How Will We Be Known | Dr. John Ewart

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood

Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.

You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word

about important issues facing your life that can guide you

according to the Bible. Well, good morning, Inglewood.

Turn to Acts Chapter 11, if you will.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

I'll catch up to you in just a moment.

Appreciate you being here. Appreciate meeting some guests

in the early service and look forward to meeting some of you

here now. Our early service was pretty

packed, so look forward to seeing you all.

I want to also say just a word of thank you as I get started.

To the folks who led the the work you all did ahead of time

and those who led Vacation Bible School last week, thank you all

so much. Appreciate that.

Let's give them. Sure, have a good week.

We look forward to following up with all those families and and

seeing what God's doing in their life.

Also want to invite you Wednesday night.

I'll be starting back in a new series on Wednesday night.

It's called Core training. Going to be an interesting

series. You come and join hundreds of us

who gather right in here on Wednesday night and we have a

good time studying God's word. We're going to be talking about

what must we believe in order to be saved?

What can we believe in order to also serve together?

We might have some different interpretations, but we can

still serve together. And then what are some of the

areas that we don't necessarily agree on?

So we're actually going to talk about how do you decide what you

have to believe in? And what do you, what can you

have different opinions about, different interpretations about?

And then how come we have denominations?

We're going to talk about all kinds of things over the next

few weeks, and I'll be hitting some of the important doctrines

over those weeks as well. So look forward to that.

It'd be a very important study. You'll like that.

You'll enjoy that. We will put that on podcast just

like we normally do as well for those who are serving in other

areas on Wednesdays. Well, for our best future, for

our best future, everything must focus upon and revolve around

God's mission. That's not just true about the

church, that's true about your individual life.

You need to understand that God has a predetermined path or

train track, as I often refer to it.

He has a track for us as a a church, but also for each of our

lives. And we need to follow that to

bring him great glory and to be used by him in redeeming the

nation's. And that's why the very first

sermon series that I've been sharing with you so far has been

called Come Join the King's Mission because it's vital.

And the book of Acts revealed models for us to understand what

healthy believers must be in his brand new church as he started

the church, why and who we must be as a church.

Then leads me to the second sermon series starting next

Sunday called Come Be the King's Bride.

Because we're going to talk about what it means to the why,

The Who, the what and how of church.

Why is church important? What is church membership about?

What is discipleship about? What are these ordinances like

baptism and the Lord Supper all about?

We're going to talk about some of those important things for

just a few weeks. That and it's going to be a

brief series that then leads us into the fall study, which is

going to be called Come Live, the Churches Vision, the seven

essentials of discipleship. I've been kind of hinting about

this and sharing with you about this.

I'm going to explain our new mission and vision statements.

I'm going to talk about our new discipleship goals.

Your leaders, and I mean over 100 of your leaders have have

worked for hours to discern, assess, provide feedback, and

then to write and preserve some defining essentials of personal

transformation. And these are going to define

the identity that we seek to become.

They're also going to provide, frankly, the practical framework

for developing the contextual biblical vision or the mission

plan to unite all of our church ministries to assist you and

your families to become this kind of disciple.

This is how we define a disciple, a follower of Christ.

And this coupled with our REACH strategy through our connect

groups that we're going to be implementing in the next month,

should create for us an incredible opportunity for

growth and transformation. And so it's a, it's an

incredible time to be a part of Inglewood, whether you, you're a

guest today or this your first time you've been visiting for a

while, It's an incredible time to believe here.

I certainly believe with all of my heart and I'm sincerely as I

can believe anything. I believe certainly that God's

hand is upon us. So first let's complete the

first part of our ACT study for now before we move on.

Several years ago, I was actually leaving some reach

conferences around churches and I was driving down a little 2

lane country highway, some state highway, county highway and, and

it came to a small community and there was a what what was

apparently a furniture store that had shut down.

You can see it was abandoned. Some of the the windows were

broken out. You can see it was empty and and

they had one of those signs out front, you know, the the big

metal sign with a big metal error on arrow.

That's an arrow. I'm from Oklahoma, a big arrow

on the end of it. And you could put the little

letters on there and spell out, you know, your marquee, whatever

you wanted to say. And it was supposed to light up.

You know, it has little holes for lights and whatever and be

flashing and, and would point in and tell you to come to the

store. Well, how one of those signs out

there and one of the legs was broken.

So the arrow was pointing kind of straight up in the air, but

the sign was still on it. The letters, the little things,

the letters were still there. Now no light was working, but

the letters were still there. And it simply said, your search

for quality ends here. And I thought to myself, you

know, you're right, because the quality did end right there,

didn't it? And So what we're talking about

together is a qualitative growth experience.

