What Now? (Acts) | Signs of Life

There's an old novel called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Maybe some of you have read that great work.

And in that book, there's a tree that grows behind a tenement building in a vacant lot that's full of ash and broken glass.

And a tree has no business growing in a place like that.

And yet every single year the tree grows taller and taller than the year before.

I think about that tree, and I think that the tree is a lot like the kingdom of heaven today.

God's rule and God's reign is breaking into the earth through the surface of the world.

And it's growing in places that nobody expected it to grow or expects things to grow.

New creation is flourishing even in a world which we all recognize, even in a world that's full of ash and rubble.

In other words, heaven is not waiting for life to end before it begins.

That's not the heaven that's presented to us in the scriptures.

There's a different vision of heaven that we get from the scriptures than we got maybe from Renaissance art.

And that picture of heaven is that it's here now.

It is?

Heaven is here?

Now, when did heaven come to earth?

Jesus brought it with him.

His death, his resurrection.

What was that all about?

It was about starting something, really a continuation of the story, but something that is happening still today and will continue to happen until one day when Jesus returns and all things have been made new.

This is the vision, the story that God is writing.

We can read it for ourselves in the scriptures.

And you might wonder, how is it exactly that Jesus is continuing to do his work?

Jesus died, he was resurrected, he ascended back to the Father.

So how's Jesus continuing his work?

Well, the answer to that question is he's continuing to do his work of bringing heaven here through ordinary people like me and like you.

We've been given the same spirit, the scripture says, that was alive in Jesus.

And not only have we been given the same spirit, but we've been given a shared mission.

We we have the spirit, and we've also been sent to continue the work that Jesus began.

And so what I want to talk about this morning is centering our lives on the work of cultivating the in-breaking kingdom wherever we see it on earth today.

Re-centering or centering our lives on the work of putting our hands to the work of Jesus as the kingdom breaks through on earth.

I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 11.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

This is not a random passage of scripture.

We're actually moving through the book of Acts together as a church family.

And I've found it to be inspiring in places, challenging in other places, but overall incredibly helpful as we think about what it means to be the church today, reflecting on the beginning of the early church and how the spirit grew it.

You can just follow along with me as I read.

I'm reading from the NIV, the New International Version, so yours might be slightly different, but it'll be close enough.

Here we go.

Now, those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews.

Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.

The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

I want you to notice first what's not in that paragraph, what's missing.

There's no mention of any apostles.

I mean, up to this point in the story, there's lots of work being done by apostles and apostles being called to do special work and miracle work and healing work and raising the dead kind of work, but there's no mention of any apostles here.

There's also no sort of like commissioning where people stand up and enlist in the thing that God is doing.

There's no meeting in Jerusalem.

There's no vote taken.

There's no official sending.

There's no real strategy or plan here.

It just says that there are ordinary men from Cyprus and Cyrene.

How do we know that they're ordinary?

Well, they're not named for one.

These are ordinary followers of Jesus, members of what was called at this point the way.

These are refugees, really, running for their lives after Stephen, their brother in the faith, was killed in Jerusalem.

And as they run, we've seen this already in the book of Acts throughout, but as they scatter, they're sharing the good news about Jesus as they go along.

So far in the story, this has primarily been limited, the sharing with fellow Jews, right?

Jesus came and started a renewal within the Jewish movement, within the Jewish faith, a renewal movement.

And so all of these believers, the vast majority of them, would have been raised in the Jewish faith and practicing the Jewish faith.

And so that message was primarily contained to other Jewish believers in Jerusalem until Stephen was stoned and these believers begin to scatter.

Now no one told these particular believers to start sharing the good news with everybody.

They just started doing it.

Nobody trained these unnamed ordinary men from Cyprus and Cyrene.

We don't even know what their names are, like I mentioned, but we do know that the Lord's hand was with them, and that's massive, isn't it?

You might not have training, you might be ordinary, you might not even know if you're up for the job, you might be on the run.

But if the Lord's hand is with you, that's all you need.

That's in essence all they had.

