Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Acts 13:1-5

Sermon scripture is found in Acts 13:1-5. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts 13:1-5.

Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Manaen which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul to the work whereunto I have called them.” And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed into Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. When they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had also John to their minister.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it does indeed go forth as the sun does and it illumines the earth. We know also, Father, that sun causes some plants to wither.

Help us, Lord God, to be those plants that are nourished by your word. Help us to have those whose souls desire to be restored by that word and corrected and moved to praise you and to rest in the finished work of our savior. We thank you for this account of the going forth of that word into the uttermost parts of the earth. And we pray, Lord God, that you would strengthen our hands through this word and our spirits to the end indeed that we would be messengers to the uttermost parts of the earth as well for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ whom we love.

In his name we pray. Amen.

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I wanted to begin by just reading a couple of headlines from the Oregonian. For some reason I decided to subscribe to it again for several months. Haven’t done it in quite a long time. So the first paper I picked up to read in this new subscription period that I’m now involved with has several headlines on it.

The headline on the first page says “Ethics Triggers Vote on Assault Gun Ban” and then the sidebar—which is, you know, most people don’t get beyond the headline and the sidebar and maybe the first paragraph. Those are the important parts of the story. The sidebar says this: politicians who come to change their vote look at the moral dimension of what’s become a life issue.

So ethics triggers votes and assault gun ban. These politicians who changed their votes and voted for the assault gun ban did so because they looked at the moral dimension of the issue of what is now a life issue. According to the Oregonian, the metro section talks about Ken Kesey. It says, “Kesey Hit for Candor in Speech.”

Now, Ken Kesey is a famous acid head of the 60s who wrote, among other things, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He was from a school, went to high school in Springfield, Oregon, and he returned to his alma mater this last week to give a speech. And this speech to these high school students was peppered with obscenities, and also he advocated the use of marijuana in this speech.

Now, the Oregonian decides to report on it with this headline as I just read: “Kesey Hit for Candor in Speech.” And then the first paragraph says, Ken Kesey took what he considered to be a novel approach. And this is the opening sentence of the article. “Now, Ken Kesey took what he considered to be a novel approach in addressing students at Springfield High School this week. He decided to be honest.”

Another headline—which I didn’t bring, but on the economics page, wasn’t the headline. It was a headline on the front page, but at the bottom of the page—said something to the effect of “Wall Street Stocks Go Down Because Jobs Report is Up.” Something to that effect. The idea is there are more people at work according to the governmental statistics this last week and the result of that was Wall Street stocks dropped.

I’ll come back to these later. That’s the world in which we live.

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The world in which Acts 13 takes place is the world we have just read of—the world of Herod who went down from Jerusalem to Caesarea to state and suffered the judgment of God there because of his hubris, his pride, his failing to give God glory. Dark times. But in the context of that world—that’s the immediate context of these verses in chapter 13—God wants us to see another, more important work beginning than what happens to Herod on the throne.

What happens to Herod on the throne is a prelude to what happens to these missionaries as they go forth in chapter 13.

So let’s look at the text a little bit so you can understand what’s going on here. Then I want to draw three particular emphases out of the text and talk about them relative to three particular applications to yourself and to us as a church.

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So let’s look at the text. First of all, we’re told in verse one that there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers and they named them.

Now, this is a significant thing. We don’t want to pass by this too quickly because up to now in the first 12 chapters of the book of Acts, the word church has only referred to the church at Jerusalem. And so we have a very significant first here. This is the first time the church is used in reference to Antioch. And so this establishes Antioch as a fully established church. And it does it in the context, in terms of this verse, of listing what we could call the officers of the church.

And it refers to them as prophets and teachers. And then it lists five men. We have here, as I mention last week, the beginning essentially of the second half of the book of Acts. Paul will now be predominant as opposed to Peter. Now Paul will go through the same things that Peter has done.

It’s interesting. We’ll talk about that in the weeks to come. But for instance, the next passage of the scripture, Saul or Paul has to deal with a magician the same way that Peter had to deal with a magician earlier in the book. Peter organizes the church at Jerusalem and Paul becomes essentially the organizer of the church in the uttermost parts of the earth as the mission emphasis goes on here. And so there’s a transition.

Today’s Mother’s Day and I don’t have a lot of mother talk in this sermon, but we could at least throw in a reference to the fact that essentially what’s happening here is Antioch now has become in a very significant way a mother church the way that Jerusalem was. In establishing Antioch, Antioch now becomes the center of much of what the church activity will be for the rest of the book of Acts. So there’s a transition from one mother to a second mother.

