Witness Pt. 24

Amen.

My name is Jesse.

For those of you that may not know me, I am blessed to be the lead pastor here at Mud Creek, which basically in church terms means I am the preacher.

And so it's time for me to get to work.

So I'm going to ask you, if you would, today, to take your Bible and join me in the book of Acts and chapter 13.

Acts chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

If you are a visitor with us this morning, and I haven't had the chance to introduce myself to you yet, or you haven't had the chance to introduce yourself to me, I would love to do that after service, and so I will be at this exit as you leave.

Come by and hang out with me, and we'll get to know one another.

Acts chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 13, we read the story of what is really the very first cross-cultural Christian mission trip.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

As I read this story of the very first Christian mission trip, I am reminded of a story by one of the great pioneers in the world Christian movement, a man by the name of William Carey.

And William Carey is widely considered the father of modern missions.

William Carey left England in 1793 to begin mission work in India, which really was a novel ministry approach and concept for the time.

And William Carey was a pastor in England, a Baptist pastor, but he was also a cobbler.

Now, a cobbler is one of those old-timey jobs that nobody has anymore, kind of like a chimney sweep.

But a cobbler is a shoe guy.

He repairs shoes and he makes shoes.

And while William Carey would nail nails into the soles of his shoes, he became convinced that God wanted him to take the gospel into the unknown parts of the world.

He came to believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ needed to be preached beyond the Christianized world of England and the New World and Europe, and the gospel needed to be preached among what he would have called the heathen, those unreached people groups.

And so he left England in 1793 and went to India and began his pioneering missions work.

One of my favorite stories from William Carey occurs just before he left for India.

And in a letter to another Baptist pastor and a friend by the name of Andrew Fuller, he wrote and said to his friend, If you will hold the rope, I will go into the pit.

I will go into the deepest, darkest place imaginable with the gospel.

I will go down into the pit if you will hold the ropes.

In other words, Brother Andrew, I'm going to go where God has called me.

And I'm going to preach where God sends me.

But I need somebody on the other end of the rope who will pray for me, who will support me, who will help me.

And I love that attitude because in the end, all of us are on one end of the rope or the other.

As the people of God, we should either be the people that are just jumping into the deepest and darkest places with the message of the gospel, or we may be on the other end of the rope.

And we may be praying and supporting and sending and giving.

But 100% of us need to be invested in the work of cross-cultural missions.

Now, some of you need to hear this today because God has called you to be the one to jump in the deep dark place.

Maybe you've sensed that for a while.

Maybe you don't know exactly where God is sending you, but God recently has birthed in your heart a desire to go to a new place with the message of the gospel.

But most of us are going to be on the other end of the rope.

Most of us are going to be in the 99% of Christians that will never go cross-culturally, at least full time.

And yet we should be holding the rope.

We should be praying.

We should be giving.

And what I want to do is I want to look at the church that sends the first Christian missionaries.

And I want to preach to you this morning about the church on the other end of the rope.

Let's read Acts 13, beginning in verse number one.

Together.

Now the Bible says, now in the church that was at Antioch, there were certain prophets and teachers.

Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Menaeon, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.

As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Then, having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

And when they arrived in Salami, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.

They also had John as their assistant.

Now, when they had gone through the island to Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar Jesus, who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man.

This man called for Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.

But Hlimas, the sorcerer, for so his name is translated, withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.

Then Saul, who is called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, Oh, full of all deceit and all fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease perverting the straight ways of the Lord?

And now indeed the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.

And immediately a dark mist fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.

Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had been done, being astonished at the teaching of the Lord.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord abideth forever.

The book of Acts tells us the story of the birth of the church.

Now, that is not to say that the church of Jesus Christ has not been on the mind of God for all of eternity.

That certainly is true.

And yet it's in the book of Acts that what it been on the mind and the heart of God is birthed into history.

As the followers of Jesus, the Son of God, are filled with the presence of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, to begin participating in the mission of God, to bring the message of salvation to the nations.

And because the church is born in the book of Acts, you can see many firsts for the early church in the book of Acts.

In Acts chapter 2, you read about the very first Christian sermon.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

You read about the very first Christian baptisms, about the first Christian salvations or professions of faith.

