Breaking the Mold - 6

This coming Sunday night by livestream at 6 o'clock we will continue our series of missionary videos because we are in missions month and on our first Sunday night we had a video from Tom and Connie Chapman in Chile. Last Sunday night we had a video from Paul Snyder who with his wife Trish and their family are in Radford, Virginia getting strong, regaining their health and making preparations to return to the field when the Lord opens the door for them to do that.

That is very much their desire to be there. And this coming Sunday night we'll be having a video from Mike Webster who is in France. And we're looking forward to that so keep that in mind and join us by computer on Sunday night at 6 o'clock. The Holy Spirit writing through the Apostle Paul told us in Philippians chapter 4, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What a great reminder. Is there a COVID pandemic? Be anxious for nothing but in prayer and supplication make your requests known to God.

Is there tension and turmoil in our society and in the political realm? Be anxious for nothing but commit all these things to the Lord and trust Him. He is almighty. He is all wise. He is more gracious than we could ever understand.

We trust Him in all of these matters. One other announcement that I need to make and that is that Piedmont Rescue Mission will be conducting their greater vision banquet by live stream this year rather than with people present as they have every year for many, many years. And all of us miss the opportunity. We look forward to those annual meetings. And I have been to every one unless I've been out of town. I think I've missed one perhaps two over the years.

But this year, it'll be live on YouTube. And that's tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, November 12 from 630 to 8pm. 630 to 8pm. And you'll want to tune into that you can access it on the PRM website, Piedmont Rescue Mission website. And that's the way to find it.

It will be a YouTube video or YouTube broadcast. Also in keeping with our missions month, I have a hymn by Margaret Clarkson based on John 2021 entitled So Send I You by Grace Made Strong. So send I you by grace made strong to triumph or host of hell or darkness death and sin. My name to bear and in that name to conquer so send I you my victory to win. So send I you to take to souls and bondage. The word of truth that sets the captive free to break the bonds of sin to lose deaths fetters.

So send I you to bring the lost to me. So send I you my strength to know and weakness my joy and grief my perfect peace in pain to prove my power my grace my promised presence. So send I you eternal fruit to gain. So send I you to bear my cross with patience and then one day with joy to lay it down to hear my voice. Well done, my faithful servant. Come share my throne, my kingdom and my crown as the father has sent me.

So send I you. Let's pray. Father, what a joy it is to know the Lord Jesus Christ in saving faith. We marvel. We are astounded at the grace that has rescued us from sin, from darkness, from spiritual death and from eternal destruction. We thank you, Lord God, that you have allowed us to proclaim a gospel to others, the same gospel that coming to our hearts by the illuminating power of your Holy Spirit freed us from bondage and rescued us from sin. And, Father, how wonderful it is that we can proclaim that same message to others, praying that your spirit will do the same work in their hearts that you have done in ours. What a wonderful privilege it is, O Lord, to be in partnership with gospel messengers who fan out across the globe and who preach the gospel in far flung places.

And we thank you for that privilege. And we pray that you may enable us to continue to be faithful to those that we have committed ourselves to in this work of missions. We pray now, Lord, that you will meet with us tonight as we gather by way of live stream and that Jesus Christ will be greatly honored. For we pray it in his name. Prayer requests.

I'll take those next and then we'll move to some communications. We are praising the Lord that Rebecca Ellis, the granddaughter of Paul and Gail Ellis, has recovered well from her recent heart catheterization. And Sabrina Gilley, a daughter of Erin and Wendy Lynch, had eye surgery, then that went well also. Our government official of the week is Elon Mayor Pro Tem Davis Montgomery. And I have at least one thank you note from a Burlington City Council person who was our government official the week a couple of weeks ago, Kathy Hikes. And she writes, Dear Pastor Barkman, thank you for the greetings and prayers from the Beacon congregation. I appreciate that you include elected officials and your prayers and acknowledgments each week. The work of the council can be challenging sometimes, and I am grateful for your support and prayers. Sincerely, Kathy Hikes. And then following receiving that, we also got a phone call from Harold Owens and other Burlington City Councilmen who responded to our selecting him as our government official of the week by calling the office and expressing his thanks by telephone.