You know, where was Cyprus?

Where was Cyrene?

What do we know?

Cyprus was an island or is an island out, you know, in the Mediterranean.

And Cyrene is a city across the map in northern Africa.

And so we understand about that these men is that they aren't from Jerusalem.

Why is that significant?

Because Jerusalem was really the center of everything that was happening at this point in the narrative.

Everything that's happening.

Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was tried in Jerusalem, he was crucified in Jerusalem, he was raised outside the city walls of Jerusalem.

He was, you know, uh he appeared to his disciples in in Jerusalem.

Like everything is happening here at the center.

But these men are not from the center, the place where everything is happening, the place where the temple stood and the apostles taught.

These these men were from the edges, part of the diaspora, scattered Jews who had spent their whole lives already living among people that weren't like them.

And I don't think that's a small detail for us to consider this morning.

I think it's really central, actually.

Because we see here that the kingdom doesn't usually break in or break through first at the center where everyone is watching and everyone already agrees what counts as normal.

It breaks through at the edges, in the places that nobody thought to keep watch over, among people who were never really fully at the center to begin with.

Now, most Christians I know, I'd include myself in this, for the most part, sort of live at the center today.

We know the right language, we've sort of settled into a general understanding of what counts as a normal Christian life.

And there's ultimately nothing wrong with that on its own.

But what we need to understand about centers is they have a way of trying to protect themselves.

They get good at recognizing what already fits and what doesn't fit, who's in and who's out.

Jesus wasn't from the center.

And Jesus hasn't called us to the center either.

I don't know if this is my favorite verse.

I don't think I have a favorite verse in the Bible, but one I mention here probably every Sunday, it feels like, is John 20, 21.

After Jesus dies and resurrects from the dead, he appears to the disciples who are obviously shocked to find him alive.

And he says to them, after saying, Relax, fear not.

He breathes on them, gives them the Holy Spirit, and he says, As the Father sent me, what?

What is the rest of that?

I am sending you.

I am sending you.

Remember what we talked about a couple of weeks ago when God goes all the way back to the book of Genesis, when God made the first humans, God didn't hand them or place them in a finished product.

What he did was he put them in a garden that was already alive, but he told them to work the garden, to take care of the garden.

It had seed and uh seed-bearing plants, but they were to tend what God had made.

They were to shape what God had made, even name what God had made.

This was the human vocation and has been since the very beginning, before sin and death came in and wrecked everything in the story.

In other words, we were made in the image of God and we were made to notice what's already growing and to give it what it needs in order for it to flourish.

That's what human beings are all about.

That's why God put us here.

Some of you maybe have read Wendell Berry, and if not, I highly recommend it.

But he spent his life farming the same land in Kentucky that his family had worked for generations.

And he wrote about the difference between exploiting land and nurturing it.

The idea is that exploiting land means forcing it to do what you want.

But nurturing means to pay attention to what's already alive in it and working with that instead of against it.

That's what's happening here in Antioch.

Nobody is forcing anything to grow here on the edges.

It's growing, and people are noticing a group of ordinary scattered people.

They paid attention to what God was already doing among unexpected people and an unexpected place, and they decided to put their hands to the work.

I want to say these actions of these ordinary people are normal Christian actions.

These aren't special people doing a special thing.

They are ordinary people doing what you and I are called to do.

Look at verse 22, Acts 11.

So the Lord's adding to their number out here on the margins, going crazy.

Not word of this gets back.

So news of this reached the church in Jerusalem, back in the center, right?

And they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

And when he arrived, he saw the evidence of the grace of God.

He was glad, and he encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.

He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul.

If you've been tracking along the story, we know Saul's incredible transformation that he's experiencing right now.

And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch.

So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people.

I want us to sit just for a second with what Barnabas actually had the authority to do here.

You know, Barnabas is sent out from the center.

He's sent out from the church, the apostles in Jerusalem to go and check out what's happening out here in the margins in Antioch.

And he could have gone in with lots of questions, and maybe he had questions.