And of course the first mother will be essentially judged—not the church of Jerusalem but the city of Jerusalem and the population and culture there.

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So this mother church now is fully established and we want to recognize that immediately in verse one. Very significant language: “there was in the church eklesia”—local church. The eklesia was the local governing body of a Roman political order and so the church is the local governing body of the believers, the community, the only ones who are the ones who are the apple of God’s eye at Antioch.

And this local church then is fully established. And we’re told in the context of this being referred to as a church now that they had certain prophets and teachers.

Now the term “prophets and teachers”—we do not then get a listing of which ones were prophets and which ones were teachers. And so we have lots of reasons to believe that “prophets and teachers” here is not really talking about two separate kinds of guys. Some guys were prophets and some guys were teachers. It seems instead that it’s talking about a joint office that can be described as either prophetic or as a teaching or instruction office.

J. Alexander has said that the prophetic aspect here, the fact that they were prophets, is an indication of their call from God. And the fact that they teach is the instrumentality, the secondary means that God uses to have them fulfill their prophetic ministry to speak forth God’s word. And so essentially, “prophets and teachers”—Lensky, for instance, says what these people were: people who understood, fully acquainted with the scriptures and able to exposit those scriptures.

They were prophets. They were forth-tellers, forth-speakers of God’s word, divinely called to that task. And so all these men listed here, these five men, appear to have the same office, if you will, in the context of this local church: that of prophet and teacher. We would call them elders, I think, today or pastors, but here the designation “prophets and teachers” is used. And then it lists five of them.

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And the first one we’re familiar with is Barnabas. Now Barnabas—that word in its original Hebrew meaning, “Barnabas,” means son. Bar is son. You know, “bar mitzvah” meaning you become the son of the law. “Bar Jesus,” son of Jesus. We’ll read that in the next few weeks. Bar means son. Nabas refers back to the Hebrew word for prophet. So Barnabas can be seen in its Hebrew translation as “son of a prophet.”

Now the scriptures tell us explicitly, however, that Barnabas means “son of consolation” or “exhortation and encouragement.”

And so the scriptures in doing that gives us a correlation between the prophetic office and the exhortive, encouraging, consolatory office of the New Testament teacher or instructor.

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And so we have here Simeon that was called Niger. Now Simeon here is a very common name. Its origins come from “shama”—to hear, have big ears. We’re familiar with that, I hope, in this church. The great “Shema” in Deuteronomy 6: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one.”

So Simeon means that. And this Simeon is distinguished from other Simeons with a designation that this particular Simeon was called Niger. Now the word Niger means black. So this is Simeon the Black, Simon the Black. And there’s different views of why this is. Matthew Henry thinks he had black hair. Most commentators, however, think that he was probably black of skin and that he was designated as particularly the Simon that was black of skin of race.

If so, that would give us a picture here of course of at this first outpost church of the gospel now penetrating the uttermost parts of the earth. It would give us a picture—as the Ethiopian eunuch did—of the conversion of all men and nations being picked up in this context of this church in Antioch.

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The third man listed is Lucius of Cyrene. And here his designation is from his birthplace or at least his home place of Cyrene.

And then we have a fourth man listed, Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch. The Herod the tetrarch was the Herod that was around during the time of Jesus’s birth and life. And so this isn’t the same Herod that just died. It’s his great—his grandfather rather—called the tetrarch because he ruled four regions.

Well, this Manaen is distinguished then as in terms not of his race or not in terms of his country but rather in terms of his companion at youth. It says that he was brought up with Herod the tetrarch. The word brought up is a very strong term—not just brought up with, but fellow nursed, fellow nursed by the same mother is what the term originally means in the Greek.

And so the point here is that Manaen has a very close relationship—is a childhood companion and friend and as if a brother—and people, I think many people think, he was a stepbrother to Herod the tetrarch.

Here we have a man then distinguished by his relationship to royal lineage and people think that Manaen probably was of a princely upbringing. And this, I think, draws correlations at least in my mind to Moses and his princely upbringing in Egypt, and he forsook all of that for the sake of obedience to God and love for him and his people. And Manaen here has done the same thing. He could have ended up as Blastus.

You know, Blastus was the chamberlain, the chief counselor of the Herod that died in the last chapter. He could have been probably a great person at court because of this upbringing. But no, he chooses to follow the Lord Jesus Christ instead. And as a result, he is a picture for us of those who forsake their own privileged position among the heathen for the sake of the gospel.