So many of our officials do really appreciate our doing this. And let's be faithful to remember our designated government officials of the week in prayer as they come up week by week. Please continue to pray for Drew Guthrie. She has had a return of cancer and we are praying for her. She battles this disease and can report that her spirits are good.

Her faith is strong. Please pray for Alice Marley, dear member of our church who fell and broke her pelvis. She's now out of the hospital and is in Alamance Health Care for rehabilitation. Pray for her there for her recovery and pray for her protection.

That's one of the facilities that's had several cases of COVID. And we would certainly pray that God will protect our dear sister from that while she's in this facility. Please continue to pray for for Liddy Norris who's recovering from her cracked wrist and broken bone in her arm. She has been to the doctor this week and the cast is going to remain for three more weeks.

And then they think they can take it off. And also Nellie Hunter has had her cast removed and has her arm now in a brace which is more comfortable than the cast. And she's continuing to make good progress. Pray also for John Spencer as he is recovering from knee replacement surgery. We're praying for Brooke Faust who is now home from a serious car accident after a number of days at Cone Hospital.

This is the daughter of Johnny and Pam Faust, members of our church. Also pray for Lee Vestal. He has a number of health problems. He is probably going to be scheduled for knee replacement surgery. He went to the doctor I think on Monday. It might have been Tuesday.

It was Tuesday for consultation on that issue. So we will get word before long if he's going to be scheduled for surgery. And then we received word this afternoon that William Green, one of the long time staff members of Piedmont Rescue Mission has COVID. And please pray for him. That's a dangerous situation for him. But it's also a dangerous situation for all the other residents of the Piedmont Rescue Mission. About 30 some men including Jonathan Wright, a member of our own congregation who is living there basically on a permanent basis and helping in the work there himself.

And of course when somebody gets in a situation like that then everybody's at risk. So please pray for the residents of Piedmont Rescue Mission. We continue to uphold the family of Dr. Alan Cairns in prayer who was our Fall Bible Conference speaker at Beacon twice.

In the year 2007, again in the year 2009. And we even talked with him about the possibility of coming again. But at that time he had retired from his pastorate in South Carolina and had moved back to his home country of Northern Ireland.

And we just didn't, couldn't work out the arrangements to have him come back. So just the two times we had him he was a great, great blessing, delightful, delightful preacher of God's word. Touched the lives of many people. He's now home with the Lord. We're praying for his family. We're also praying for Dr. Margie Persons, a Bonicoy sister who had a really bad fall and particularly injured her head. She had to have plastic surgery.

She's had that now. And she is recovering and let's pray for her full recovery. All right, turning to communications, I have a thank you note from the Green family who are preparing to go to a field that probably we will not mention because this goes out potentially.

This broadcast goes out all over the world and this is a restricted country. But they write, Dear Beacon Baptist Church, we just wanted to say thank you for extending grace, patience and support during this unexpected time. Although our plans have changed, we trust that God is sovereign. As you may know, our current plan is to learn the language in another country while we wait for our field of service to reopen. We just learned that some paperwork we have been waiting for for our alternate country language country visa should come in a few weeks. If this is true, we are hopeful that we can leave for the language country in January. Before our departure, we wanted to make sure our supporters are currently receiving our monthly email updates.

If not, please contact us again. Thank you. We praise God for you all in Christ.

Jesse, Hannah, Lila and Ezra Green. Wes Gunther, the director of TAP Ministries says, Beacon Baptist Church, we would like to thank you for your special gift of $500 to TAP. I forget what those letters stand for. Teacher, teacher something, teacher assistance program. Thank you, Steve Lynch, our special veteran of Wednesday night, teacher assistance program. And it's a ministry of sending training materials virtually all over the world. And we contribute materials as people have materials that are suitable. We send them on up to Pennsylvania and we also send them money from time to time to help them with shipping. He says this added gift was applied directly to the shipping cost of sending books to the ICM Bible College in India.

Thank you for your support of TAP Ministries. Well, let's see. I've got several letters.

I have to decide which ones. I think I'm going to read one at this time from the Valhalla's in the Czech Republic. If I can find the first page, I've only got the second one here. I hope I didn't go off and leave the first one on my desk. If I did, then we will not be hearing that one.

