop there. We'll finish the rest of this section tomorrow because what happens next is that Barnabas goes and fetches Saul, that he would come with him to Antioch and the gospel spread would continue as Saul had been appointed to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

We'll talk more about that when we resume in Acts 11 .25. But in the meantime, we rejoice again, as I had mentioned yesterday, and knowing that the gospel of Jesus Christ has come even to us. And at this particular time that we're reading about in Acts, there's a common language that the Lord is using so that the gospel would spread to many more.

Well, even in our day and age, there are instruments at our disposal that God uses so that the gospel can reach more people. And in fact, you're listening to one of those tools, podcasts, the internet, the way that the gospel can go out this way.

We've seen the internet do a lot of dangerous stuff, a lot of sick and disgusting stuff, in fact, but praise God, he does redeem tools like this for his purpose so that the gospel can go forth. And what a great thing that we have at our use that we can use this to help others come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

And it is my pleasure to continue to teach these things day in and day out on this podcast, as I have opportunity to, because you know I've missed some weeks here and there. But I desire to do it every day, continue to proclaim Christ, and I hope it is a blessing to you, and it's something that you can use to share Christ with others.

Prayer for the Gospel’s Advance and the Closing Sign-Off

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read, and I pray that we continue to remain true to these things and desire that others would know these things and hear the good news of Christ who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

May your gospel continue to go forth, and Lord, how you can use us to advance that gospel. May we be ready and full of courage to do so for the sake of the souls that still need to hear the good news of Jesus and be saved.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.