In Acts chapter 3, you can read about kind of the first official miracle, the healing miracle of the early followers of Jesus.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

You can read later on about the first persecutions.

You can read about all kinds of great firsts in the book of Acts.

Here in Acts chapter 13, we have the very first mission trip, a long journey by the Apostle Paul, his friend Barnabas, and this young assistant by the name of John Mark, who's not going to stay for the whole trip.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

But they set out to begin the work of sharing the gospel.

They're sent out from the church of Antioch.

And very quickly, I want to just give you some highlights from their trip.

The Bible tells us that they leave Antioch, they go to Seleucia, and then from there, they would have sailed west to land on the east coast of the island of Cyprus.

Now, I've got a picture of the island of Cyprus, I believe.

This is Cyprus.

And I just thought it would be worth saying to you as your pastor that if Mud Creek, you felt led to maybe send me as your pastor on a three-month preaching tour of Cyprus, I would pray carefully about that.

This is a beautiful place that they travel to with the gospel.

And yet this beautiful place was evidently a place of deep spiritual darkness.

And so Paul and Barnabas, the Bible says, they begin on the east coast of Cyprus, and the first place that they go to preach is the Jewish place of worship, the synagogue.

That would have been natural for them.

Barnabas himself was a Cypriot Jew.

He was from Cyprus.

Perhaps he knew people of that community.

There would have been common beliefs, a common understanding of scriptures, a common connection to the God of Israel and Israel's culture and worldview.

That was a natural place to start.

And so they began preaching in the synagogue.

Now the Bible does not tell us how they were received there.

The Bible doesn't tell us if everybody comes to Jesus or if nobody comes to Jesus.

The Bible just says they preach and they keep moving.

Christianity does that, it keeps moving.

And evidently what happens is they work their way from the east coast of Cyprus to the west coast of Cyprus, finding themselves before the most powerful Roman authority on the island, a man by the name of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul, the Roman head of government.

And we know about Sergius Paulus that he is an intelligent man in verse number seven.

The Bible says you're smart, you're smart, you're a smart guy.

Evidently, he's also a spiritually inquisitive man.

Because in the official family, in the court of Sergius Paulus, we're told that there is a sorcerer.

This is the second sorcerer we've come across in the book of Acts.

It's kind of hard to figure out exactly who they were and what they were doing.

I think this is part prested digitation.

There's some illusion happening.

They're magicians who can trick people, but also take it for granted that there is genuine dark spiritual evil at their disposal.

This is a false prophet by the name of Bargesus or Helamus in Greek.

And he has the ear of Sergius Paulus.

Like Grima Wormtongue from the Lord of the Rings, a shout out to all my Tolkien nerds.

He is whispering into the ear of Sergius Paulus while Paul and Barnabas are trying to preach the gospel.

He's misinterpreting and reinterpreting and clouding the mind of Sergius Paulus until Paul finally has enough.

You ever just get fed up, good?

Well, Paul's just fed up, and he's right to be fed up.

He's tired of being misrepresented, and he has enough.

And so he promptly, in the name of the Lord, promptly strikes the guy blind.

He just gives him all these colorful descriptions.

He says, Listen, you're full of deceit, you're full of fraud, you're a son of the devil, you're an enemy of all righteousness.

You see, Paul was very seeker-sensitive in his ministry.

He was always concerned that he was going to offend somebody.

And so Paul just comes out with it and he says, Congratulations, you can't see.

And evidently the man is struck blind, the mist falls on him, and he begins stumbling around trying to find somebody.

Help him to help him.

And so verse 12 says that when the Roman leader, uh Sergius Paulus, sees this, that he's at some level convinced of the truth of Paul's claims, and he embraces it and believes it.

It's a fascinating trip as you see the gospel going further, as you see this mission's impulse.

And you see something very, very important about missions work in this passage that you will actually just run right through if you're not careful.

Because the Bible says in verse number nine, while Paul and Barnabas are traveling, look at what happens.

That then Saul, who is also called Paul, they are filled with the Holy Spirit and they confront this false teacher.

It's here, while they're on this missions journey, that Saul drops his Hebrew name, Shaol, and he takes the Latin form of his name, Paulus.

And why does he do that here?

Why is this important?

Because the Apostle Paul's ministry is taking him away from Jewish people and focusing more and more on Gentiles.