Oh, yes, here it is. But before I read that letter, I have a very short thank you from Renato Giuliani in Italy. And we were corresponding back and forth about an upcoming visit he has to the States. And then he says, please, when you can give all the dear saints at Beacon our love in Christ. So there you are from Renato Giuliani in Italy. Now, from the Valhalla's in the Czech Republic, they write, Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are composing this letter in the middle of a second wave of the pandemic. If you keep up with the news, you may know that Czech is now the worst country in the world when it comes to daily cases and deaths per capita caused by COVID. While in the spring we were considered the model country for dealing with the virus, now it is the opposite. We are nearing a very strict lockdown and anticipate the governmental decision. Yet all of this coronavirus did not hinder the work of Christ's kingdom.

So here's what is going on for the past several months. English camp. We could not have our English camp in Prost whatever, I can't pronounce the name of that town, due to travel ban. Our home church was able to pull together a number of U.S. missionaries and friends from around the country and have an English camp here. Our oldest girls, Hannah and Rachel, spent a whole week helping with the camp and on the days that Anthony was teaching lessons from the Book of Ecclesiastes, the whole family came and served together. Over the summer we attended a week-long church family retreat where we had opportunity to fellowship with other like-minded churches, hear teaching from God's Word, pray, and encourage one another. Although the pandemic has posed some obstacles to our church planting efforts, we have seen God do amazing things in Ostrava. New people are coming to both our worship services and our Bible studies.

Our monthly worship services have consistent attendance, anywhere from 40 to 50, and Anthony continues to preach through the history of redemption. We have seen two young women who did not grow up in a Christian family come to Christ. This is a huge praise and evidence of the grace of God. One of them, after several months of discipleship and preparation, was baptized.

Praise the Lord for his saving work. Anthony has been discipling several young men who show potential and desire to serve in leading positions in the new church plant. Anthony has also been helping a group of conservative believers within a Lutheran denomination southeast of Ostrava who expressed a desire to become independent and start a Bible-believing church. Most recently he taught at their youth conference. At the moment they attend our worship services in Ostrava.

Now that's a second church that they're planting away from their home church in a city that I have trouble pronouncing. Then they said, Furlough. Finally, as many of you know, we were scheduled to come to the United States on Furlough this coming November right now, and if they had come, they would have been staying in our missionary home as we were delighted to be able to open it up to them. However, after some thinking and prayer, giving the present situation of the demands of ministry, as well as the uncertainties imposed by the pandemic, we have postponed our furlough to November 2021. We are sad that we will not be able to see any of you, but hope we will do so next year, Lord willing.

Of course, you can connect with us by Skype or Zoom, and we would be delighted to talk to you. Well, I have two other letters, and I only have time to read one, so I think I'll read this one from David Champlin in Suriname, and he says, We are still under COVID-19 regulations. There is a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. The number of people at one place is limited to 10, except for funerals and religious services where 50 people are permitted. By the way, here in North Carolina, the governor has changed the number of people gathering indoors from, I think it was, 25 to now 10. It does not apply to churches.

We are, by court ruling, removed from those restrictions. I continue reading David Champlin's letter. Social distancing of one and a half to two meters, that's five to six feet, must be observed. Face masks must be worn. Hand sanitizer must be used.

Person-to-person contact must be minimal. Some businesses keep count of the number of clients in the store. At any time, people wait outside until it's their turn to enter.

We've seen all of that here, though I haven't seen anything of that kind lately. Body temperatures are taken and hand sanitizers sprayed on hands before you can enter. Public transportation has resumed after months of being shut down. Barber shops, hair salons, beauty spas, and some sports are allowed to reopen. Schools are opening but are being watched to see if they are turning into places where the virus has spread.

The current COVID-19 regulations are in force until November 8, so that's Sunday, when the new regulations will be announced by the president. He goes on to say some other things about the country being in financial difficulty due to indebtedness, which they're not now able to handle because of the downturn in the economy related to COVID. He says the churches we work with have resumed services with limited numbers of people coming.

Public transportation, having only resumed a short time ago, with the cost of a ride having doubled, also figures into the number of people attending. Many are still afraid that they could become victims of the virus and so do not attend services. The singing, sharing, and pleasure of being together is diminished by being separated, masked, and scattered around the area where the service is held. That sounds very much like conditions we're facing here.

Ideas we are exploring. Staggering services with an early and late morning or evening service. The congregation being divided into groups, A and B. Service times and preachers rotated so every group has a chance to hear all the sermons.