So Manaen is pointed out for us as well.

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And then the fifth person related is Saul, who we’re also very familiar with. We know that he has been called by God to minister to the Gentiles. We’ve seen that in his calling and in his salvation.

So we have in this first verse the description of the church at Antioch fully organized, so to speak—to use a Reformed term—of five officers in the church, five men ministering there. In the context that encourage that ministry is one of encouragement and exhortation, a prophetic ministry, and it is a prophetic ministry that is carried out through instruction in the word of God.

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Verse two says that as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work unto I have called them.”

The term here “ministered” is a significant one as well. This is another first. This is the first time that this particular word—which is the root word of our word “liturgy,” “leitourgia”—this word is used here for the first time in reference to the church.

So we have a lot of firsts in Acts chapter 13. And it’s worthwhile to just talk a little bit about this particular word. This word, according to J. Alexander, is used in the New Testament in a variety of ways. It can apply to the ministry of angels as in Hebrews 1. It can apply to the Christian ministry of charity and kindness as in Romans and 2 Corinthians. It is used to describe magistrates as ministers of God in Romans 13.

That’s a very significant text for the people who believe that God’s law should be the standard by which all men rule their lives, including civil magistrates and their particular function. Civil magistrates are described in Romans 13:6 as ministers, liturgists, to God. If it’s their calling, in a very special way linked to God’s service.

And this term—by the way, this term “liturgy,” this ministry, this particular term was also used in the Septuagint to describe the ministry of the Levites at the temple in terms of the sacrificial system. So there’s some correlations between the Old Testament and New Testament being drawn for us here.

And this term is used in a variety of ways as I’ve said. Another way is referring to public worship and especially the Jewish ritual in Luke chapter 1 and Hebrews chapter 10. Alexander goes on to say that however, but in the true sense of the general one expressed in the translation “ministering,” this means “engage in the discharge of their official functions with particular reference to public worship with the special addition in this case of fasting”—not a stated periodical observance which is rather discouraged than recommended in the New Testament but as a special aid to prayer.

So Alexander is saying that when we read here “they ministered to the Lord,” this has probably specific reference to the worship service that these men would conduct in terms of the church at Antioch. And then we have thrown in, in terms of this ministry, that they were fasting.

And fasting, as Alexander says, is not really a big deal in the New Testament. It’s really a very few references in the New Testament to fasting. I’ll talk a little bit later why I think this reference may be here. We do see fasting as an aid to prayer, as an adjunct to prayer in the part of God’s people and at several places in the New Testament. And we see it here in selection of officers, and we’ll see it one more place in the book of Acts as well, relative to the selection of officers. So it’s a special thing going on here, and they’re fasting for this service or worship to God.

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So in the context of this ministry, the Holy Spirit speaks to them. Now let me read another quote here from another commentator. He says but in verse two—let’s see, yeah—here in verse two Luke for the first time applies this word “liturgy” to Christian practice by use of the word “worship.” Luke shows continuity with the past, but he also indicates some degree of discontinuity. In the new form of worship, we see not the priest at the altar, but every believer at church in prayer.

Well, you see, that’s a—I’m not sure I would agree with that last statement: that in the Old Testament we had the priest at the altar, in the New Testament we have believers of prayer. What this verse is saying is that “they” has to refer back to these particular officers of the church. That doesn’t mean that the congregation is not also involved in ministry or living out the work of the church during worship.

But it does mean that these men had a particular function and calling to lead in that worship. Now that is directly correlary to the Levites of the Old Testament. As the Levites of the Old Testament ministered in the context of the sacrificial system, the people were also praying to God, observing, performing their part of the liturgy whenever that was required in terms of the sacrifices etc. But they were also engaged in prayer.

The scriptures make that clear. So really there is a correlation being drawn here, not a discontinuity rather a continuity in terms of this.

Lensky thinks that specifically this term “liturgy” here has specific reference to the divine worship services. He says the particular participle used means that they were in the midst of a divine service with the assembled congregation and it may well have been one of the regular Sunday services taking in the entire congregation as such.

So the picture for us here is that the call of the Holy Ghost to initiate the first missionary journey and begin this whole saga that’s going to unfold for us in the book of Acts—in terms of taking the gospel to the uttermost parts of the world earth—being Christ’s witness to that end happens through the five prophetic teachers as they’re ministering in divine worship to God. And to them the Holy Ghost says in some way, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work render I have called them.”

