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Published October 31, 2022

The Power of the Word

This morning we want to tackle a fairly large passage of Scripture – approximately two chapters in the book of Acts – but we are going to go through it fairly quickly. Today we want to take a bird’s eye view of the first official missions trip recorded in the Bible.

You’ll recall from a couple of weeks ago, the church in Antioch was told by the Holy Spirit to appoint two men – Barnabas and Saul – for the special work that God had called them to. At this point, we’re not told exactly what this special work would be, but as we read on, we discover that it would include traveling over 1400 miles to visit dozens of towns and cities, preaching the Gospel and planting churches all along the way.

This would be no small task, so to assist them in their journey, they would take along John Mark – who was a cousin of Barnabas and the eventual author of the Gospel of Mark.

This first missionary journey is recorded for us in Acts chapters 13 and 14 – and as I said, that is a lot of Scripture to cover in one sermon, so we are going to go though it fairly quickly. We won’t be looking at each verse in detail, but rather, we want to zoom out and try to see the big picture. What are the themes and what are the principles that we can learn about life and ministry as we look at this first missionary effort?

So naturally, there will be lots of good bits in these verses that we just won’t get a chance to look at today, but that just means there are lots of great things for you discover in your own personal study of these chapters later on!

Now we have already looked at some parts of Acts chapter 13. Two weeks ago, we went through the first 5 verses that talk about Barnabas and Saul’s commissioning as missionaries. Then last Sunday, Mike took us through a big chunk of Paul’s sermon in the middle of chapter 13. So we won’t rehash all that stuff. But there are four main stories that come out of these two chapters, and so that’s what I want to look at today.

The first story takes place in Paphos, so let’s begin reading in Acts chapter 13, starting at verse 4, as Barnabas and Saul first leave Antioch. It reads like this:

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God’s Prevailing Purposes

Last Sunday, Luke, the author of the book of Acts, gave us a snapshot of life in the early church. And he gave us two contrasting examples of both the good and the bad.

First of all, Luke told us about a man named Joseph – otherwise known as Barnabas – the Son of Encouragement. Filled with the Holy Spirit and motivated by love for the church, he sold a field he owned and gave the money to the apostles to give to the needy within the church. This was a great example of the generosity and care for each other that was common within the church in those early days!

But in contrast to Barnabas, Luke then goes on to tell us about another couple – Ananias and Sapphira. With hearts filled by Satan and motivated by pride – they also sold some land and gave the money to the apostles. However, they kept some of the money for themselves and decided to lie about it to the Apostles (and really, to the Holy Spirit) – claiming that they had given everything, when in fact, they had not. For their deception and as a strong warning to the rest of the church, the Lord stuck them both death.

Their sudden and dramatic deaths would have been quite a shock to the church, I’m sure! In fact, verse 11 tells us that…

11 Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened.

Acts 5:11

And that verse kinda sets the stage for the rest of the chapter. As we finish up Acts chapter 5 today, we’re going to see that God continues to do some amazing things in and through the church, and people just don’t know what to make of it all!

Are these followers of Jesus good or bad? Are they doing these amazing things with trickery and slight of hand or is God really behind it all? And perhaps most importantly, is their message of faith in Jesus merely empty ramblings, or is it really the Gospel truth?

Those are the questions that everyone was asking, and those are the questions that Luke wants you to consider as well!

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Remembering the Gospel

Most people are pretty intimidated by any words that end in ‘ology’. When we hear things like ‘neurophycology’ or epidermeolgy’ – our eyes almost immediately gloss over – assuming that this topic is far too complex or complicated for us to understand. That’s stuff for people with PHds – We best leave that for the experts to talk about.

So when we hear the word ‘theology’ we might be inclined to react the same way. We might think theology is just something for pastors (and Brian) to talk about. It’s something that is studied in Bible school or Seminary – but it doesn’t really have a place in every day life. Theology is something you discuss with your professor – not your kids or your co-workers.

That’s often the concept we have of theology, but that’s not the case at all!

The word theology simply means “the study of God.”

Just like how we study life in biology or we study the stars in astronomy – in the same way, we study God in theology.

Theology is our attempt to understand who God is and what He is like and what He is done.

And theology is critical for every Christian. Without theology, we would know nothing of Jesus. We would know nothing of the cross. We would know nothing of our own sin. We would know nothing of salvation. We would know nothing about anything of eternal value!

As Christians, if we claim to know and love God – theology has to be part of our lives.

I mean, really, how could we love a God that we don’t know?
How can we obey God without knowing his instructions?
How can we honour and glorify God without knowing what things bring Him honour and glory?

Theology is critical to the Christian life.

Now that being said, I understand that ‘theology’ is still an intimidating word. Even for those of us who went to Bible school, when we hear the word theology, we probably envision a big thick textbook, filled with words like ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification’ and ‘propitiation’ – and we’re feeling lost even before we get started!

But that’s exactly why I’m so excited for this sermon series that we’re starting today. Sometime ago I order a book called “Visual Theology” by Tim Challies and Josh Byers. And the idea behind this book is to help people grasp the keys ideas in theology by presenting them in an easy to understand way – complete with lots of visual aids in the form and style of infographics.

I thought this would be a cool ‘coffee-table’ kind of a book that I could just leave out and people might flip through when they come over to visit or whatnot. But when I got the book and read through it, I enjoyed it so much and I found it to be so helpful to me that I wanted to share it with you.

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Tag: preach

The Power of the Word

God’s Prevailing Purposes

Remembering the Gospel