He could have gone in with and lots of concerns about doctrine, and maybe he had those two on his way.

Questions about order, concerns about whether Gentiles becoming Christians without being Jews first is even allowed.

They hadn't really seen this sort of thing yet.

He had every reason to slow this down until Jerusalem could get its arms around it.

But what happens instead?

Instead, Barnabas shows up, and then Luke, the author of Acts, tells us what he sees.

He sees the grace of God and he's glad.

I think it's worth noticing too where Barnabas is from.

Back in Acts chapter 4, Luke tells us that Barnabas is a Levite from Cyprus.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

The same island that the unnamed men in the story came from.

And so understand, Jerusalem sends an inspector, in essence, to Antioch.

And the one that they send turns out to already know what it is to live far away from the center.

Saul, who is known as the Apostle Paul, says something later in a letter that helps explain the kind of work that Barnabas is doing.

And in his writing to the Corinthians, he says that Paul planted the seed, that Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.

Why?

So that neither one the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, only God who makes things grow.

Barnabas is not the one who planted the work in Antioch, is he?

He was nowhere near it at the time.

The unnamed men already did this.

The ordinary followers of Jesus did it.

So what does Barnabas do when he arrives?

He simply waters it.

He sees the grace of God, he calls it good, he's glad, and he nurtures what God is doing.

You know, Jesus talked about this kind of kingdom growth too.

He said that the kingdom is like a man who scatters seed and then goes on about his life, sleeping and waking.

And all the while the seed sprouts and it grows on its own.

And the man who planted the seed has no idea how it actually happens, but it happens.

I think that's what Barnabas does in Antioch.

He's encouraged by these baby Christians and he encourages them to stay true to the Lord, the scripture says.

Not true to Jerusalem, not true to the center, not true to what it looked like exactly in the city, not even true to himself or the apostles, but true to the Lord.

And then he goes and he gets Saul because why?

Because a movement this alive, it needs not more authority to control what's happening, but it needs more hands to cultivate it.

I think Barnabas shows up and he sees this incredible work that God's doing and he's like, I can help here, but I can't do it all.

We need more laborers, we need more hands.

It reminds me of Jesus talking to the disciples and saying, The fields are white for harvest.

Pray for the Lord to send workers.

And then what does he do?

He sends the disciples, you're the workers, go do it, my followers.

So here they are.

If the field is white with harvest and Barnabas needs more hands, and he sends for Saul, and they stay an entire year giving themselves to the work that God is doing in Antioch.

And what does God do?

God causes it to grow.

It grows not because of Barnabas and Saul, it grows because God wants it to grow.

But Barnabas and Saul have a God-ordained part of the plan, part of the work.

We're going to see that a little bit more of ourselves here in just a second.

Notice the fruit that comes out of what happens here in Antioch.

Verse 27.

During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

One of them, named Agabas, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world.

The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea.

Where's Jerusalem?

In Judea.

This they did, sending their gifts to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

So let's think about for a second who's sending money to whom?

Who is taking care of whom?

The church in Antioch, which is a baby, brand new, year-old work of God, filled with mostly Gentile believers, are gathering their resources, they're giving them and trusting them to Barnabas and Saul to take back to the believers in Judea who are not Greek Gentile believers, Jewish believers.

I mean, one chapter earlier in the book of Acts, these two groups couldn't even eat at the same table because Jewish believers weren't sure that Gentile believers belonged at the table at all.

And now Gentile believers are pooling their money to feed Jewish believers that they never met.

This generosity is a sign of the kingdom.

It's it's fruit.

It's the fruit, the kind of fruit that grows up out of the work that God is doing.

When God does work on the earth, it always produces fruit, some kind of fruit.

That's how we know that the whole story is moving toward ri the restoration of all things, a whole world that bears the fruit of heaven.

And so what we see here in the in in chapter 11 of the book of Acts is that the gospel didn't just cross a boundary in Antioch.

It it turned into shared wallets.

See, it it changed the way that people live.

They metabolized what they had consumed.

