They Were Called Christians

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Acts chapter 11 tonight, Acts chapter 11. I had my messages mapped out really from the beginning of the year to the end, and got to the Sunday night series that I was going to start this week, and it was going to go into January, and I thought, I don’t feel like I’m quite ready for that. And so I was looking for, been looking for something to talk about tonight.

I’ll let you know when I come up with something. but as I was talking one day this week Charla and I sat down for lunch or dinner I don’t know one of the two I know there was food and there was talking really that didn’t even have to be confined to meal time it could have been any time of day with food and talking but as we were talking the subject turned around to a passage she had read that day talking about the disciples first being called Christians at Antioch. And I thought, well, there’s an interesting passage to look at.

We’re going to look at that one tonight, because after she talked about it, it got my brain sort of spinning in circles, where I went and studied on it. And I think there’s some good instruction for us in there as well, about these people who were first called Christians at Antioch. For a long time, I thought the word Christian wasn’t used in the Bible.

I thought that was a great response to people who said, well, the word Trinity is not even in the Bible. That’s an argument for the Trinity being unbiblical. My response, this was many years ago, but my response at first was, well, the word Christian’s not in there either. Yeah, it is.

Unfortunately. Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. But it’s in there three times and this is one of those.

It wasn’t widely used among the disciples. It was actually something that was applied to them by people who were from the outside. They looked at these people and they applied the term Christian to the disciples.

We take for granted the word Christian. We’re Christians. It’s our religion.

It’s who we are. I’ve been saved. I’ve been baptized.

I go to church. I practice this faith. I am a Christian.

For many people, yeah, we’re Christians. We go to church twice a year, Christmas and Easter. Or we’re Christians because we’re from a European background and we’re not Muslim.

we’re not really atheists people use the word Christian in a lot of different ways but the word Christian has a very definite meaning in the beginning to be called anything with that suffix meant you belonged to that person I’ve heard various interpretations of the word Christian from this passage where they were first called Christians I’ve heard people say the word Christian means little Christ I’ve heard people say that it means Christ-like. I’ve heard people even say that it means of the party of Christ. What’s the party of Christ? Everybody was divided up in the early days by who they followed.

I’m one of the Pharisees. I’m one of the Sadducees. Excuse me.

I’m a follower of Caesar. I’m a follower of the Zealots. I’m a follower of this group or that group.

And to be part of that party meant you were part of that, you know, sort of like parties nowadays. parties nowadays in America have gotten to the point where we’re almost radical. You know, I’m this side and you’re that side, and so we can’t even talk to each other. I heard on the radio the other day they were talking about how depending on the parties, and it may not be so much here in Oklahoma, but depending on what party you’re in or what political line you fall into, we buy different products.

And I said, give us six months of your grocery history, and we can tell you probably who you voted for. That’s insane. We’re not watching the same shows, listening to the same news, buying the same products.

We live in parallel worlds. They were kind of that same way. Maybe not so in your face and against each other, but everybody was lined up behind somebody.

You were with the radical Jews. You were with the Romans. You were with somebody.

So that idea of the party of Christ would be somebody who I fall in line behind Jesus Christ. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter, folks, it doesn’t matter what the exact translation is of the word Christian. All of those explanations fall into the category of somebody who follows Jesus. Whether you’re a little Christ, meaning not that we are the same as him, but that we look like him, we resemble him, we do what he.

. . You know, like I hear sometimes people in my family say Benjamin is a little Jared.

Well, he is his own person. He’s a different person. But I see lots of my mannerisms of him.

So whether we’re called a little Christ or Christ-like or of the party of Christ or any of these other things, they all fall into the category of somebody who follows Christ. And up until then, the disciples had called themselves the disciples. They’d called themselves believers. They referred to themselves as those in the way.

And it was at Antioch that the people around them looked at them and said, that’s who you are, you’re Christ followers. And it started out as kind of a name-calling thing. It was name-calling for a reason, and it stuck.