We want to become true disciples.

We want to qualitatively grow. And then I believe just because

we've experienced this, we're going to then see quantitative

growth that follows that, right? And so we want the quality of

discipleship to guide us. And our study in the book of

Acts has really been the tale of two churches that help us with

this. So the first church in Jerusalem

was led by the apostles, and the majority of the people there

were Aramaic speaking Jewish Christians.

Just got to think of that context.

And then what we see is that the gospel spread.

I'm there. So the gospel spread and it

could not be stopped. It's just too powerful.

And as the gospel spread, it led to new churches just like we're

we're going to celebrate tonight.

We're going to see a new church starting in Tarboro.

We're helping a new church in in Kensington by Pittsburgh.

We're seeing as this gospel spreads, new churches spring up.

And So what we're going to see today is we're going to meet

another one of those churches and we're going to continue to

grow and our understood value for what a healthy biblical

church ought to be. That's what we're going to do

this morning. By comparing these two God

blessed growing churches, we ought to be able to discern some

traits and characteristics that help us to say here's who we

should be. So they are known, preserved

examples and models for us. As we examine them this morning,

we need to ask ourselves the question, how will we be known?

How will Inglewood be known? Will we be a recognized, known

example of a church who passionately pursues the King's

mission? Are we going to be an influencer

in the region and an example for churches to follow and to learn

from? Or will we be just another

normal church? I can tell you about normal

churches. I was sharing this last night

with a group of men that out of the 400,000 so, so or so odd

churches in the United States of America, 360,000 of them would

be considered unhealthy. And so we can be normal or we

can create a truly new normal, which is what I pray we're

after. So throughout Scripture, God

revealed to us the why, The Who, the what, and the how of about

how His people ought to be. If you recognize this, the

earliest stories in the Old Testament, and then the law and

the Tabernacle and the temple and the prophets and the leaders

are all revealing to us what it would should look like, what it

ought to look like for man to walk with Yahweh.

So even in their failures, because at times they didn't do

a good job of that, but even in their failures we are shown what

should be. There are lessons that we learn.

So then in the Gospels we see the very Incarnate or

incarnation of God in human flesh, and we learn from the

life and the character of Jesus in the in the Gospels.

Then, then, in the Epistles we see principles and

characteristics of what true discipleship ought to be.

So the Bible is the story. The whole Bible is the story of

God's redemptive mission, all pointing to Jesus Christ, but

also giving to us a parallel teaching along the same way of

what the people of God should be, what they should know, and

what they ought to do. So these first two sermon series

are these, excuse me, these next two sermon series are very, very

important because they're going to define us as a church as we

move forward. They're also going to help us

concentrate descriptions of true discipleship that are being

lived out and blessed in Scripture and thus showing us

what we need to do today. So I want to introduce to you a

second church where we can observe these biblical

practices. This church ought to remind you

of Jerusalem, the church at Jerusalem.

I don't know if you remember Jerusalem.

Maybe you haven't been here for the whole study.

So let me just remind you very quickly.

In one passage in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, it'll

Acts 2:42–47

be on the screen. And they devoted themselves to

the apostles, teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of

bread and the prayers, and all came upon every soul.

And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles,

and all who believed were together and had all things in

common. And they were selling their

possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all

as any had need. And day by day, attending the

temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they

received their food with gladness, with glad and generous

hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.

And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who

were being saved. So we see these these actions,

we see these attitudes, we see these spiritual disciplines.

So remember their devotion. They were devoted to this, that

A1 mindedness to this. And then you see these

disciplines and practices. And now we're going to learn

from the church at Antioch beginning in Acts Chapter 11.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

Let's go to verse 19. Now those who were scattered

because of the persecution that arose over Stephen travelled as

far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no

one except Jews. But there were some of them, men

of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the

Hellenist also preaching the Lord Jesus.

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number

who believed turned to the Lord. Now, this outline is just a

simple, I'm just going to list some of these characteristics

and actions that we observe. And the very first thing we see

is evangelism. That's what we see.

So the Antioch Church was established.

It was started, it was planted by Greek speaking Jewish

Christians who fled Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen.

Remember Stephen stoned to death because of his faith, the

religious leaders kill him. And the Bible says back in Acts

Acts 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8, verse four, that now there were those scattered who

went about preaching the word. So after that, because of the

persecution, people are leaving Jerusalem, but they're taking

the gospel with them and they end up in this place called

Antioch. Now, Antioch is interesting

because it's the third largest city in the Roman Empire at this

time. So don't dismiss that this is a

large city. It's a very diverse city.

It was near a major worship Center for old Greek gods and

even an old ancient Assyrian female deity that they worship.