Bumping elbows and keeping social distance does not feel the same as a handshake or a hug. Efforts are being made to start Bible studies, youth activities, and Sunday school. The uncertainty concerning the near future causes many to wonder if these activities should be resumed or if more time should be allowed to pass before restarting these activities.

I have been able to preach to various numbers of people in some of the churches at random times depending on the COVID regulations. Flights that have been allowed between Suriname and Holland and from there to the USA may be stopped due to the increase of COVID-19 cases in Europe. Flights from Parramarabu to Georgetown and onto Miami and back may be able to be resumed with two flights a week. This has not happened since March.

If the flight to Holland is cut off and the other one doesn't resume they would have no way basically of getting out of the country even if they had an emergency and needed to. School for Lynn has been online since fourth quarter of last school year. Enrollment is down. She began the 2021 school year with only one student but now two others have joined.

Only one is a native English speaker but all the parents are English speakers. She spends nine hours at school Monday through Friday teaching her students online and then converting her teaching materials into a form that can be sent home on Fridays when parents arrive at the school to return completed work and pick up the new work for the following week. We are very thankful being healthy, all appliances working, safety on the road, sufficient income and for the opportunities we have to share. That letter from David and Lynn Champlin. And with that we open our Bibles once again to Acts chapter 11.

We've been working our way through this passage week by week but never more often than every other week and sometimes even a bigger gap than that. But you recall that this is really when the Christians of that early church, the saints from Jerusalem who were all converted Jews, scattered from Jerusalem by persecution went wherever they were scattered preaching the gospel but limiting their preaching, their witnessing to other Jews only because they didn't understand fully the purpose and plan of God in the Great Commission until they came to Antioch, 300 miles north of Jerusalem and there some of them overcame their form of reluctance, overcame the cultural resistance that Jews had in their relationship with Gentiles and went ahead and preached the gospel to Gentiles and God did a mighty work and many of them were saved. The report of that came back to Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas up there to check things out.

Are these reports true? He arrived on the scene and found out that they were true and were actually greater than the report that had come to them would have indicated. It was a great work of God that was going on. He settled down in Antioch, taught the people, taught the disciples but he soon had more demand upon his time and his resources than one man could do. And so he took a break and went to Tarsus where Paul, Saul of Tarsus had gone after having escaped from Jerusalem because of persecution and he invited Saul to join him at Antioch as a co-pastor and Saul did that and they both came together and systematically the two of them taught the word of God to the assembly of the saints on a regular basis over a year teaching them sound doctrine and the result of that was that these Christians began to be established in the Scriptures, established in a Christian lifestyle and after a year of that activity we read that the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

Then we'll take it up from there in our message tonight but I want to read that portion that I just summarized starting in Acts 11 verse 19. Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene who when they had come to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists preaching the Lord Jesus and the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. When he was come and had seen the grace of God he was glad and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord for he was a good man full of the Holy Spirit and the faith and a great many people were added to the Lord.

Then Barnabas departed to Tarsus to seek Saul and when he had found him he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. That takes us through verse 26.

I'm going to pause before I continue reading verses 27 through 30 and remind you what has taken place. We're talking about the work of missions and we see the first step is evangelism. When you go to places where there are no Christians you have to preach the gospel and pray that God will apply it to hearts and save souls which is exactly what he did. So the first step was evangelism. They preached the gospel. First it was just scattered persecuted Christians, people we would probably call laymen, who witnessed the gospel, preached the gospel, God blessed them, souls were saved. Evangelism occurred.

That's the first step. But a loosely related group of believers who have no church, no organization, no regular assembly times, no pastors, no gifted teachers raised up by God are very weak people. We need to go from evangelism where God has blessed the evangelism to the salvation of souls. We need to go from evangelism to church planting. Church planting is what took place. It started with Barnabas and then when Saul of Tarsus was added it went forward very, very strongly in the power of God's might and these people were getting organized into a church, into a recognizable body of believers, growing in grace, growing in knowledge to such an extent that they were recognized by the unconverted inhabitants of Antioch as being people that reflected Christ.