And I think we need to rediscover what it really means to be not just a Christian as a religion, but a Christian as our identity, who we are, that we are first and foremost. Before we’re Americans, before we’re conservative, liberal, moderate, before we’re black, white, before we’re any of these things, we’re followers of Jesus Christ. And so we’re going to look at a few verses here in Acts chapter 11 tonight to see what it was that was going on when they were first called Christ followers, when the world first looked at them and said, there are those Christ followers, what it was that was going on and what they were doing and what we can learn from it. Starting in verse 19 of Acts chapter 11, it says, Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phinus and Cyprus and Antioch, preaching the word to none but the Jews only.

And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. So, if you’ll recall, if you’re familiar with the story, there was a persecution that arose. Saul, who later became the apostle.

Paul was a big part of that. Stephen was martyred for his faith. He was the first Christian martyr, not counting the Lord Jesus himself.

He was the first Christian martyr, and a persecution arose where the church at Jerusalem scattered throughout the known world. Because God had told them, you’re going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the uttermost part of the world. And it was kind of like with the Tower of Babel.

God said, you’re going to go forth from here. And the people sort of went, no, we kind of like it here together. And God said, okay, I’ll scatter you.

We could do this the hard way or the easy way. And they chose the hard way. And so God scattered them.

God allowed them to be scattered through persecution. And those who went, we know from where it talks about this earlier in the book of Acts, we know that they went forth carrying the word everywhere they went. But we see in Acts chapter 11 that a lot of them went because they were Jewish background believers.

They went and they carried the gospel. They carried the message of the resurrected Christ to other Jews, which is great. But there’s a whole segment of people.

There’s a majority of the world’s population you’re leaving out when you say we’re going to talk to the Jews only. So as they went to these areas, they carried the gospel to only the Jews, and many were saved, and we can thank the Lord for that. But finally along came some of these men who were of a Greek background and heard the gospel, and Cyprus and Cyrene, and they began to share the gospel with, it says, the Grecians.

That’s Greeks, but it doesn’t just mean Greek people. It doesn’t mean people just from Greece. A lot of times when we see the word Greek in the Bible, it means the Gentiles, anybody who’s not a Jew.

And so these people came to Antioch and they began preaching the gospel to everyone. I think there’s a lesson in there for us as well that we tend to want to reach out to the people who are just like us. Whether we realize it or not.

I mean, I think sometimes we are afraid of reaching out to people who are too different from us. Stay away from that part of town. Oh, don’t you know the reputation that guy has?

He’ll never listen to you. And we do that, and we rationalize these things. But these people were willing to go to somebody different.

They went to the Gentiles. And thank God that they did, because we wouldn’t. I mean, unless somebody in here is of a Jewish background that I don’t know about, we’re all Gentiles.

And without people like this who are willing to go and carry the message of the Jewish Messiah, who is the Savior for the whole world, and carry that message to the Gentiles, we wouldn’t be here today. We wouldn’t be sitting in this building, and big deal that we’re sitting in this building, we wouldn’t be sitting in this building saved by the grace of God, if somebody hadn’t gone to the Gentiles. And they went to the Gentiles, not telling people you’ve got to follow the Ten Commandments, you’ve got to act Jewish, you’ve got to go through all these rituals.

They went preaching the Lord Jesus, it says. And the hand of the Lord was with them, verse 21, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. So when they began preaching to the Gentiles that were at Antioch, multitudes of these people, these people who were like, that were considered to be dogs, these people who were strangers and aliens from God, began to turn to him, began to repent in droves and trust the Lord Jesus as their Savior.

Then the tidings of these things, verse 22, the tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was at Jerusalem. There were still some people at Jerusalem, and they began to hear about what was taking place at Antioch, because news spreads. I mean, they may not have heard later that day, because they saw it on Twitter, but news was going to get back to Jerusalem that there was a revival going on at Antioch.

And it says, and they sent forth Barnabas that he should go as far as Antioch. Now, wisely, they didn’t say, oh, this is great. They said, okay, let’s check this out.

And I say wisely because not everything and everyone that claims to be working for the Lord Jesus really is. And they wanted to go, before they supported this movement in Antioch, they wanted to go make sure that this was real. They wanted to make sure that these weren’t false teachers, that this wasn’t some cult getting started. And so they sent Barnabas to go to Antioch and check it out.