And, and, and there are historical records about Antioch

that talk about how immoral it was.

This was this place was known for its wickedness.

It was known for its immorality. So what happened in Antioch did

not stay in Antioch, right? But there was a Jewish community

there also. So the gospel flourishes first

with these Jewish people and then it spreads out into the

Gentiles, the Bible tells us. So this, this church is made-up

of both hands. They're both Jewish background

and Gentile background believers, right?

So you got to think about these early persecuted Christians who

fled there. Never mind that we've been

driven from our homes. Never mind our friends and

family members have been imprisoned or killed.

Never mind God LED us to the most wicked city in the Roman

Empire. Never mind there are Gentiles

here and I'm a Jewish Christian. Never mind all the chaos and all

the uncertainty. God, we have a message to

deliver and we have come preaching the Lord Jesus.

And so despite their circumstances, they aggressively

took the gospel to those who lived in their city.

Now I pray you get that. I pray that we can recognize

what could happen here. I pray that we can aggressively

take the gospel to a place much, much less immoral, but still

perhaps lost and dark as Antioch.

Maybe we need to repeat that at times and to remind ourselves of

of how much we need to do that and and it says in the hand of

the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned

to the Lord. Now that's my king on mission.

See, that's what he does when his people obey, he blesses and

sometimes in a great way. God had a predetermined plan for

Antioch through through the scattering, through the

persecution, through the barriers, through the chaos,

through the uncertainty. A great number of people were

saved as God used an obedient people.

And he has the same kind of predetermined plan for every

single one of your lives as well as us as a church.

Because all we are as a church is US put together.

It's all we are. And he has a plan here and he

wants it to spread. I remember years ago, Teresa and

I, when I was pastoring in a small town, we, we lived in a

trailer out in the country and on a cow pasture for some time.

And we literally had to go. And every time we went home or

left, we had to, we had to undo the padlock and the chain on the

gate so the cows wouldn't get out and open it up so we can get

the car out real fast and shut the gate.

And then we had to avoid the cows as we made our way to the

trailer. And it was, it was a kind of a

fun place to live out the middle of the country.

And our oldest son was pretty young in those days.

And it was 4th of July. And in Oklahoma, you can have

real fireworks. I don't know what y'all's

problem here is. So we thought it was a smart

plan to go out and really tall dry grass in the middle of July

out in the middle of the country and shoot off fireworks.

Well, you know what happened. So there's a blaze taking place.

And I mean, and the wind's blowing.

I don't know that I've ever seen a fire spread that quickly.

And I go run back to the trailer and I have a hose that's about

10 feet long and the fire's 100 feet away or something.

And that thing spread. I mean, it's going, I mean, it's

blowing through that field. It's growing through that

pasture. He's getting ready to head to

the woods. It's going to get the trailer.

It's going to get everybody going to get the cows.

It's going to get, you know. And if it wasn't for my neighbor

who thought quickly, who had some fire extinguishers and a

really long hose, there have been a lot of trouble.

But that's the way the gospel is.

The fire of the gospel can spread rapidly, and my friends,

it will be impossible to stomp out if we submit to His mission.

I've seen it, I've lived this, and I invite you to join me for

an extensive personal evangelism training this fall because I

want to guide you to become evangelistic, not to just do

evangelism, but to become evangelistic in a very natural,

relational way. It's going to be perfect.

If you've ever said I've always wanted to share my faith, but I

don't know how, or I've been too scared to do this or I've been

too nervous about this or I need somebody to show me how.

I don't know how to lead that conversation from weather and

sports to Christ. I don't know how to do those

things. We're going to talk through all

that step by step. It's going to be a great study.

You're, you're going to enjoy it because God will want to save

people. Now I'm going to throw off our

tick folks and this is on me. Sorry guys, because in the early

service we had a baptism and, and it was a wonderful testimony

and I wanted to read it right here.

I just wanted you to hear what God does when the gospel spreads

and God's people share and to see what happens.

But I also want you to hear in this testimony what happens when

we don't do what we're supposed to do.

It's a beautiful testimony. Just listen to this.

This is the testimony of chastened Flora, who was

baptized in the first service. The things I remember about my

life before accepted Jesus into my heart.

I knew about God, but I didn't really know Him.

I never, I never took going to church, reading the Bible, my

family devotion seriously. I tried to be a good person, but

deep down I knew I was lost. My 6th grade year, I remember

sitting through one of the chapels as I listened to the

speaker, I felt God talking to me.

It was a feeling that I'd never had before and as tears ran down

my face, I started to pray, asking God to help me turn away

from my sins and asking God to come into my heart and be my

Lord and Savior. At that time I didn't have a

church home and we were visiting different churches, so my

parents and I reached out to multiple church leaders that we

felt could talk with me and help guide me to the next steps.