And as they metabolized the truth of what God was doing, it turned into a way of being, a way of acting that affected their actual wallets, the way that they spent their money and used their resources.

It's here in the same passage that Luke tells us that the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.

You know, up until this point in the book of Acts, they're just called members of the way.

Remember Saul when he was on his rampage and he's going and he's pulling men and women out of their homes to persecute them, Christians?

They weren't called Christians at the time.

They were looking for people, members of the way, those who belonged to the way.

And now we see members of the way, we see the fruit of what God is doing in them, and it looks like Christ.

And so people began to call them little Christs, little Christians, because it became evident in their lives.

They become, or they're called Christians not because of their ethnicity and not because of some sort of official certificate, but because of the thing that was growing in them and then coming out of them.

So what does this look like for us this week in our own lives?

That's the question I think we need to get around to this morning.

What does it look like then in our own lives?

We're ordinary men and women.

We might not be from Cyprus or Cyrene, but we're from lots of different places.

And depending on where you're from, it might feel closer or further from the center of the Christian faith.

Maybe some of you are from somewhere, you know, in the Bible belt or in the buckle of the Bible belt.

Or some of you work in institutions that are very much Christian institutions, and you attend churches that are very solid churches.

And so we might feel a little closer to the center, but some of us might live and work and be in places that don't feel like the center.

It feels more like the edge, the edges of what God is doing, the edges of the kingdom.

So what do any of us do, whether we feel close to the center or live out in these unexpected places, what are we to actually do?

How are we to actually live like uh the example that we see here in Acts chapter 11?

Acts 11 · chapter mention

So I want to give you sort of, it's not a technique, but it's sort of a way of paying attention that I think Barnabas models for us in this story.

So I'm just gonna give you three things.

Write these down.

We're gonna go through them very quickly.

That was not the introduction.

We are we are getting very close towards the end of this sermon.

So if you get a little worried there, don't worry.

We got 45 minutes to go.

All right, so uh number one, how can I sort of begin to pay attention?

How can I engage in the vocation that God first gave me in Genesis along with the rest of humanity?

Knowing that Jesus has made it so that I can.

That Jesus has done work, which we're gonna talk about in a second.

Jesus has done the work so that I can recover my vocation and join God in the renewal of all things.

Here's the first thing we want to do this week that we can practically do.

We can begin to look for signs of growth.

Look for signs of growth.

I really love the story about Barnabas because as we said earlier, Barnabas didn't plant this work.

He didn't plant the seed.

He comes along and something is already growing.

And some of us might be planters and we're all called to live as witnesses, but some of us, yeah, maybe we like that work of cultivating hard ground and putting the seed in and praying for rain and waiting and waiting and waiting.

And some of us do that work, that's very important work to do.

But I think for most of us, we we're really the work of Barnabas is closer to how we actually experience life and what God is actually doing around us.

And so we can actually look for signs of growth where we see little green sprouts popping up.

I know this winter was absolutely horrendous for many of us.

And wasn't it so incredible just to see those first little tiny green shoots popping up out of that brown?

Hardened soil.

Man, it wasn't spring yet, but we knew it was coming, right?

There were signs of it.

Look for signs of growth.

What does Jesus say?

He says to his disciples, open their eyes and look at the fields, because they are already ripe for harvest.

The Lord's hand is already at Antioch before Barnabas ever shows up to notice.

So what do what should I be looking for?

What does it mean?

What do these signs look like?

Let me just give you some examples.

I'll start by saying someone I'm very close to texted me this week.

And this person doesn't really want anything to do with God.

And okay, so we're just trusting and, you know, letting God do God's thing in this person's life.

But they texted me and reached out because a very close friend of theirs lost a very close family member this week.

And this person texted me to say, would you be praying for them?

Would you be praying for them?

That's a sign of growth.

It's a sign of the kingdom.

It's not a full-grown tree, is it?

I mean, there's no fruit on these branches.

I mean, it's barely, maybe sees sort of a crack in the soil of the kingdom sprouting up.