Verse 23, who when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. Barnabas got there and he saw that this was genuine. He saw that people really were responding to the gospel.

And people’s lives really were being changed. And people really were being converted. And the power of the gospel was changing things in Antioch.

And he saw that and he was glad for it. He wasn’t jealous saying, y’all are growing faster than the Jerusalem church. You’ve got to shut this down.

None of that. He was glad for the work that God was doing at Antioch. And he exhorted the people.

He encouraged them. He encouraged them to purposely and specifically, it says, cleave to the Lord. Say that we are going to stick with the Lord.

Follow him as closely as we can. Verse 24 says, for he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. And much people was added to the Lord.

So the church there continued to grow. not because they were entertaining not because of anything else they were doing other than telling people about Jesus. It almost seems like it’s too simple, doesn’t it?

There should be more to it than that. When you tell everybody about Jesus somebody’s bound to respond. Somebody’s bound to respond.

Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to seek Saul. So by this time the guy who started the persecution has already become a Christian and now Barnabas is on his way to go find Paul. And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch.

Think about this. The guy who comes to help out at your church is one of the ones who started the persecution that led the missionaries that started your church to flee for their lives. Imagine that.

Sometimes we read these stories and we forget just how incredible God is at changing people’s hearts. God took a terrorist. God took a religious terrorist and sent him to help with the church that got started because he had terrorized them in Jerusalem. And when he had found him, he brought him into Antioch, and it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught much people.

They came and helped out. Wouldn’t that be an awesome problem to have, that we have so many people coming to Christ that we need to bring in help to get them all taught and discipled? That’s what they had to do.

They had to go call in Paul. And if we would tell people about Jesus as readily and as often as they did, we might have the same problem as well. I don’t tell you that to be ugly.

I’m saying that for my benefit as well. I look at this and think, how did that church grow so fast that they had that problem? Oh, maybe if I was sharing Jesus as often as they were, we might have that problem.

And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. As the church grew, as the church prospered, as it proclaimed the gospel, people looked at them and said, y’all are Christ followers. That’s who you are.

That’s what you’re doing. You’re just a bunch of Christ followers. And some of the people might have meant it as an insult, but it’s honestly the greatest compliment that any of us could receive to have somebody recognize and say, you’re a Christian without us having to broadcast it.

Now, when I say not broadcasting it, I don’t mean we should hide it. I don’t mean that we should be silent about it. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t tell people about Jesus.

But we shouldn’t have to go tell everybody, look at me, I’m a Christian, I’m better than you. For them to realize that we’re believers, we should live in such a way that they know it. It should be evident.

Jesus, in John 13, said, By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. That by our love, by our compassion, by our demeanor, there should be something about us that people should look at and realize they must be followers of Jesus. And then earlier in the book of Acts in chapter 4, it says, Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.

The people heard Peter and John speaking and realized these are these dumb fishermen from down the way. And here are how they preach. And here are the things that they say and teach.

They must have been with Jesus. I’m not saying everybody has to stand out on the street corner on a soapbox with a megaphone. But there ought to be something different in our lives that people look at us and go, Wait a minute, wasn’t that he had to have been with Jesus?

He has to have been walking with Jesus. Because look at the difference from here to now. There should be something about us that’s different that the world notices even before.

We should tell them. We should tell them about Jesus Christ, but there should be something about us that is different that the world notices even before we’ve had the opportunity to tell them. And it says in verse 27, And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch, and there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be a great darth throughout all the world.

That means a famine throughout all the world, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. So it’s recording here, he stood up in the church at Antioch and prophesied a word from God that said, there’s going to come a famine throughout the Roman Empire. The whole known world is going to be hit with this famine.

It’s going to be coming. And obviously it’s going to be worse in some places than others. And it even records here that it was fulfilled in a certain period of time.

It was fulfilled in the days of Claudius when he was the emperor of Rome. So they heard about this famine that was going to strike. And when it actually did strike, it was so bad in Jerusalem that it says in verse 29, then the disciples, every man according to his ability determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt at Judea.