Says that this is an emotional—he said it might be better translated “do now send.” It has a lot of strength and force to it. It’s not a passive kind of a thing. The particular grammatical construction is a forceful emotional thrust: “Do now send Barnabas and Saul. Separate them for the work when I have called them to work.”

And so we have here the calling of the Holy Spirit communicated to the leaders of the church at Antioch that these two men are going to be separated for particular ministry or work. The word “work” here is not “liturgy” or that sort of work. It’s the typical word for work. It involves labor. This is going to be a labor that they’re going to have to go through.

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So we have the fully organized church at Antioch participating in divine services led by their instructors and prophetic instructors called by God using the secondary means of God’s word to lead his people. They’re ministering in the context of local church, the eklesia, worshiping in that church.

And in the context of worship, the Holy Spirit communicates to them somehow—and we don’t know how—that indeed these two of the five leaders are to be separated for a particular work to which the Holy Ghost has already called them.

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And then in verse three we read that when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them they sent them away. They obey the Holy Spirit.

And some people—again, I don’t know. I don’t know the time frame here. But some people think that immediately in the context of the same ongoing Lord’s day, Sabbath day, Sunday worship service, as this is communicated by the Holy Spirit, by the end of the day, this is happening. Hands are being laid upon them.

In other words, there’s not a period of time here and consideration of what’s going on, but rather a fairly immediate event. We don’t know that for sure, but we do know, of course, that they’re not going to waste time doing what the Holy Spirit has told them to do. He’s made it clear to them. And they then move on the basis of that in obedience to them, lay their hands upon Barnabas and Saul, and send them away.

And so they’re gone.

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Now it’s useful to point out here—I’ve already begun to talk a little bit about correlations to the Old Testament. Here we have a major correlation though. You remember that this laying on of hands and ordination as such—a laying on of hands conferring particular authority—and we’re told later in the book of Acts that they are commending them to the grace of God by this ordination, that this ordination has its roots back to the ordination of the Levites themselves.

Same sort of things going on back then. And you remember the people of God laid hands upon the Levites when they were first chosen to replace the firstborn of each family. The people of God laid hands upon the Levites and consecrated them to the service, to the ministry, to the liturgy of the temple service. And they were also separated. The scriptures tell us in different portions of the Old Testament that these Levites were separated unto God through this ordination, through this call to service.

Barnabas and Saul are separated from the rest of the church to some degree in the sense that they’re separated unto a particular task, a particular means of ministering to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we have the correlations between the term “liturgy,” the service, the worship service, the Old Testament, New Testament—that the correlation between ministers, Levites being separated out and that separated out happening in the context of an ordination, a laying on of hands by the people that have called, people that are the secondary means that God uses to send them forth on this journey.

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Now they’re going to go forward and they’re going to offer up the Gentiles as a sacrifice to God. The scriptures use that kind of language repeatedly to talk about the offering up of the Gentiles. For instance, in Romans 15:16, we read that Paul says that he should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.

Instead of cutting up animals, they’re going to go out and cut up Gentiles. They’re going to go out and be ministers offering up the Gentiles as a sacrifice to God. That’s what Paul says he was commissioned to do here—describing this calling that God had given to him earlier and now actually ordains and has hands laid upon him to this particular task.

A lot of correlations here to draw continuity between the church as it existed in the old covenant and in the new covenant administration.

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They will report back to the church in Acts chapters 26 and 27 after their missionary journey is complete, this first journey.

Verse four then says, “So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost…”

You see again, the Holy Ghost says, “I’ve called these guys to a work. You separate them.” They separate them and they send them. And the scriptures want us emphatically to see a correlation between the actions of the officers of the local church and the work of the Holy Spirit because they are sent forth not by these prophetic teachers, elders, pastors—no, they’re sent forth by the Holy Ghost through the secondary means of the officers of the church.

Scriptures want us to correlate those secondary means with the work of the Holy Spirit.

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They departed to Seleucia. From there they sailed to Cyprus. And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. They had also John to be their minister.

So this trip then ensues being sent forth by the Holy Spirit in this special ministry. This first missionary journey begins.

They first go to this port, Seleucia, which is a Syrian port. It is interesting that Seleucia was named—was built by Seleucus Nicator and called by his own name as Antioch was by that of his father. Antioch was built by a particular man, a ruler, and the city of Antioch was named after Antiochus, and his son then Seleucus Nicator builds Seleucia and he names that port—that was the port for Antioch essentially—names it after himself.