The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. Now the question is when you have progressed this far, God has blessed evangelistic efforts, God is blessing church activity efforts. The people are now coming together with regular assemblies, being taught the word of God, being organized into a church, being identified as members of the church, coming under the ministry of pastors and teachers such as Paul and Barnabas.

And all of this is going on. The question is when do you know that that group of Christians who are now being organized into a church, what can you look at to say they have become a church? That's a good question, not one that's easily answered. How do you come to a place where you recognize a church has been established? A church is in place. We can rejoice that the goal of church planting has been accomplished, not that church work is ever done, not that when you get to that place you have nothing further to do. The work of teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you goes on to the end of the age. And so that teaching and preaching work goes on. When do you get to the place where you say this group of people, formerly just individual believers saved by the grace of God, has now been organized into, incorporated into, functioning as, and is recognized as a bona fide local church rather than just a loose fellowship of believers?

And there are probably several good answers to that question, but the one in the passage before us is you reach that point when you see that church beginning to engage in ministry. Up until this time, they are people who are being ministered to. First the gospel to unconverted people. Someone must come and bring them the gospel. Unsaved people are not going to be involved in gospel work. So the gospel must be ministered to them by others as indeed it was.

God blessed souls were saved. However, it's a loose fellowship of believers. So something more has to be done and Barnabas comes and Saul comes and they preach Sunday by Sunday. They work with these people. They disciple these people. They ground them in the word of God. Changes are being made in their lives. They're being recognized by the community as being Christ-like. Things are taking place, but still up until this point, everything has pretty much been others ministering to them.

That's the way it has to be in the beginning. Unconverted people are incapable of ministry. Babes in Christ aren't equipped to do a lot of ministry, though people should get busy serving the Lord at whatever level they're able as soon as they are able, but babes in Christ need to be grounded.

They need to be taught. They need to move on from the simplicity of the gospel to other truths in the word of God so that they can be equipped to do the work of the ministry, as Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter 4. So how do we know when a church, when a fellowship of believers has become a church? Well, it's when you see the work of the ministry going on within this congregation. Now, we aren't given enough glimpse into this congregation in Antioch to know all that's taking place, so what we find in these next verses, I would not say is the first evidence of ministry, but it's the first recorded one, but at least it shows us the pattern. This is how we can tell when a group of believers have moved from a fellowship that is being ministered to by others to a working unit that themselves are reaching out in ministry to others. And here's what we read in verse 27. And in those days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea. This they also did and sent it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. So we have number one, evangelism, number two, church planting, and number three, ministry. Now, this report of their ministry breaks down basically into two sections.

There's first of all a need and there's secondly a response to the need. The need was brought to them, they were made aware of it by the arrival of prophets that came from Jerusalem to Antioch, and particularly a leading one by the name of Agabus. What is a prophet in the New Testament context? A prophet in the New Testament context is the same as a prophet in the Old Testament context.

A prophet is someone to whom God reveals truth directly that he then proclaims to others. It was an office in the early church, as I will show you in Acts, or rather in Ephesians chapter four, and I referred to these verses earlier, but I will now read them specifically. We read, and I'm trying to figure out where to jump into the passage here. Then, therefore he says, verse eight, Ephesians four, eight, when he ascended on high, that's Jesus Christ, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. This is the distribution of gifts to the church. And I'll skip verses nine and ten for the time being and drop down to verse eleven because this elaborates on what Paul by the Spirit of God means when he says that Christ gave gifts to his church. Verse eleven, and he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. Four offices that were given to the church, these are gifted men. In this particular case, the gifts that Christ gave to the church were gifted men that he selected, raised up, equipped, and gave to the church for its blessing, for its edification, for its growth. He gave the church apostles.

Paul, of course, is one of those. He gave the church prophets, such as Agabus, people who received divine revelation directly from God and proclaimed it to others. He also gave the church evangelists, and I think that's basically the same thing that we call today a missionary. And finally, he gave the church pastors and teachers, that's really two terms that describe one office, pastor slash teacher. Two of those gifts, two of those gifted offices from the early church have, I'm quite convinced, have passed off the scene.

They were intended to be temporary. The office of apostle was for the foundation period of the church. The office of prophet was for the foundation period of the church. But the office of evangelist or missionary continues on, and the office of pastor teacher continues on.