Now it says the whole known world was going to be hit by this famine. But evidently Judea, apparently Jerusalem, that area was so particularly hard hit by the famine that even the people at Antioch, who presumably were going through the same thing, said, wait a minute, they are so much worse off than we are. Without it being asked, they take up a collection, and everybody gave what they could to help relieve the church at Jerusalem, to help care for the people in Jerusalem and help their ministry continue.

Which also they did, verse 30, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. So this is just a little snapshot in time at the ministry at the church at Antioch. and what was going on around this time period, when the people around them looked at them and said, y’all are a bunch of Christ followers.

Y’all are a bunch of Jesus followers. And there were three things that characterized this church, at least that I see in this passage, three things that characterized this church that probably would have made people realize they’re a bunch of Christ followers. And I think if we want to be a bunch of Christ followers today, these would be good practices for us to follow as well.

First of all, they couldn’t stop talking about Jesus. They could not stop talking about Jesus. I bring this up all the time, but I want you to think of some news that you’ve had in your life that was so good you couldn’t stop telling people about it.

Can you think of something? It may have been a while back. Something like a new baby or a new grandbaby.

Good news, right? A new job or a promotion. Maybe you’ll have won the lottery.

If you did, see me afterwards. We’ll talk. Some good news.

So amazing news that you just, you can’t help but tell everybody. We’ve probably all had those moments. I hope you’ve had a moment like that.

Where you’ve had some news so good you just couldn’t keep it to yourself. People might even ask you to stop talking about it, but you just couldn’t. That happens to me.

We know you told us. For them, the fact that Jesus had died on the cross and been buried and rose again, leaving the tomb empty and was seen by his disciples and rose from the dead promising forgiveness of sins, that was news that they could not stop talking about. They were destined for an eternal hell separated from God.

And because of what Jesus did without any good that they’d done on their own, they were now promised, they were now assured of eternal life in heaven with God. I can’t think of anything more incredible than that. And with that news in mind, they could not stop telling people about Jesus.

We’re running for our lives from persecution. They went telling people about Jesus. We’re going to go to other cities and tell people about Jesus.

We’re going to go to people who are completely different. And we’re going to tell them about Jesus. We’re going to go to those scary old Gentiles and tell them about Jesus.

They just couldn’t stop talking about Jesus. They loved talking about Jesus. There are things that I love talking about.

I love talking about my children. I love talking about the Bill of Rights. my wife can attest I love talking about I love talking about history I should be as excited more excited about what Jesus has done for me than any of those things and I should delight in talking to other people we should delight in telling other people the story of what Jesus has done for us.

See that was one of the hallmarks of this church, one of the characteristics of this church that made other people look at them and say, a bunch of Christ followers. They could not shut up about Jesus. They could not stop talking about him.

They could not quit telling people about him. Second of all, they were eager to show compassion. When we look at the end here, and it talks about the famine that was taking place in Judea.

Now, when it says that in Judea, when it says that the whole world was undergoing famine, that could mean the whole globe. More likely, I think it means the whole Roman Empire in this context. The whole known world was undergoing this famine.

Either way, Antioch was going to be hit by the famine. But evidently, Judea was hit harder. And so these people, even though they’re suffering, even though they didn’t have a lot, nobody asked them, they were just excited and jumped at the opportunity to show compassion to somebody else.

That ought to demonstrate us as a Christ follower. That ought to mark us out as somebody who follows Jesus. You would do this for me?

You would give me this to meet my need when you don’t have anything either? That doesn’t make sense, but we do it because we love Jesus and because Jesus loves people. This was a church with a major heart of compassion.

And not just for the other believers, but for the world around them. And it’s easy for me to get hard-hearted sometimes, maybe for you as well. These people were eager to show compassion.

It’s not just about giving money. It’s not just about giving food. It’s just about showing compassion in whatever way God has given us opportunity.

Sometimes that means giving people money or food. Sometimes that means that we’re there to cry with somebody when they need to cry. Sometimes that means that we’re the ones helping them when everybody else has turned their back on them.

Whatever door God opens for us to show compassion, if we’re Christ followers, we’ll be eager to show compassion to those who need it. And finally, they had a good reputation. They had a good reputation.