So we have this progression of father and son. And we have the church, the mother church at Antioch, now sending out people, going to this port first, that is named as many of these cities were for their particular leaders, but who was the son of the Antiochian man who was responsible for the naming of that city.

And so we see this transition, this progression of generations, so to speak. And I think that it’s perfectly legitimate by way of application to see the sending forth of Saul and Barnabas through this port city named for the father. They’re going to go forth with the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has now claimed, as it were, Antioch as his special mother church to send forth missionaries into the uttermost parts of the earth bearing his name.

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So they go to this port city first. It’s interesting that Luke—and we’ll talk about this more over the course of the book of Acts—but Luke does this. He almost always names the harbor points from which the journeys go out. He always wants us to understand that harbor port progression then going out through these seas and waterways, correlating the seas, of course, back to the Old Testament allusions to the Gentiles and the other nations as the sea.

And so we see the going forth of God’s word as we read about in Psalm 19—that sun rising. We see now Paul and Barnabas carrying that bright torch through the sea port and then out into the uttermost parts of the earth.

So they go to Seleucia first, the port city, and then they go on. And from there they sailed to Cyprus. Cyprus is an island, and at Cyprus was a very wealthy island. It was not a poor place. A lot of trade going on there, etc.

When they were at Salamis, that’s a particular city on the island of Cyprus. They then preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had also John to be their minister.

We’ll see this is the common pattern. We’ve talked about this before. The gospel doesn’t normally go out to street preaching in terms of the pagan world. It goes first to those places where the word of God had already been carried by the Jewish nation, by the Jewish people. The synagogues were established in many places of the known world. And they go there first where the word has had some degree of penetration.

And they preach the word there. And at these synagogues they will find both Jews and they will find Gentiles—those who are attracted to the truth of the Old Testament and the preaching of the word in the synagogue system. This is the pattern we’ll see repeatedly.

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And then finally, we’re told at the very end clause here that they had also John to be their minister. This is John Mark or, I think, the cousin of Barnabas. And the word here “minister” really in its kind of literal translation means an underling or a domestic servant, so to speak.

And so John is along not as a minister in the sense of, you know, liturgist, as these other men are doing, but rather he’s there in the sense of an apprentice, I suppose, a servant, an underling. And I use that word for a purpose to get across the connotation of this word in the original language.

Mark did the medial tasks that Barnabas and Saul would call them to do. Now it’s probable that he also did other things as well. He might have assisted them in baptisms, etc. But essentially the word wants us to understand here that he was an underling. He was an assistant. That’s not a bad place to be.

If you remember, Joshua began how he began as a servant to Moses, his assistant. He would do things for him and probably all kinds of fairly menial sort of things as well. But through that action of menial service to the people that were called by God to carry the word, one prepares himself and trains himself for leadership in the church. Because we know that leadership is based in service.

Now some people think that, you know, you’re always in this position of menial service. No, that’s not true. He was being trained for something else. And we’ll track his life story as we go through these missionary journeys as well.

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Okay. So that’s basically the overview of the text. Pretty simple stuff really. And I’ve entitled the sermon “The First Missionary Journey Begins.” But on the tape labels I prepared yesterday, I thought, well, how about “Thy Kingdom Come”? That’s a good title for this as well. A secondary title perhaps.

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“Thy Kingdom Come.”

I want us to focus on three things relative to the truth of this passage. First, the inherent victory, the coming of Christ’s kingdom that’s pictured for us in this text of scripture. Secondly, that this victory occurs through missionary activity, through the proclamation of the word of God.

I kind of passed over that they proclaimed, they declared forth the word of God in these synagogues. That word is an all-comprehensive word. It means the whole lifestyle, the calling of Christians in obedience to that word. It’s not a truncated word. It’s an expansive word.

It was a calling. I’ve been thinking this last week of if we should get a slogan for this church. Not a slogan. We—on my letterhead I’ve had for years, I’ve had “Proclaiming the Ascension of the Savior King to the Throne.” Kind of long, kind of wordy.

Preparing this family camp brochure I thought using the phrase we’ve used before. It comes from the old Scottish Covenanters: “Proclaiming the Crown Rights of King Jesus.”

Well, I don’t know how people understand that either. I don’t know what, you know, we’re going to ask for ideas. I’m asking for ideas now. But the idea is that the word of God calls men to love and obey Jesus Christ in everything that they do. That’s the word that’s preached forth in these synagogues.