And Paul says, if that means that I've got to change my name so that I can earn an audience with people that need Jesus, Paul says, there's nothing that's not on the table for the sake of the gospel.

He would write about that sort of mission's impulse in 1 Corinthians chapter number 9.

What he would say to the Jews, I became a Jew, to the Greeks, I became a Greek.

And he says, To those under the law, I would live under the Old Testament law, to those apart from the law, I wouldn't worry about the Old Testament law.

But he said, I would do whatever is necessary to win those that are in front of me.

By all means, he says.

I want to employ everything but sin to share the gospel.

To the weak, I'll become weak.

To the poor, I'll become poor.

To the backward, I'll become backward.

He said, To the educated, I'll be educated.

But as long as I have the opportunity, I want to do everything necessary to share the gospel.

And Paul does that here in Acts chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

But my question is, what kind of church produces these kinds of people?

People that are equipped for spiritual warfare.

People that are willing to change their name for the sake of the gospel.

People that are willing to pull up roots and to go further for the message of Jesus.

What kind of church did they come from?

I think it's important because Acts 13 tells us.

But then at the end of their mission trip, at the end of Acts chapter 14, we find out as they've traveled all over kind of the Mediterranean world, they go back to this church in Acts 14, 26.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

This is the church that they leave from, and it's the church that they go back to.

What is this sending church?

What is their culture?

What are they like?

And what does it say to us if we want to participate in the mission of God today?

Now, full disclosure, my prayer for our church is that God would call some of your children and grandchildren to missions the way he called Paul and Barnabas.

I didn't think you would like that.

I know that you're hoping that they get that engineering scholarship to Clemson, you're hoping that they make the girls' softball team down there, or you're hoping that they become the starting defensive end, and I hope they do too.

But I hope that God bursts in them a desire to go out with the message of the gospel.

And that even if he doesn't birth that in your children or grandchildren, that God would make our church the kind of church that's on the other end of the rope.

That even if we're not all going, we're all praying, we're all sending, we're all involved holding the rope somewhere.

So, what does that church look like?

First, notice this the crowd is diverse.

This is a very diverse congregation based upon the description.

Now, that really should not surprise us, understanding something about the city of Antioch where the church is located.

The city of Antioch was the third largest city in the ancient Roman Empire, and it was a diverse melting pot, a metropolitan crossroads of all sorts of people.

Everybody from the world came through, and many of them stayed in Antioch, and the church reflects their diversity.

But as you look at the passage of Scripture, I think this church reflects diversity in two key ways that are instructive for us.

First, there is a diversity of spiritual gifts in this church.

You notice this.

The Bible says in verse number one that in the church there were certain prophets and teachers.

There were people gifted as prophets and people gifted as teachers.

This is important.

Why?

Because they are not the same spiritual gift.

They're both public ministries, they're both speaking ministries, but they're different.

Prophecy in the Bible can mean a lot of different things.

Sometimes it does mean saying, hey, probably not going to want to leave the house on Thursday because it may get gnarly for you.

So this is going to happen, so you better get ready.

Typically, though, it's going to mean giving a direct revelation from God to his people.

We should expect that in the Apostolic Church because the New Testament was not completed.

But these are people that are hearing directly from God for the church.

And then they're teachers.

A teacher is an explainer.

Take what's been written and say, this is what it means.

Now, those two things are very, very different.

Prophecy is exciting.

Prophecy is supernatural.

Prophecy is something new.

Teaching is just like anybody with a pulse, we can put them in a Sunday school class.

Can they fog a mirror?

Sign them up, right?

That's two very different passions and two very different gifts.

And yet, in this case, both of those passions and both of those gifts are in service to the greater missions efforts of the church.

Why is this important?

It's important because, in my experience, in churches, people are gifted in certain ways, which is biblical, but we become so passionate about our gifts and our ministry area that we silo ourselves into our ministry and we forget that we're all part of God's mission in the church.

Here's what I mean by this, okay?

There are some people in our church that are incredibly gifted, for instance, you know, I don't know, children's ministry.

I'm not.

I mean, I can keep them alive.

Probably.

And that's basically the bare minimum, but it's just the minimum.

My gifts are in preaching and teaching, and I know that.