Is that just my supposition, or is there a scriptural warrant for that? Well, let me call your attention back to Ephesians chapter 2. It says, Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Paul describes here the church of God. Now we're talking about the universal church, the body of Christ.

There are different terms that are used for it. But here he calls it the church of God. He describes it as being like a building.

Buildings have foundations. And he tells us that in the foundation there are three elements. There are apostles, there are prophets, and most important of all, Jesus Christ, who is the chief cornerstone.

That constitutes the foundation. Now we know that when Jesus did his work upon the earth, his foundational work, which of course is the most critical work of all, that there might even be a church, when he completed his work, he departed from earth, went back to heaven. He's no longer here doing his cornerstone work. He did it.

It's done. He laid the foundation. He laid the cornerstone. The church is being built up from that point. And this text would indicate that we should expect the same thing to be true of apostles and prophets.

They too were in the foundation. They were part of that foundation stage of the church. That makes sense, particularly in the case of the prophets, when we keep in mind that up until this point, the only scriptures written were the Old Testament scriptures. But now we're dealing with New Testament revelation, a lot of revelation that is added to the Old Testament scriptures that was not included in the Old Testament scriptures, even though there's more in the Old Testament than many people realize. And we certainly shouldn't neglect the Old Testament. We need to remember that in the early church, when those preachers, such as Paul and Barnabas, were preaching from the Bible, preaching from the scriptures, what were they preaching from? Old Testament.

That's all they had. There was no New Testament. They were preaching from the Old Testament. There's a lot more in the Old Testament than many people recognize. Some people act as if, well, now that we've got the New Testament, we don't need the Old. We can just forget it. Maybe we pick up some of the interesting stories out of the Old Testament, like David and Goliath, and Daniel and the lion's den, and so forth. But there's not much else in there that's of any particular interest and use to us.

Oh, how wrong you are. But it's not all the revelation. And we've got a New Covenant. The Old Testament scripture centered on the Old Covenant. When Christ died and shed his blood, he said this, and the symbol of it is the communion service, which they did not have in the Old Testament. That's a new ordinance for New Covenant people. And he said, this cup is the New Covenant, the New Testament in my blood.

This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. So we've got a New Covenant people. It's an advancement, a large advancement from what was available in the Old Testament. But these people have no New Covenant scriptures, except what is communicated to them orally. They don't have it written down. They can't read it for themselves until the epistles start to arrive. But at the time we're talking about, in Acts chapter 11, none of those have been written yet. I don't think a single Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John was available to them. None of the epistles of Paul had been written yet at this time, or any of the other apostles. They didn't have the written word of God, but they did have people who could proclaim to them New Testament revelation orally.

Who were they? The prophets. They received divine revelation from God, and they proclaimed it to the people. And in that way, they had their Old Testament scriptures augmented with New Covenant scriptures, communicated to them orally by these prophets. Now, that was a long explanation to get to this particular prophecy. Agabus comes from Jerusalem. He's a prophet.

He receives direct revelation from God. And he tells them about a famine. Agabus stood up and showed by the Spirit of God that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. We can date this famine. We know when Claudius Caesar reigned.

He reigned from AD 41 to AD 54. So, Agabus, who's a prominent New Testament prophet, he also shows up again later on in Acts chapter 21 and tells the apostle Paul, If you go to Jerusalem, you're going to be greatly persecuted. You're going to be put in bondage.

You're not going to be a free man. If you go to Jerusalem, he made that prophecy, and indeed it was fulfilled. Paul went to Jerusalem, and that's exactly what happened. So, Agabus is a leading prophet, and he tells them a famine is coming.

Now, this is interesting. He tells them the famine is going to be over the whole world. I take that to mean at least the Roman world. It's going to affect everybody. It'll affect Rome. It'll affect Antioch, where these people are.

It will affect Jerusalem. But evidently, the people of that day were keenly aware that the saints in Jerusalem were right on the edge because of greater persecution there than most other places. Christians were persecuted virtually everywhere to some degree. But Jerusalem was the hottest area of persecution. It was the persecution hotspot.

We talk about COVID hotspots, where it breaks out in greater numbers. Jerusalem was the persecution hotspot, and most of the Jews who became Christians were so intensely persecuted by their own community, their friends and relatives and neighbors who were Jews who refused to believe in Jesus. Many of them lost their jobs. Many of them lost their homes. Many of them were just struggling to eat and to feed themselves.