So we’re talking about the bringing forth of the kingdom through the proclamation, the declaration of God’s word by missionary activity, preaching of the gospel. And then the third thing I want us to focus in on is calling. This is an interesting text of scripture relative to the calling of these men. And I want to talk about that a little bit too.

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First of all, however, victory. We have to see this text and its correlation to what is the context for it, the surrounding portions of scripture. And we’ve just had the death of a king in judgment from God. And the death of a king who had been given an extended reign over a period of land that even his grandfather didn’t have. And so we have the abolishment, the destruction of one kingdom and the typical pointing to the destruction of Jerusalem AD 70.

One kingdom is passing away and another kingdom is being established. And what we have in this missionary journey then is the counterbalance to the death of Herod. The word—what does the scriptures tell us? Says Herod killed, but the word increased and multiplied and grew and matured. And now it’s telling us how that word, the word of Christ’s kingdom grows and multiplies.

So there’s this transition from Herod to Saul and Barnabas as they take forth the word.

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I talked about that last week relative to humility. Remember we said that Herod’s sin is a sin of hubris or pride against God. He doesn’t give God the glory. And we said that these two men who are going to establish the kingdom of Christ in the uttermost parts of the earth are specifically—were given specific illustration later in this same book of Acts when people call them gods and start to worship them—they tear their robes and say “don’t do this.” They’re the counterbalance to Herod in the text of the book of Acts.

And so we see them going forth as kings really under the Lord Jesus Christ, and they acknowledge, they give glory to him in their ministry and so establish the kingdom of Jesus Christ there.

There is a correlation here is what I want to try to point out between the first half of the book and this second half of the book. And the first half ends with God’s judgment upon the ruler of Jerusalem, by way of implication of the Jewish people. And the second half begins with the establishment of the preaching forth of the word of God that will establish the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

So we have that now. In the context of this, we have humility then—not stated but as the implied condition or rather—the basis on which this is established: a humility to the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, of giving God glory.

I’ll return to that a little bit later, but let’s keep going on this.

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So we have this correlation between the two kingdoms: one falling, one rising up.

Now I think this is why—one reason why fasting is involved in this text. Let me just explain that a little bit. As I said before, fasting really is not used much in the scriptures in the New Testament. It’s not a big emphasis in the scriptures. There are very few occurrences of fasting, but they’re significant ones.

You remember that our savior fasted 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness and then comes back to begin his public ministry and begin what he is going to be called to do by God. He comes back from the fasting to victory, to proclaiming and fulfilling his work that God had called him to do. 40 days—this is a significant number in the scriptures obviously. Jonah in the belly of the whale, 40 being related to the flood, 40 years before Samson comes forth, 40 years of captivity.

When the scriptures tell us about 40, it’s a transition away from death and into resurrection, death to life. And our savior is a picture of that with his fasting in the wilderness.

Fasting in the book of Joel—and I did an extended series, three or four sermons on this several years ago—fasting is seen as a symbolic death and preparing a person for resurrection and service to God. The book of Joel is about the coming of the day of the Lord, and the book of Acts is about the coming of the day of the Lord. The book of Joel emphasizes fasting as preparation for that coming. And it’s also because it’s preparation—a proper preparation, a proper giving God glory and debasing of ourselves recognizing our sinful nature—it is therefore preparation for the victory that God calls us to in the book of Joel.

The book of Joel ends with God’s people victorious over all their enemies who are going to come through the land first at God’s hand to judge them. And so we have here the coming forth of Herod and the chastisement of the church by Herod. But we see the reference to fasting—a transition into victory.

And so I think it’s important that we see in that: remember, Cornelius also, he’s the other one that fasted here in the book of Acts. And he fasts, and as a result of his fasting and prayers going up to God as a memorial, God brings him the message of the great King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. So he moves Cornelius to full resurrection, to full union with the church of Jesus Christ.

So fasting, I think, is thrown in—at least one thing to remind us of the victory that comes as a result of fasting. And so this text refers to that.

Understand that this victory is related, if that’s what we see here, and I’m sure that it is—this victory is related to the local institutional church. This victory comes and is about, in specific reference, the beginning of this proclamation of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. This establishment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, “thy kingdom come”—and it is now coming to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The kingdom comes through the faithful work of a particular local church at Antioch.

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There’s no involvement that we know of here from the church at Jerusalem. Now they were involved in a secondary sense. They sent forth Barnabas to Antioch. But Antioch doesn’t consult Jerusalem here. No indication that there’s no collective organization of different churches that are existing here coming together to see if this is a good thing or not.