That wasn't just a random text message.

That's a sign of growth.

So, what can you be looking for?

Maybe a coworker or a client that's talking to you about something real, something beyond work.

How about a marriage that you know of or are in or are close to that's holding on against all odds in a very difficult season?

How about a friend who's trying to get sober?

A teenager that's asking real questions.

A neighbor who's looking for help.

I mean, signs of growth are all around us if we know what to look for.

You know, when the kingdom breaks in on earth, it rarely announces itself as heaven.

You know, no trumpets, you're not going to hear anything like that.

No banners unfurling, no one riding in on a horse to tell you that the kingdom is breaking in.

It's more like looking across barren frozen ground for these little tiny cracks to open up in a little shoot of green.

Most of the time it looks like the kind of stuff that happens on your typical Tuesday.

Let's pay attention to those and see them for what they are.

Number two, so look for signs of growth.

Number two, support what's growing.

Support what's growing.

It's one thing to notice that there's some sort of sign of growth.

There's something happening over here.

It's a whole other thing to then like get involved in it.

And I've talked about this before.

New England doesn't feel like a very get involved in it sort of culture.

I mean, it's New Englanders get involved in it when they're asked, and they do an amazing job of showing up when people need.

But the idea of sort of engaging or instigating or inserting ourselves sort of goes against the general culture.

But if we're going to do the thing that God has called us to do, it requires us to support what's going.

And in order to support what's growing, we have to get our hands on it in some way, shape, or form.

And so the way that we can do that is begin to think about okay, this person came to me with this very interesting request.

Okay.

So I need to start thinking about and praying about what is this thing in front of me and what does it actually need right now in order to support it staying alive and growing more?

You know, some of us, in some situations, it could be a resource.

Someone may come to us and we may have a resource.

Oh, do you know about AA?

It meets downstairs at Summer Street Church on Tuesdays.

Or another resource.

Oh, yeah, we have tools for discussing the Bible.

Why don't you show up on Wednesday with me?

I'm going to midweek.

Other resources are available.

Sometimes it's time.

Just committing some time, which we'll talk about here in a second in the third one, but it's committing some time to a person for follow-up, not just patting them on the back.

Oh, thanks for sharing, but giving a little bit of time.

Sometimes it's just showing up the same way every week, whether you feel like it or not.

It's just consistency in the life of a person.

Whatever we see growing as followers of Jesus, whatever we see growing, we give it what it needs, not what's easiest for us to give.

Some of you know this.

I know that you know this because you were told in Sunday school when you were a little kid, or maybe even later.

Do you know the name of Barnabas?

Do you know what it means?

I know somebody does.

Somebody, if you know it, shout it out.

Son of Encouragement.

Son of encouragement.

Isn't that powerful?

When he gets to Antioch, that's exactly what he does.

He encourages what God is growing.

Isn't that what cultivation is?

It's putting our hands to something in such a way that just simply encourages growth.

We can't make it grow, but we're doing what we can in order to encourage it.

And I think one simple way to do this step, you want to write this down, is what we see in the scripture, and we see Barnabas doing it.

One simple way to support what's growing that we see on a typical Tuesday, and something that costs you almost nothing to do, is to simply say to another person what you see.

I see God working in you.

Can you see how a simple statement like that can provide support for the thing that God is doing already in the life of a person and move them forward or help them to move forward in the process?

Okay, so that's the second one.

So the first one is we want to look for signs of growth.

The second, we want to support what's growing.

And the third, and maybe the most difficult one, is to stay.

It's to stay.

I think this is a call, the story is a call to all of us who want to be a part of the thing that God is doing, who realize that part of what God did through Jesus on the cross and through the resurrection wasn't just about a verdict, but it was also about a vocation.

Didn't just solve my eternity, it solved my present as well.

And so I think the call of this story on our lives, in part, is at least to sync our life to God's timing.

Part of the reason why we miss out, we don't live in vocation.

We wonder why our life feels lackluster or lacks some sort of purpose or meaning or feels a little bit empty, is because we're expecting God to sync up his timing to us.