That is when the people I looked up to the most turned their

backs on me. I felt confused as to why no one

wanted to talk with me about becoming a Christian and being

baptized. My heart was broken and I no

longer trusted people that called themselves Christians.

I developed a lot of hatred and became very bitter.

At this point in my life, I felt like it was falling apart again.

I was overwhelmed with anxiety, disappointment, and emptiness to

the point that I was sinning against God.

Now, May 11th, my life changed here at Inglewood Baptist

Church. I felt God speaking to me.

I was tired of carrying all my worries on my own.

I started attending church more, going to Student Connect group,

and spending more time with God by reading His word and doing my

daily devotion. I would like to give a big thank

you to Pastor Jordan and Pastor Dylan for believing in me and

talking with me when I reached my darkest point in my life.

I know I'm not alone and I know I've been saved by grace.

Jesus didn't just give me a second chance, He gave me a new

life and I'm excited to see what God has planned for me as a

Christian. Isn't that beautiful?

Amen. I'm so thankful that God didn't

give up on chasing because sometimes the church did.

Now see, we've got a responsibility, friends.

We we've been entrusted with life in the gospel and we got to

do something with that. And we got, I promise you here

at Inglewood and you, I promise you this, that if you make a

decision at Inglewood, we're going to be visiting with you

and counseling with you and talking with you and helping

you. And I want every single one of

you to understand this is my next step in discipleship.

This is my next step in discipleship.

This is for my kid. This is what my student needs to

do. And that's what these next

sermon series are going to help us do.

That's what's going to happen in our Connect Group ministries.

So I need you to understand how important this is.

Look at verse 22. The report of this came to the

ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to

Antioch. And when he came and saw the

grace of God, he was glad and he exhorted them all to remain

faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a

good man, full of the Holy Spirit and the faith, and a

great many people were added to the Lord.

So the mother church in Jerusalem, just like if you've

been in this study with me, you know that this happened more

than once. The church in Jerusalem wanted

to check this out. They send Barnabas and that

word, his name means Son of encouragement.

What a wonderful name to go help him.

And here's a man who is a leader.

Now, don't miss this. He had a known, observed

character. They knew him.

He was a good man. He was full of the Holy Spirit.

He was full of faith. And he had to display that for

people to know that about him. So how will we be known?

How will you be known? How are you known?

And more and more were saved. But that was just the beginning.

See, that's just the beginning. Our goal isn't to just make

converts, is it? Now what do we want to make?

Look at verse 25. S Barnabas went to Tarsus to

look for Saul. There he is again.

Oh Saul. And when he had found him, he

brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with

the church and taught a great many people.

And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

So this is what happens. God, blessed evangelism and a

faithful people lead to the need for, secondly, discipleship.

I mean, no surprise, right? With the great evangelistic

success, Barnabas needed help. I mean, what a great problem.

We have so many new believers. We're being overrun by people

being saved. We need help.

And you might think that's something foreign, something

that only happened Teresa. And I've experienced this,

Teresa and I have experienced this in previous past church

where more than once in more than one context, more than one

place, more than one kind of church where we've seen people

being saved and baptized every single week to the point we had

to baptize on Wednesday nights. Keep up with it.

You got to think about what that means.

New Christians needing Bible study, their children needing

teaching and and guidance and an incredible awesome

responsibility for the church if the church is ready to accept

it. And my prayer is Inglewood that

we are because I believe this is what God will do here.

Between the sermon series coming up, our understanding of

discipleship, the REACH ministry, and our connect

groups, we've seen it time and time and time again.

What happens when we have to baptize 5?

Every Sunday we're going to have a 2 hour worship service.

No, I'm kidding. OK, so here we go.

The other thing that's interesting in the book of Acts

is time is often compressed in Acts.

So it gets weird. If you go to Galatians one and

two, you're going to realize it's been 10 years since we saw

Saul. And so a lot of time has passed

and the Bible says that Barnabas has to go down there and look

for him. The way the wording is, he

actually has a hard time finding him.

Saul's out doing ministry in Tarsus.

We don't hear about that in the Bible.

Maybe one day we can sit around and and hear that from him and

find out what you do during those 10 years.

But they came back and they taught for a whole year and they

made disciples. And for the first time these

equipped disciples were called Christians.

Now it's an interesting word because that terms only only

only occurs two other times in the New Testament, and it's used

by outsiders, not by actual Christians.

And in the beginning, this word was not necessarily positive.

It was actually used as a negative connotation by

outsiders about these believers in Jesus.