We see a particular local church, eklesia, at Antioch. And their faithful ministry is what produces the separating of these men and the providence of God for the work of the ministry. I think that’s significant.

Note also the involvement of this: the text wants us to understand this setting forth of these men, this coming of the kingdom of Christ, their apocalyptic situation, not simply in relation to the local church but the local church worshiping. The worshiping church is the context whereby the Holy Spirit speaks to the five leaders of the church and instructs them to set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work that God has already called them to do.

So we have the local church involved in all this.

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And then finally I want us to understand then this relationship: but it is a relationship to the establishing of personnel, people are being filled up for the work of the ministry, that this gospel might be preached and that God’s kingdom might come.

I mentioned these two halves of the book of Acts. Do you remember how Acts starts? Acts starts with Jesus resurrected but not ascended, talking to his disciples, and they want to know when the restoration of the kingdom will come to Israel. And he says, “Well, it’s not to know the times or seasons, but it will come.” I think that’s the implication of what he’s saying. “You’ll receive power from on high. Wait, and you’ll receive power from high.”

Then Pentecost happens. Right? Wrong.

What happens between that statement and Pentecost? Do you remember from the book of Acts? They choose Matthias. They make up the 12. They replace Judas. Okay? They make up the fullness of the base of what will be the army of God as it goes into the day of Pentecost and receives blessing from God and power to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.

What happens here? We see a church that has now become mature. There’s some people think 3, 4 years after the death of Herod, and what we’re reading about here maybe longer—we don’t know for sure. But we read the filling up—first of all the officers of the church of Antioch—five men are listed. Five, not two, not three, not four. Five men that are listed.

Five in the Old Testament is the number for military strength. You see platoon and the army organized—the principle of fives and tens is a double witness. A five is the number of fingers on a hand that makes a fist. I teach my children this because it’s true. The scriptures want us to think in terms of five men making up a battalion, a small platoon in an army. And then ten being the organizing principle in church, state, and the army as well.

The church is filled up to military strength now for the task that’s called it to do. And as a result of that, now personnel changes are made and two men are separated from these five. They now are sent forth in a particular way, going forth as Jesus sent his disciples out by twos, going forth to preach the gospel. Twos and threes, and we’ve got John Mark going along as system.

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So this coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ happens in the context of the local church. It happens in the context of worship. It happens in the context of fasting—a movement from death to life that we’ve seen over and over and over again in the book of Acts. And it happens in the context of personnel being employed by God for particular work.

And so personnel are very important. And it correlates then to the calling of Matthias as an apostle. Some people think—I don’t know. I think that this is—I don’t know about this. Some people think that Barnabas and Paul are here being ordained to the apostles because it’s after this they start being referred to as apostles. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that God is preparing his people for the next phase of the kingdom work that he has called them to do for the coming of his kingdom. And he does that through personnel.

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Now remember how Joshua began? Remember I’ve talked about the correlations between Acts and the book of Joshua. Do you remember how Joshua began? Joshua begins by God talking to Joshua and assuring him that he will go with him as he goes into then the uttermost parts of the earth, or into Canaan actually, a picture of the whole world that will come when Jesus comes.

And Joshua then communicates those instructions down a specific chain of command in chapter 1. He tells the officers who tell the people they affirm all this stuff—military organization is in Joshua chapter 1. Now you’d expect that of course because they’re going into a military campaign. But the correlation between Joshua 1, Acts 1 and 2 with Matthias, and then Pentecost, and now the selection of these two men, the growth to five first of all the church and Antioch, and the selection of two of those men to go out in a particular fashion shows us that at the beginning of these major phases of conquest, God goes through these personnel changing activities and prepares the army as an ordered group under the King Jesus to do what he’s called them to do.

And so I think that’s what we have here.

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So we have victory strongly pictured for us here. And victory in the sense of organizational structure. And we even see that in the reference to John Mark. He is an underling. He is a good foot soldier who will attend to the needs of the two men that he is going with. There is order in this that is pictured for us. It isn’t just some kind of loosey-goosey sort of structure. No, men are ordained. Men are called underlings. Some men are called liturgists.

There’s a structure to this church. And that structure is part of the way God prepares his people and his church for the victory, for “thy kingdom come,” for the coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Victory.