And so because I'm in preaching and teaching, I tend to look at children's ministry sometimes and think, well, you know, that's just not important.

I study, I labor to teach and preach the word of God, and so we've got fussy kids in the nursery.

Just give them something by Thomas Watson, a novel, and they'll be fine until we're done.

And then for those people in kids' ministry, they're thinking, why is he preaching so long?

Don't he know that these kids are getting restless and it's time to change their diapers and we've got a nap and get them out of here?

There are people that come into our church today that will never teach a Sunday school class.

They will never prophesy or preach the way they did here in Acts chapter 13, but God has given them gifts of service and of helps.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

And they came into this place today, and you know what they see?

They see mismatched paint, they see stained carpet, they see lines in the parking lot that need to be repainted.

And some of us did not see those things because that's not our gift, but thank God for those people, otherwise, we would have families of tadpoles living in our baptistry.

We need these kinds of people.

But it's easy for us to think the only, get this tunnel vision in the church and think that the only thing that matters is the thing that I'm doing, the thing that I'm passionate about, and the thing that I am part of, without realizing, friends, without realizing that missions is not a department of the church.

Missions is the drive of the entire church.

Because what can happen is if we're passionate about preaching, we'll dig preaching.

If we love music, we'll get in the choir.

If we like kids ministry, we'll volunteer there.

And if for some reason we just love to travel for Jesus, then we'll go on mission trips.

And that's just this other thing out here that some people do and some people don't do.

No, friends, every department, if that's the right word, every department of Mud Creek Baptist Church is a missions-sending agency.

Every single one of them is designed to be that way and is leaning into that.

Even with our kids' ministry, do you know they're collecting over the next few weeks and months, they're collecting pennies to send to a children's home in Peru?

Why?

Because they're on this end of the rope, sending for the sake of the gospel.

They're going to be collecting and filling backpacks to send to the coal fields of West Virginia where people live in extreme poverty.

Why?

Because we want our kids to be involved in the sending mission of God.

Every single mission, every single ministry, Mud Creek Christian School, ask Miss Sherry, who's the director there.

She will tell you that that is a missions organization that designed, that is designed to share the gospel to the mission field of kids before they get to kindergarten.

Ask Mike Nelson, who does such a great job at leading Carpenter's Hands, and he will be the first to tell you that Carpenter's Hands is a missions organization that exists to be the hands and feet of Jesus and to be sought and light in our community and around the world.

Every aspect of our church family should be about doing mission.

Did you know that we're even having an event on the first Saturday of September where we are going to go down to carpenter's hands and all the men of the church, y'all heard me, are going to go split wood.

Why?

Because we want to be a mission to old ladies in our community and others in need that are going to heat with wood this winter and it's going to be cold.

And if we can show them the love of Jesus by splitting wood on Saturday, September 5th, we will register right now to come split wood.

Amen.

It's mission.

Everything is mission.

Mission drives the church.

But their diversity is not just in their spiritual gift.

Some of their diversity is just kind of the plain old ethnic diversity of people from different places and different backgrounds.

Look at what the text says.

It tells us about who was in the leadership team of the early church.

Barnabas is there.

Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew from the tribe of Levi.

We've met him in Acts chapter.

We've met him in Acts chapter number nine and chapter 11.

Then there's Simeon, who is called Niger.

I want to be very, very delicate here, but this is important.

The word Niger comes from the Latin word for black.

That was evidently his nickname.

I guess there were a lot of Simeons, Simons in the early church.

This one was distinctive because of his skin color.

And evidently they were not great at nicknames in the early church.

But he was very clearly black.

Then the Bible says that there's Lucius of Cyrene, that is from North Africa, which at this time was probably not particularly dark in their color of skin.

Menaead, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, either as sort of a stepbrother or a member of the kind of unofficial family raised in power, raised in wealth in the Jewish royal family, and Saul, Jew, raised outside of Israel, but educated in the ivy leagues of Gamaliel's school of theology.

This is a mixed bag of people.

There's all sorts of diversity, all sorts of backgrounds, different skin colors, different languages.

But they're all working together for the sake of the gospel.

And I think this is important to us because they seem to understand, listen, as different as we all are, if the gospel of Jesus has come to us, then it should be going to people that are different than us.

And so I think their diversity is actually very critical to their commitment to send Paul and Barnabas out on this first mission trip.