And the word actually is a combination of Greek and Latin.

You have Christosianus, which means that second word in Latin

means to be identified with. So I am identified, I belong to

Jesus Christ. That's what the word literally

means. And it doesn't become something

that the Christians themselves call themselves too much later.

But see, here we see people creating a new, separate, unique

identity. They're not, they're no longer

just formerly Jewish people. They're no longer just formerly

Pagan people. They're now a new people called

Christians. They're now a new identity.

And that's what the gospel does. That's what the church is like.

It's amazing that we can come together like that.

And, and we have to ask ourselves, are we producing

true, authentic Christians at Inglewood?

And you think, well, it might be a dumb question.

I don't think so because I don't know about you, but I've met a

lot of people in my life. Teresa and her testimony would

share that she would be one of these before she met Christ.

I've met a lot of people who think that they're Christians.

I met a lot of people. If you ask them, are you a

Christian, they're going to say yes.

And they think they are one. They call themselves one,

especially in this part of the country.

Have you ever met anybody who says I've been a Christian my

whole life? Yeah, this is a cultural

phenomenon here, especially in this part of the country.

Well, let me share a truth with you.

No, you have not. You have not been a Christian

your whole life. That's impossible.

Now. You might have been raised in a

wonderful Christian home. You might have gone to church

your entire life, and so you might have known about Jesus.

You might have known about the gospel.

As long as you can know anything in your life.

But until you personally trust in and rely upon Jesus Christ as

your personal Lord and Savior, because of who He is and because

of what He did on the cross and because of what He did in that

empty tomb, and you specifically asked Him to be your Lord and

Savior, you are not a true Christian.

You have to be saved no matter how you were raised.

And that's not my opinion. That's just the word of God.

So being saved should lead to a difference in our lives.

So we have to ask our questions. Are we really producing

disciples who multiply, who belong to, who truly identify

with Christ? So we need to create a

comprehensive, understood and valued pathway for for biblical

discipleship for all ages to where you know, this is what we

mean, this is what I need to do next.

This is what my child needs to do next.

So we're going to need biblical definitions, destinations, and

directions of essential discipleship.

And that's what we're sharing in these upcoming sermon series.

We're going to define on it. This is what we mean by a

disciple. This is what we mean by a church

member. These are your expectations.

These are your responsibilities. This is how we're going to care

for one another. This is how we're going to hold

each other accountable. And you got to understand right

now at this moment as we sit in this service, there's in fact,

I've heard it's historic. It may be a record.

I don't know that somebody that may be in recent time.

We have a great group in discover Inglewood in the edge

right now at this very moment studying about how to become a

member here. I've heard it's the largest

group ever, but I don't know if that's true, maybe just in

recent time. And I just pray that you're next

because I want you to be here. Because we need a clearly

defined, unified vision for church programs and resources to

move us away from a bumper car mentality to fulfill God's

mission so that we can really make disciples.

And that's so exciting to me. It's like building a train.

I mean, I can hear the engine revving up.

I can hear the steam building up.

I can hear that train coming. All right, so verse 27, I'll

move on. Verse 27.

Now in those days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch,

and one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the

Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world.

This took place in the days of Claudius.

So the disciples determined everyone according to his

ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea, and

they did so, sending it by to the elders by the hand of

Barnabas and Saul. So evangelism and true

discipleship then leads them to engage in #3 ministry and

stewardship. So we see Agabus, this prophet,

his interesting character, he'll appear again later in chapter

21. And he predicts Paul's arrest in

Jerusalem, and he predicts A famine that actually was

historically supported. So during the reign of Claudius,

there was a massive crop failure.

That's actually documented in both Roman and Egyptian

writings. So this is a real thing.

These are real people going through real events, as these

aren't fables. This isn't myth.

This is true history taking place, and the Church of Antioch

felt called to give and to minister to help.

They saw serving others. They saw giving to us and

meeting needs as Christ, like something a true disciple would

do. So they knew that they were

simply stewards of that which God had entrusted them, and they

gave for His glory. So they gave an offering each

according to the individual ability, and they sent it with

Barnabas and Saul. Now for a few minutes, tighten

up your seat belt. Curl up your toes.

I want to talk to church members.

If you're a guest here. Thank you for being here so

much. This infomercial will be over in

a minute. But Inglewood, we are now

working on our 2026 budget. We're doing it months earlier

than normal because we're using an entirely different process.

Every single person who's responsible for spending a penny

of Inglewood funds and money is, is is asked to propose.

How did they spend that money last year?

How do they think they're going to spend that money next year

and what do they believe God seeks for them to do in this

next year in a new way of with high assessment and and

massively high accountability? Just ask your finance team and

members. I'm just going to say it out

loud. I need you to support the

regular budget of this church if you do not do so already.