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But secondly, how does it happen? It doesn’t happen as it did in the book of Joshua with the sword. It happens just as Revelation talks about in 19 and 20 with the rider on the horse with the two-edged sword that comes out of his mouth slaying the enemies.

They’re going to go out and slay, cut up Gentiles, but they’re not going to do it physically. They’re going to do it with the sword of the spirit, the sword of the word. They’re going to speak forth the word of God in this military conquest. And this victory will happen as they faithfully proclaim the word of God in these synagogues and these other locations.

That word, the scriptures tell us, is sharper than any two-edged sword. It is more efficacious in its offering up of the Gentiles, slaying and offering them up than the sword that Joshua used. That’s the scripture. Sharper than any two-edged sword. Cutting apart bone and marrow.

Cutting up sacrificial animals is what the sword did in the Old Testament. And that word of God today used by his men and the structure that he provides through the local church and through worship cut people up. And it cuts us up when we come to God’s word. When these words strike our hearts, it should cut us apart. And we’re offered up then—book of Romans tells us—as a living sacrifice to God.

The Gentiles will either repent of their sins. They’ll either be taught to love and serve Jesus Christ, or they will be condemned through the proclamations of the church to have rejected that message. And the dust will be shaken off the feet, and other men will be reached for.

Either way, you end up dead. Everybody ends up killed. Some are killed and go to hell. Some are killed in this life spiritually, brought to their own spiritual understanding, their own spiritual death and brought to resurrection power through the Lord Jesus Christ.

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This victory happens as a result of missionary activity. Now this missionary activity—Larry Y. Woody in his commentary on this particular section of scripture says, we have here, you know, origins are important. We have here the first set of missionaries who are really set up and set up by the church. And it gives us the pattern. He says it’s repeated throughout the book of Acts.

And that pattern is this: the local church—not the denomination—and Larry Y. Woody, I might mention, is an Orthodox Presbyterian Church elder, ruling elder, I believe, in the Midwest. He’s also a very famous literary man, written books, etc., prior to his conversion even after that are quite well regarded in the literary world in the country. And that’s why his commentary on the book of Acts is unusual and yet so delightful as well because he weaves these stories of his own life and different perspectives of the culture with this commentary in the book of Acts.

Well, in any event, he says this is the model: The model is local churches send out elders, men who have already been called to a particular test. Barnabas and Saul weren’t being called to their first office. They were already functioning as prophetic teachers, elders, pastors in the Antiochian church. And two of those men are then sent out by the local church.

That’s how missionary activities are supposed to happen. He says there’s not given any money here by the Antiochian church that we know of, and in fact Saul makes it quite clear that he goes forth and is self-supporting as does Barnabas. The local church—the tithe of the local church—supposed to support the local church. They’re supposed to take care of their own needs. So funding for missionaries is supposed to happen essentially through the field. They become self-supporting to the people that they minister in the context of.

And Paul makes a big deal of that of course in some of his epistles.

So Woody says local churches should send out men who have already been approved, but they’re households are in order, that they’re qualified and called by God to be elders. And then if God makes it known to us through the Holy Spirit—not by way of direct revelation anymore but through the Holy Spirit’s secondary means of his word and his people—makes known these men are called to office, they send them out to be missionaries. And they go out, not supported by the local church, not supported by a group of local churches who don’t know them very well, who know them from a couple of sermons now and then maybe. And they go out and they’re missionaries.

And Woody says, “You know, nobody does it that way.” So that’s the model, but nobody does. But I do think it is important to see that model.

You know, it isn’t—it is not—you know, to take this one instance and to build a whole theology of missionary support would be wrong. So we’ll look at this as we go through the book of Acts and what happens as a result of this.

But I do think that Woody has a very good, very good insight into this matter. And it does give us the importance of—we’re talking about “thy kingdom come.” We’re praying to that end. We’re using the secondary means that God gives us—the preaching of the gospel and all the missionary activity. That missionary activity should happen in the context of the local church—men already approved, financed by their self-support in the context of the missions they’re called to function in the context of.

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And then, so, okay—victory through missionary work, through the proclamation of God’s word. And then calling.

And I want to talk a little bit about this calling aspect here as well. It is significant, I think. There’s a couple of very important points to be made relative to this calling.

Let me just read one commentator again, a Reformed commentator speaking of this setting apart of Barnabas and Paul to the work that we talked about in the first couple of verses of the chapter. He says, “The immediate context of verses 2 and 3 seems to restrict the reference to worship to the five prophets and teachers Luke has mentioned. But there are at least three objections to this interpretation.”