Because they understood, you know, the gospel came to me, and if the gospel can save me, if Jesus has a place for me, then Jesus has a place for anybody.

But I do think, I do think we're kind of challenged here at Mud Creek in this area.

And here's why.

Because Hendersonville, North Carolina, in the year 2026 is simply not as ethnically diverse as the city of Antioch would have been around 45, 50 AD.

Just not.

So our church is probably never going to have the same sort of ethnic diversity that they do here.

But that's not to say we're not a diverse congregation.

I know in Henderson County, diversity in a church like ours is basically like, do you like Skull or Copenhagen?

That's about as diverse as we get.

But we actually are a more diverse congregation than you may realize.

Did you realize that we have a member worshiping with us today who was born in South Africa?

Did you realize that we have members that are worshiping with us today that are from Colombia?

Not Columbia, South Carolina, the actual real country, the nation of Colombia.

Did you know that?

Did you know that we have families from Mexico in our church?

Did y'all know that we have people in our church from Michigan?

And if God is able to save Yankees, there is nobody that should be off the table.

And so we should all recognize, church, that even if we don't have the same diversity exactly that they did in Acts chapter 13, we should recognize that the gospel came to us on its way to somebody else.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

And we should be willing to go and to pray and to sin in whatever direction God might open a door, because God has welcomed us, and we should be doing everything that we can to see all sorts of people brought into the family of God.

So that even if our church is never as diverse ethnically as the church in Antioch was in Acts chapter 13, I do know that the Bible says that around the throne of Jesus in heaven, that there will be people there from every nation, every tribe, every tongue, every skin color, every background, every social standing, every economic class, and they will be there together with one voice, worshiping Jesus who died for the sins of the whole world.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

And if that's true, then our task from the corner of Irkwood and Rutledge, right here in Hendersonville, is to get them there.

That's our task, is to get them there.

And so the crowd is diverse, moving quickly.

Second, notice this about the church on the other end of the rope.

The people are hungry.

They're hungry.

And I mean that at two levels.

Quite literally, they are hungry.

Because they're fasting.

But their fasting, I believe, is an indication of their spiritual appetite for God to do something new.

Now you'll notice that when God calls Barnabas and Paul in verse number two, it happens as they minister to the Lord and fast.

As they are engaged in worship, as they are performing their duties before the face of God for his glory.

And as they fast, while they fast, God speak.

I was talking to one of our pastors about this sermon, about this story just the other day, and he said.

Most of our people think more about fast food than do fasting.

I'm not going to tell you which one it was.

Because frankly, that was just nasty, wasn't it?

But he's right.

We don't often think about fasting.

We are Baptists.

We feast.

We're going to schedule a Valentine's Day banquet.

We're going to have an Easter breakfast.

We're going to have homecoming.

We're going to have ice cream suppers in the summertime.

We're going to have watermelon in the summertime.

We're going to have hamburgers and hot dogs in the summertime.

We're going to have a Thanksgiving meal.

I mean, we're going to pepper the calendar full of times to eat.

As well we should.

Amen.

I don't have a bit of a problem with that.

And yet, fasting here is an important spiritual discipline that many of us have lost.

Many of us have lost.

We don't know why specifically they were fasting.

I just assume, and I may be wrong, but I assume that they were anticipating something new for their future, something on the horizon, a new work of God.

And they wanted to clearly know God's direction and clearly know God's will.

But what I do know is that fasting in both Old and New Testaments is a sign of spiritual desperation, a sign of spiritual devotion.

That is, in effect, saying to God and even to our own natural appetites, Lord, I am more hungry for you than I am for the food that I need to live.

And so while they are setting aside their bodies and their minds in dedication to the Lord, it's there that God speaks.

To put it just as simply as I can, God spoke to a church that was hungry to hear from him.

God spoke to a church, in other words, that was not satisfied.

And I believe the question that should be in front of us today is really: are we hungry or are we satisfied?

Are we satisfied with what God is doing at Mud Creek or do we want to see God lead us into more?

I'm not calling for a fast, even though that may be appropriate, but I am asking you, are we hungry to see God send out people to the field?

Are we hungry to see our people equipped to share the gospel?

Are we hungry to see God save sinners?

Are we hungry for the next season of ministry and life at Mud Creek?