When good things started happening, when God started working among these people and incredible things were starting to happen, work got all the way back to Jerusalem. I don’t know if you realize this or not, but they’re not right next to each other, Antioch and Jerusalem. Antioch is in what’s now Syria.

And in the part of Syria it’s in, you’d have to go through Syria and Lebanon and all the way through the northern part of Israel down to the middle where Jerusalem is to get there today. Even today it would be kind of a long trip. And in their day they had to ride on an animal or walk.

But God was doing such incredible things through these people. And he was using these people in such incredible ways that their reputation spread all the way down to Jerusalem. The Jerusalem church heard what was going on and they had to check it out because a good report had come back to them.

As people who follow Jesus Christ, We should have a good reputation in our community. That may not mean that they’re always going to like us. That may not mean they’re always going to agree with everything that we say, especially as we’re moving into a time where the whole culture just is getting further and further from God.

And you’ve heard the controversy. I haven’t looked into it a lot, but I’ve heard bits and pieces on the radio this week. Because I’m old school.

That’s how I still get my news is from the radio. but I heard rumblings on the radio this week about some house show, house flipping show where, you know, what am I trying to say? The hosts of some show about house flipping, the media is all aghast that they go to a church where the pastor believes that homosexuality is a sin.

Who thought there were Christians who still believed Christian things, right? but who knew there were Christians who still believed the Bible? How dare they?

We’re all about freedom and diversity until somebody says something we disagree with. We’re in a culture now, ladies and gentlemen, where people are going to look at us and say, they’re crazy. They believe that.

They’re not just about homosexuality, about any number of things. Wait a minute. You believe we shouldn’t kill our children?

You believe that we should be faithful to our spouses? You think we should work for what we have? the Bible teaches us to believe some crazy things that are out of step with the culture.

And as we go down that road, the world’s going to look at us and they’re going to think we’re crazy about some things we believe. And they may even be mad about some things we believe. And you know what?

That’s okay. As I’m fond of saying, they have the right to be wrong if they want to. But they should look at us and say, those people are crazy.

Look at how they love us. Look at how genuine they are. Look at what’s happening with them.

Look at the things that they’re doing. If they believe in God, because there are a lot of people who profess to believe in God, but don’t believe the Bible. Look at the things God’s doing with them.

You know what? They can think we’re nuts and we can still have a good reputation. They can hate us and we can still have a good reputation.

I’ve told you before in talking about the Mormon church, I think their doctrine, I think their teaching is absolutely bonkers. absolutely opposed to the Bible in many, many areas, in many important areas. And I’m not encouraging you to go be a part of it, but in terms of their family values and their culture and the way they raise their children and the actually following through with what they profess to believe, sometimes I think they may have a better reputation than evangelical Christians.

So I can look at them and even though I think some of the things they believe are nuts, they can have a good reputation with me. that’s the point I’m trying to make here the world can look at us and think you’re crazy I don’t like the things you believe I may not even like you but my goodness good things are happening here as the world look at us and say they’re crazy but they’re such nice people they really believe the things that they say they believe they follow through the things that they preach or do they look at us and say that’s a hypocrite or those are the meanest people I’ve done some things recently that put me in the meanest people category. I told some of you on Wednesday night about dealing with the Mormon missionaries and then I thought afterwards I shouldn’t have told them what I did for a living.

Folks, those three things will characterize us as Christ followers. If we tell everybody, if we can’t stop talking about Jesus, if we’re eager to show compassion to other people, and if we have a good reputation with the community, they’ll look at us and they’ll say, we must be a bunch of Christ followers. There’s a question that I heard years ago.

Apparently Jimmy Carter was asked when he was a kid. It was in a sermon. If it became illegal today to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

And evidently he was convicted by that question. I was convicted by hearing that question secondhand. And I think about that all the time.

Is there enough evidence to convict us? Is there enough evidence to convict me? So I leave you with the same question.

Is there enough evidence to convict us of being Christ followers? Would the world look at us today as individuals and as a church and say, aren’t you Christ followers? Whether they mean that in a good way or a bad way, would they recognize us as being people who follow Jesus Christ?

And if they look at us and don’t see people who follow Jesus Christ, what do we need to do to rectify that?

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