And if under those conditions a famine descends, these people are going to be in serious trouble. So hearing that prophecy, the church at Antioch sprang into action. Then the disciples, verse 29, each according to his ability, similar language is found elsewhere in regard to giving, then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea. This also they did and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas and Saul made a special trip to Jerusalem to carry the offering from the church in Antioch to help the persecuted saints in this time of famine.

Now what is the point? This is the church ministering. When they heard of this need, they didn't say, well, we sure hope those guys make it. We're sure going to pray for them.

I'm sure they did that too. They prayed for them. But they said, we need to help them.

And so they reached into their own pocketbooks, every one of them according to his ability got involved. They determined to send relief. That means, first of all, there was a careful decision made on their part, a carefully weighed decision as to how much they ought to give. First there was a determination, and then having determined how much they should send, they followed through with it. They determined to send relief to the brethren.

This they also did. We see similar patterns elsewhere in Scripture, but here it is. Now isn't it interesting that when it comes to describe this church at ministry, it describes them giving financially? That's an important ministry. You might have said, well, the first thing we would expect to see them doing is witnessing in their community. There's no question in my mind that they were doing that, but it's not mentioned. Well, if there's ministry involved, we would expect the most likely thing they're doing is organizing classes, children's classes and other things in the church and doing a greater and greater job of teaching the Word of God to all the people in the congregation. There's no question in my mind that they were doing that as well. Well, if we're talking about the ministry of the church, no doubt they had widows who needed help. We find other places in the New Testament where that's an important ministry of the church, and no doubt they got involved in something like that, widow's tables. They may have.

This is very early. We don't have any record of it here, but that's possible. But the one thing that is recorded for us is that these people were givers. They already apparently had the giving mentality. They must have been involved in giving.

They were already doing it because when this came along, it wasn't something new and strange to them. They said, oh, we know what to do. How much can each one give? How much can you give, brother so-and-so?

How much can you give, sister so-and-so? And they all waited, determined to send relief to the brethren in Jerusalem, which they also did. Now we know they are a church. They are functioning.

They are mature. They are ministering, having been ministered to first by evangelists and then having been ministered to by teachers who came from other places to supply what was lacking in their own church. Now we see them to the place where they are ministering.

They're reaching out to others. Now we can say a church has been successfully planted in Antioch. With that, we will close in prayer. Father, how grateful we are that your plan for your church is a perfect plan. How grateful we are that we are members of the body of Christ, and we have opportunity to minister within the body according to the gifts and abilities that you give to each of us. How grateful we are for the ministry of prayer.

And we come to offer thanks, first of all, that Becca Ellis came through her heart catheterization in good shape and Sabrina Gilley came through her very delicate eye surgery in good shape. We want to intercede for our government official of the week, Davis Montgomery in the city of Elan, and we pray, O Lord, that you will bless him, that you will guide him, that you will guard him, that you will cause him to reflect upon truth and righteousness and justice and to serve the community of Elan in an honorable and godly way. We pray for Drew Guthrie that you might minister to this dear sister and likewise to Alice Marley as she's recovering from her broken pelvis, and Liddy Norris and Larry Hunter and Mary Shaw and Art Pope and John Spencer, all of these, O Lord, who are recovering from surgeries or expecting them in the near future. We pray for Brooke Faust that you will bring healing to her and to Lee Vestal and we pray for William Green at Piedmont Rescue Mission that you might strengthen this brother and help him to fight off this COVID virus and I pray that you will protect the other residents from catching this disease. We pray for the family and friends of Dr. Alan Cairns, even as we remember with such joy and gratitude his ministry among us and know that he touched the lives of so many others. Thank you, Father, for giving such an able and capable preacher to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and thank you now, O Lord, for calling him from his labors on earth into his heavenly rest.

We pray for Dr. Margie Persons that you might help her in her recovery. We pray for our nation, for the confusion and turmoil that continues in our land. We pray, O Lord, that you would be kind and gracious and that you might treat us mercifully, even though we acknowledge that we deserve to be treated in judgment. But, Father, we pray that you might be merciful to us and that you might bring healing to our land. We pray now, Lord, that you will help us to honor you as we go our separate ways tonight and tomorrow and in the days to come as we ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.