Or are we just pretty well satisfied?

These people were hungry.

They were saying, God, do something fresh and do something new.

And so they removed any distraction.

And God spoke.

And it could be today that the reason many of us do not hear God speak, the reason maybe our church doesn't hear God speak, the reason perhaps many churches never hear the voice of the Lord is because we're constantly distracted by everything else.

All the bells and whistles and algorithms that compete for our attention.

That we never hear God.

Distracted by sinful things at times, distracted by simple busyness, distracted by our schedules, distracted by our families, and we never leave space to hear God speak clearly.

This is a struggle we have at our house literally every day because I live with two blurters.

And because their dear mother, the preacher's wife, is so soft-spoken, unlike her husband, often she will be telling me something that I need to know, something that happened, or something that we've got coming up, or something just whatever generally is on her mind.

And then one of the blurters will interrupt and speak over their mother.

She'll be saying, Yeah, tomorrow night we've got to make sure we do this and then blah blah blah, just the way I hear it.

And I will have to say, be quiet while your mom speaks.

Do not interrupt your mother.

I need to listen to what mom's saying right now.

A lot of us have our minds and our hearts so filled with distracting noise that we cannot hear our Heavenly Father speak.

And perhaps some of you are at a season in life, and I think maybe our church is at a season of life where we need to say, Lord, speak.

We want to eliminate anything that's distracting us, and God, we need to hear from you about what's next.

And so because they're hungry, God speaks.

And God says in verse number three in this church where God is speaking, He says, Separate to me, or verse number two, separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Then they fast again.

They're already hungry.

And I said, We're going to fast again.

Fasting all the time.

They pray, they lay hands on them, and then they send them away.

They send them away.

Isn't it amazing that in this church they give their best and they give their brightest for the sake of mission?

Asa got real convicted about that blurting just now.

He couldn't even stand to preach.

Did y'all see that?

Couldn't handle it.

They give Saul and Barnabas away for the sake of mission.

Get this.

There are some people in church that you don't want to lose, right?

They preach too well.

They seem, I'm not talking about me.

They sing too great.

They serve so faithfully.

They give too much.

So we don't want to give them away.

We don't want to see them go.

That's Paul and Barnabas.

Five-star recruits.

We know Paul's resume.

Remember Barnabas' resume?

He had come to the Church of Antioch in Acts chapter 11, had encouraged them in his early days, had led them as they got off the ground, had supported them, encouraged them to walk in the grace of the Lord.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

And yet they say we will lay aside our personal preferences for the sake of the gospel.

That's powerful to me.

It's powerful.

Because it reminds me that there should be nothing too much for us to give up.

That if God calls our best and our brightest, if he asks for our deepest commitment, our largest gifts, our most fervent prayers, he's worthy of all of that.

He's worthy of all of that.

And so this church is remarkable in that they are not merely trying to hoard.

Y'all seen that show, hoarders?

Some of y'all thinking, preacher, I'm living that show, been married to it for 20 years.

But you've seen this show, right?

It's very, very sad, and we know there's real psychological issues, but suffice to say, that there are that's that's the way churches in America, that's the way we run.

We're hoarders.

We hoard the best people, we hoard the best preachers, we hoard the best musicians, we hoard the best ideas, we hoard the best programs, hoard all the money, and we just keep it in our little kingdom, right?

And then we build the biggest buildings and we hoard and we hoard and we hoard and we draw in more people and we hoard them.

We put a bigger building so we can bring in more people and we hoard and we hoard and we hoard and we hoard.

That's not their attitude in the book of Acts.

They're sending.

They're not close-fisted with the blessings of God.

They've released them for the sake of the gospel.

Why did they do that?

I think the clue is given to us in verse 3 and verse number 4 because the Bible says, notice it very carefully, this is what the Bible said.

It seems to be contradictory, but they're actually, it's actually explaining itself.

Verse number 3 says that when they fast and pray, they send Barnabas and Paul away.

So who sent Paul and Barnabas on their first trip?

The church did.

They sent them, they led them away.

In verse number four, who sent Paul and Barnabas away?

The Holy Spirit sent them.

In other words, the church is acting in concert with the sending heart of God.

There's a great missionary from England, another missionary from around the time of William Carey, named Henry Martin, who said that the Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions.