But that's not what happens here.

So if Antioch needed a year before anybody here ever mentions moving on, that should tell us something about our own patience with the person or the thing or the place that we're watching grow.

You know, leaving early is its own kind of neglect.

Well, how long do I stay?

Well, I don't think it's a cop out to say, I think the Holy Spirit will tell you.

How long do I stay involved in this person's life in this process?

I don't, I think the Holy Spirit will let you know.

I mean, maybe it's when you start to see some fruit, but maybe not.

Maybe it's longer than that, maybe it's before that.

Maybe you never see fruit.

Maybe it's when someone else comes along to, you know, take over the work that you've begun.

I don't know, but I know that if Jesus has invited you to cultivate something, something that God is growing, I know that we don't leave until the we don't leave the work until the Holy Spirit tells us that it's time to.

We stay.

I think there's something in here which is really interesting and worth some further study and discussion, but that God's work and our work are not entirely separate things.

That God typically works through people.

The same spirit, as we mentioned before, that raised Christ from the dead is the spirit that is alive in us right now.

So when we look for signs of growth, when we support what's growing, when we stay, the spirit of the risen Jesus is working in us, and at the same time, he's working through us.

Let me close here.

I want to repeat this fact.

This is really important.

That God uses ordinary people every day to grow his kingdom in unexpected places.

That is happening.

That is not unusual.

That is Christianity.

That's what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

And so listen, rather than defaulting to what we typically default to at the center, critique, correction, control, there's a time for all of those.

But rather than defaulting to those from the center, let's commit to cultivating what God is doing on the edges and the unexpected places.

How can I first give my hand to the work of cultivation?

I want you to think right now about where God might be growing his kingdom.

Somewhere in proximity to you, to your life.

I want you to think: are there signs somewhere in someone that God might be growing his kingdom?

Think about the people that you know that you interact with on a regular basis.

It could be the random person you bump into in town that you didn't know before, but now you, it could be that, but I think typically it's it's typically people that we know.

I want you to think about the places that you're in, that you go to.

And I want you to ask yourself, can I see what's growing there?

Can I see a sign?

And if not, ask God to help you see it and to help you encourage it and to stay as long as the Spirit says it.

Some some of you, some of you wonder, does God actually really, I hear what you're saying, but does someone, does God actually use someone like me or people like me to do this kind of thing?

I'm a Christian, but I'm not really educated in this kind of stuff.

I'm a Christian, but I I'm not really trained in this stuff.

I'm a Christian, but I'm really a businessman.

I'm a Christian, I'm really a businesswoman.

I'm a Christian, but I'm retired, you know.

I'm a Christian, but I'm just in my 20s.

Got a lot to learn.

I'm a Christian, but I don't typically say a lot.

I'm sort of more the quiet person.

Does God actually use people like me to do this kind of thing?

And I would say to you, you're the only kind of person God uses.

Because there is no other kind of person.

And I'm confident that the kingdom of heaven is breaking through in your general vicinity right now, maybe even in your own life.

Maybe even in your own home.

Maybe in your own relationships.

That the kingdom of heaven is breaking through, and that this is what you were made for.

You know, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, it does two things in the life of the believer, at least.

One, it deals with everything that was working against you.

Sin, shame, death itself, the scriptures teach us, are all defeated at the cross and the empty tomb.

And therefore, you are free.

That's one.

The second thing that the the resurrection, the death and the resurrection of Jesus does is it restores you to what you are always meant to be.

Not only does it rescue you from sin and death, but it restores you to what you were always meant to be.

So you're not just free, you are sent.

You're not just saved, you are sinned, not just forgiven, but you're useful again.

You're a cultivator, you're a greenhouse maker, building greenhouses around the little sprouts that we see growing up in our lives.

Jesus didn't just rescue you for something from something, he restored you to something.

The very work that you were made to do in the very beginning.

And I just want to say there is no greater joy in all of life than being set free by Jesus and restored to a life of meaning and purpose.