Now, let me help you understand this.

You are an extremely generous people.

I mean, more so than most churches, no question about it.

I mean that there's no embellishment.

I'm not running for office. I'm not looking for a vote.

You are incredibly generous people.

You're gracious. You are, but you often give to

your favorite heart project and and what happens is with that

designated giving is I'm asking you to please embrace the

regular budget with your hearts also because that regular budget

supports a myriad of ministry and makes everything possible.

And so don't just give to that thing you like that mission trip

or that special partnership or that special project.

And I and I don't want you to stop doing that.

It's wonderful. We would call that an offering,

but your tithe, your base level giving, please make sure you're

supporting the budget. Does that make sense?

I'm just being honest with you and you are wonderful.

But, but but we want to see our budget continue to grow.

And here's why. Because I believe with all of my

heart, we're getting ready to experience historic growth and

we've got to make sure that we have the ministry capacity to

keep up with that, right? And so let's work together on

that. I'm there with you.

And then, and then I want you to ask yourself, how healthy is my

stewardship of my time and my focus?

This is for all of us. How well do I, how well do I

serve? How well do I volunteer?

How well do I lead when I'm asked to?

Because some of you are also designated servers.

Now bear with me. Don't throw anything yet.

I'm glad we don't have him. Those Charles I once I, I, I was

a valedictorian. I know it's hard to believe it

says something about my high school.

I was a valedictorian in my high school senior class, which says

something about my high school more than me.

And, and at the end they let me pray because in those days you

could. So I'm praying at graduation and

the Superintendent leans over to you and goes as soon as you say

Amen, dug behind the podium. And as soon as I said Amen, I

dug behind the podium because those hats were coming at me.

They were throwing their mortar hats down there trying to pick

the the Superintendent. I think some of you are also

designated servers. And here's what you do.

You serve very well for this special, I mean, vacation of

obstacle. Amazing how many volunteers,

right? 252 weekend.

Amazing how many volunteers and you serve very well for these

special things. And that's wonderful.

It's admirable. Please don't stop.

Thank you for doing that. But then some weeks we don't

have enough people in the nursery.

We don't have enough people working with their children.

So also work hard on our week to week ministries that we have as

well, our special needs ministry, all kinds of things

and all kinds of opportunities. So we're going to help you with

that. We're going to establish a clear

pathway for leadership development, spiritual gift

discovery and volunteer placement.

So please be ready to give your best time and effort because

remember, one of the four areas of 100% participation

expectation from the crazy man up here is surface service.

And this ought to be the part of an expectation responsibility of

mature discipleship and every single church member.

So the folks at Antioch didn't sit back.

They didn't expect somebody else to do it.

They all piled in, they all got on board.

They're all ready to do it. They're all trying to help.

And, and, and, and because our primary focus this morning needs

to be on Antioch, just let me summarize Acts chapter 12 verses

Acts 12 · chapter mention

one through 23 for a moment, because it goes back to

Jerusalem for a while. So the Jerusalem church

experiences great persecution by a king, Herod.

In fact, he executes James the Apostle, who's the brother of

John. And Peter's imprisoned again,

and he's released from prison by an Angel again.

It's like they can't learn. And then King Herod allowed

someone to call him a God and he didn't correct them.

So God sends an Angel and strikes him dead and he's eaten

up by worms. The Bible tells us so.

Better be careful people. God means business.

OK, so the Holy Spirit once again defended his people,

promotes his mission just like he's been doing, as we've been

seeing in this study. Now let's rejoin the story at

Acts chapter 12, verse 24. But the word of God increased

Acts 12:24

and multiplied. And Barnabas and Saul returned

from Jerusalem when they had completed their service,

bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.

So the word of God increased and multiplied.

We've always got to remember whose mission this is.

We've always got to remember whose church this is.

You've always got to remember who owns life and who's in

complete control. And all we are must be

surrendered to that authority. We must turn over all He has

entrusted to us because it belongs to Him and it needs to

be used for His glory. And that includes the gift of

your life, because we've been bought with a price by Jesus.

The Bible says. One of my favorite figures in

missions history is a missionary CT Stud.

I've mentioned him before. I just like the name CT Stud.

He, he was the Michael Jordan of Britain in his time.

He was a cricket player but he was he.

He would have been a multi millionaire in our day and he

was a well known celebrity in his day and he gave it all up

for international missions. Listen to what he says.

He said. I hadn't.

I had known about Jesus dying for me, but I'd never understood

that if he died for me, then I didn't belong to myself.