And the nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.

In other words, the closer we get to the heart of a sending God, the more we will want to send.

The more we will want to send.

Why is that?

Because we have a sending God.

How do we know that?

Because God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but he sent him so that the world through him might be saved.

And this is what Jesus always talks about.

You remember the story of Zacchaeus?

Remember that story?

Let me jog your memory.

Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was?

Alright, Zacchaeus is this little guy with a big problem.

And his problem is nobody likes him.

And why does nobody like him?

Because he's a tax collector.

I don't like him.

And so Zacchaeus decides that he wants to hear from Jesus.

You remember the story?

Decides that he wants to hear from Jesus.

But poor old Zacchaeus, in the middle of a crowd, well, he can't see over anybody's shoulders.

And so he can't see Jesus.

So what does Zacchaeus do?

What kind of tree?

Well, some of y'all paid attention in Sunday school.

Whoever that dear sister was, she's proud of you today.

Climbs up in that sycamore tree because he wanted to see the Lord, right?

And he does.

But more importantly, listen, the Lord saw him.

You know, some of y'all are trying to hide today, and you're just trying to investigate Jesus this morning, aren't you?

You ain't gonna hide from him.

He knows exactly where you are.

And then what does Jesus say to him?

Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, come down.

Because I'm going to your house.

And everybody's scandalized.

Why would Jesus go eat with the tax collector?

How dare he?

Here's what Jesus says, Luke chapter 19 and verse number 10.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

This is Jesus' one mission statement that explains his whole life.

For the Son of Man has come to do what?

To seek and to save that which was lost.

In other words, Jesus echoes here what he had said earlier in Luke chapter 15, that he is the one who leaves the 99 to go after the one that is lost.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

That he's like that widowed lady who looks for her lost piece of silver, upturns every cushion, looks under the couch, sweeps up the floor, doing every single thing that she can to find that which was lost.

Jesus says, that is the very reason that I'm here.

And is it not true?

For those of us that know him today, do we not realize that this is true?

Do we not realize that he sought us when we were lost?

That he came after us when we were astray, that he loved us when we were unlovable, and that he reached us when we were far from him, that he pursued us even in our sins to bring us all the way home.

We know that.

And he tells the disciples before he ascends back to heaven in John chapter 20, the Bible says that he breathed on them.

John 20 · chapter mention

And he said, Receive the Holy Spirit, as the Father hath sent me, so send I you.

And so now we have people that recognize Jesus was sent for us.

We will send for him because we are sent for him.

Jesus says he'll leave the 99 to find the one that's lost.

1%.

That's who Jesus is for.

1%.

Ironically, it's about 1% of professed Christians that ever become cross-cultural missionaries.

1%.

You know what a faithful church does?

A faithful church goes with Jesus after the one that's lost to see them discipled and matured into the 1% that go.

That's what a faithful church does.

So that the 99% that stay behind on this end of the rope are holding up the 1% that go.

So that 100% of us are involved in God's mission to reach those that are lost.

The church understands that.

And so they're willing to send Paul and Barnabas in response to the voice of God.

And so, as your pastor, I want to say this to you: that Mud Creek Baptist Church has thrived and excelled for years in being a church that basically says, come and see what's happening here.

And that's great because there's a lot of cool things happening here.

But there's more to being a faithful church than just saying, come and have a seat.

Being a faithful church means that we send people out.

It's not just about bringing people in, but it's about sending people out after the lost.

My prayer for us as the people of God is that we would develop into a church, like you see in the church at Antioch, a church on the other end of the rope.

That we are willing to send our best and our brightest.

But at the same time, friends, God has not called all of us to go to Waziristan or wherever.

He hasn't.

But I guarantee you this they need some missionaries at Engels.

They need some missionaries at Planet Fitness.

They need some missionaries at Hillendale Elementary and East High School and points in between.

They need missionaries in the place where you work.

We need missionaries that will give their lives to the mission's cause of taking care of children during our worship services in the nursery.

You could take a mission trip here for an hour every week.

Did you know that?

God has a place for you in the field.

And we want to see you go.

We want to pray for you and love you and support you wherever the Lord sends you.

You may need to get a passport, you may not.

But my prayer is that our church be a church that's holding the rope for those that go.