Redemption means buying back so that if I belong to Him, either

I had to be a thief and keep what wasn't mine, or else I had

to give up everything to God. When I came to see that Jesus

had died for me, it didn't seem hard to give up all for him.

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be

too great for me to make for Him.

OK, so God, wow, what else do we need to learn today?

So go to Acts 13, verse one. Now there were in the church at

Antioch prophets and teachers Barnabas Simeon, who was called

Niger, Lucius of Serene Manny, and a lifelong friend of Herod

the tetrarch and Saul. And while they were worshiping

the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me

Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them

and sent them off. So when the church evangelizes,

when the church disciples, when the church ministers as

stewards, we're going to grow an even greater sensitivity to what

God wants. And so I want you to witness

their number four, prayer and worship first.

So the leadership you got to see from all these different

backgrounds, all these different, different

relationships, they're from different places, different

backgrounds. And God and his miraculous thing

called the church brings them all together in unity and

service. And I love that about the church

with all its weirdness, with all its issues.

It's this miracle where God brings us together into a crazy

family to serve him as one. And so the leaders of Antioch

are worshipping, they're praying, they're fasting, they

sought God, they sought God as leaders.

You know, the new REACH strategy that we're going to implement in

our Connect groups is going to help us create a very proactive

personal and corporate prayer ministry, and it's going to

impact both our congregation and our communities.

I hope you'll pray for the leader training that's coming up

in the next few weeks. But we also have recorded some

podcasts. And just to let you know,

because I get asked about this a lot because of our Wednesday

night podcasting series. And we, we've recorded some

podcast episodes that will help you in your prayer life.

You can use them just in your prayer life.

They're actually designed for when you're out walking your

neighborhood. So if you go walking your dog or

you like to walk around the neighborhood or the mall or the

track and you listen along with this and it's going to give you

prayer prompts as you walk and you listen, pray for this and,

and they'll be pauses for the next 4 minutes.

Pray for that and then they'll come back on.

So you enjoy, there'll be some just in general that Pastor

Charles and I've done. There's some on how to pray for

lost people, how to pray for inactive Christians.

We're going to do some on worship, how to study the Word,

all kinds of things. So listen for those things and

then spend time fasting and praying yourself as you seek

God. You might fast your time, you

might fast your focus to seek the Lord's will for our future,

or for your next personal discipleship steps, or about the

one with whom you ought to share the gospel today.

Because true worship, if you really understand what it is,

what true worship does is it takes the focus off of you and

all the stuff going on in your life and it places it upon the

one on the throne where it belongs now.

Often times we tend to equate worship with singing and music,

and we call this the worship service.

But it's far more than that. See, the the the music and the

singing are designed to help us to focus, to help us redirect

our attention off of us to bring praise and glory to Him.

And so spend quality time, personal time every day in

focused worship. As you seek His Word and you

seek His will for your life, open yourself up to what He

desires from and for you and stop and listen for His voice.

As you study His word, pay attention to how He moves your

heart in prayer and praise Him for who He is and thank Him for

all that He's done, all that He's doing, and all that He's

going to do. Now look at verse 2.

We're coming to the last point. And while they were worshiping

the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me,

Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them.

Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them

and sent them off. See, a church that engaged in

evangelism, discipleship, stewardship, ministry, prayer,

and worship is going to grow more and more outwardly focused.

And they're going to want to do what God wants.

And they're going to want to impact not just themselves and

their community inside the church.

They're going to impact their world.

So learn finally from Antioch about their missions.

The Holy Spirit led the church right to his mission.

And if we focus and listen, He's always going to do that.

And they respond in faith as a cosmopolitan city, a large city.

Having a burden and vision for the nations was not a difficult

thing for them. They were surrounded by them.

And we need to be no different. My friends, the lost world is

right here, It's right around you.

But how will we respond to that? The Antioch Church was planted

because others went there to share the gospel to the lost in

that city. They knew they needed to go.

They knew that's what they had to do.

And we need to feel that same burden.

Now, today, this morning, we celebrated people who are going

to go help a church plant up in Pittsburgh.

They're going to go take the gospel up there.

We've also mentioned a group that's in Taiwan right now

fighting weather a little bit. They're there to share the

gospel. Tonight.

We're going to celebrate sending out people and folks from

Tarboro are going to join us. You need to be here tonight to

celebrate. Celebrate with our brothers and

sisters from Tarboro who are going to join us here for this

incredible celebration. We're going to have a reception

following. It's going to be incredible

time. You need to be here as we send

out the tailors to share the gospel in Tarboro.

It's the same thing. So Antioch responded to the Holy

Spirit and obedience and they send out these very first global

missionaries. And so how must we do this?

What is our obedient response? Maybe he's calling you to

missions this morning. Maybe that's what you're

supposed to do with your life. You need to serve on the mission

field someplace. You need to serve in ministry

someplace. Perhaps he's calling you the

word sent that's used in the scripture.

There's an interesting word. It means to release somebody

from their duties. And you got to think about who

these two guys were, Barnabas and Saul.

I mean, these were the primary teachers.

These were the some of the primary leaders.

They're sending out the very cream of the crop to go.

You are released from your responsibilities here.

Now go and take the gospel and make disciples and train

leaders. So we've got to develop a

systemic mission strategy to engage the entire congregation,

as well as to send new missionaries and church planters

out from this church. We're working on that.

I'd like to plan a new church every three years.

I'd like to send out missionaries every three years.

I want all of you, 100% of us, engaged somehow in the mission

projects. We're going to use our connect

groups to help us with that too. So the rest of the book of Acts

is that story, the story of their missionary journeys.

We're going to come back in November.

We'll talk about those then. But right now we need to move to

our next step. What's the proper identity for

Inglewood Baptist Church? What's that specific vision,

that contextual plan that God wants us to live out as His

church, to join Him on mission? How can I be that true

Christian, a real disciple, totally identified with Christ

that he seeks for me to be? How will we be known in our

communities in the world? You may not know this, but but

97% of the world has heard of Coca-Cola. 72% of the world has

seen Coca-Cola, 51% of the world has tasted Coca-Cola, and Coke's

only been around since the early 1900s.

I mean, if God had assigned world evangelization to the

Coca-Cola Company, the job could have been done by now.

But He gave it to us. And there's not somebody else.

It's not their response, it's not mine, it's theirs.

There's none of that. It's us.

It's us, me and you. We have a Commission task and it

doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter who you've

been. This king has a mission for you

if you'll trust him and believe in him.

One of my other favorite people from missions is a guy named

George Scott. He was A1 legged school teacher

and he goes to Jay Hudson Taylor, the famous missionary to

China. And he goes, I want to serve in

China. And Taylor looks at him and he

says with only one leg, why do you think of going as a

missionary? And Scott replies with his whole

heart. He says, well, I don't see

people with two legs going. And he went and he served there

in China beautifully. Don't matter who you are, God

has a purpose for you. And these early churches provide

us patterns and examples as they engage in evangelism,

discipleship, stewardship, ministry, worship, prayer,

fasting and missions. And to be a biblically healthy

church, so must we. So we're going to begin to learn

how to do that next Sunday. But for now, I just encourage

you one last time, Come join the King's mission.

CT Stud also said this once and it was made into a song.

He said some wish to live within the sound of a church or a

Chapel bell. But I want to run a rescue shop

within a yard of hell. What about us?

What does God want us to do with his gift of life?

How does He want us to be known? Father, thank you so much that

you give us these gifts. Father.

You equip us with everything we need, Father, to be obedient to

You, to fulfill Your purpose and plan for us.

We lack nothing if we trust in You.

But Father, for some, maybe they never have.

So that's the starting point for them.

Father, I pray that if there's someone here who's never trusted

in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that right now your

Holy Spirit would just run rampant over their hearts and

minds. Their Spirit, for them to know

that you are absolutely real, the gospel is the absolute

truth. The only way they can be saved

is by trusting that Christ died on the cross for their sins and

rose again. Others need to come and join.

Or maybe they need to be baptized, like the testimony we

read. Father, like like Jason showed

us earlier, Father, that they too need to recognize and

identify publicly, proudly with Christ.

Maybe some just need to come and pray.

But Father, all of us need to understand what is my next step?

So Father, in a moment, as we sing, I pray that maybe they'll

come and talk to a pastor. Maybe they'll come and kneel

here at these steps. Or maybe they'll go to our new

Next Step room and pray with those who've been trained.

People are going to love them. People just want to share with

them. People want to encourage them.

So Father, whatever we need to do this morning, it's time to do

it. It's time to respond in Christ's

name, Amen. Well, stand with me.

We're going to sing, but I also want to introduce to you and

encourage you right over here. We have a room and we have

trained people who want to share with you.

They want to love on you. They want to pray with you.

They want to talk to you about what God's laying on your heart.

And some of you may want to come and talk to a pastor.

We'll be here. Maybe you want to come and pray

here, but I encourage you to go there.

Maybe you're not comfortable praying right here, but these

people would love to pray with you and encourage you.

So I encourage you just make your way to that room.

They're going to hang around for a little while even after

they're going to be there. So as we sing, you start moving

that way as we join together. Thank you so much for listening

today. And I also hope that you'll go

to [email protected]

as well as our app and find many other resources that will bless

you and your families. Thank you once again.