The call to Christian

Good morning. Good morning, Steve.

You're happy new. Are we allowed to say That's all

I saw in some of the hours. Maybe there's not.

Don't go there, especially since I don't know if you were here

last week. Matt reminded us that Friday was

International Quitters Day. It's about as as best as the

world has to offer. You know, the 2nd Friday of the

year. Thanks for coming.

New Year's resolutions done and dusted.

It's all you can hope for. Yes, it's all the world can

offer. But what I want to do today is I

want to remind you of all that God has to offer for us as a

community, for us as sons and daughters of the Most High.

I want to stand, as Rora says, not as ACEO, but as Acroa Chief

reminding Officer. And I want to remind you of

something rather particular and that is the mandates given to us

as a church's three CR back probably nearly 30 years ago

when Ash and Nadine came and planted this church this past

Christmas was 30 years. They sat in their lounge as a

family, had the first 3 CR service on Christmas 30 years

ago. And not long after that, God

planted in their heart a prophetic call to be a base

church. And the portion of Scripture is

the very portion that we're going to look at today.

It's from Acts Chapter 11. If you have your Bible, you can

Acts 11 · chapter mention

page on over there. Essentially what was laid on on

Ash's heart was that God is going to do exceedingly

abundantly what he could even hope or imagine, blow his mind

while they're sitting in a lounge just with him and his

family opening the Bible and essentially doing church

together. And now he's sitting in the

fullness of it. But I want to remind you what

that is, Carl, your second Sunday here, you don't know what

that's about. I want to show you today, and

we're going to look at the book of Acts Chapter 11, and it's

Acts 11 · chapter mention

essentially what happens in a town.

Well, it's a city called Antioch.

While you're paging, there's just a little bit of a

background about Antioch. So Antioch, it was a Roman city.

Actually, it was the third biggest city in the Roman

Empire. It carried significant political

clout. Apparently.

They say Antioch held sway of the whole eastern side of the

Roman Empire like we have over the East.

Pretoria. They were a a very dense

political place. Lots of diplomats and what have

you set up in Antioch. They were a sports crazy city.

Their sports of the day was chariot racing, which meant that

they had people coming from all over Rome.

They had celebrities in the city.

They also were a bit of a melting pot because of the

attraction of the city. You had Greeks, Persians,

Romans, Jews, Arabs all in there, and then they also had

the temple to Daphne, which meant that the streets were

filled, the slews of prostitutes.

And in this dark place, the gospel comes rushing in.

Are we going to take a look at what happens?

Because firstly, what we'll see is the fingerprints of what God

wants to place on three CR And He's spoken over decades about

this calling upon us. But also because this is no

minor portion of Scripture. They say that this is possibly

one of the biggest shifts in Christian history that we're

about to read. It's a hinge moment in this

portion of Scripture, a door is open that Satan has tried to

close for over 2000 years. It's a massive moment.

It goes from the gospel only going to the Jews to going to

the Gentiles as well. It goes from synagogues only to

city streets. And that is our call that I want

to remind you of today. So reading from verse 19 and in

Acts Chapter 11, it says now those who had been scattered by

Acts 11 · chapter mention

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 Lords hand was with him and a great number of people

believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the church

in Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done.

When he arrived and he saw what the grace of God was able to do,

he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord

with all their hearts. Barnabas 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, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch.

So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church, taught

great numbers of people, and the disciples were first called

Christians in Antioch. It's a massive moment and it's a

massive call upon 3 CR to be a base church in the ilk of the

church that God planted in Antioch.

And I just, there's a whole bunch of things that we can draw

out, but for time's sake, we want to look at four or five

things that I want to remind you of what we are about.

What has God spoken over us? What is the prophetic future

that he would prefer us to have over our own devices and plans?

And the first is this. The first thing we see here is

radical salvations. Take a look at verse 21.

It says the Lord's hand was with them and a great number of

people believed and turned to the Lord.

Now, so often church growth, especially in the city of

Pretoria, is nothing more than a church relocation.

You know, I used to be at this church, but now I'm at 3 CR and

you can bend it either which way.

I'm often like, oh come on Lord, give us the city for my

inheritance. Give me the lost.

And someone actually said, you know, sometimes it's like God

just takes the pack of cards and he just shuffles it a bit, you

know, deals a different hand. You can you can play a different

hand. It's not all bad and I agree

with that. But it seems here the Lord's

hand was with them. Can we agree the Lord's hand is

with three CR? I'm speaking to the people in

our overflow overflow, and they're sitting in the cube and

the guy's out in the quad. The Lord's hand is with us.

If that is the case, and if this is what his preferred future is

for us, then it shouldn't just be.

It should be a comma, not a full stop comma.

And a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

We should have corals and bellas getting saved every Sunday.

We should see prostitutes and politicians and businessmen and

chariot races and sportsmen flooding to the church and even

advocates and lawyers. People relocating from still by.

Because that's what happened here.

Arabs, you know, I don't know if you know this, but the fastest

growing church in the world is in Iran.

The gospel is like wildfire in Iran at the moment and it's

gotten so bad that Jesus seems to be appearing in Muslims

dreams and the the Christians who aren't allowed to

evangelize, you know, the peril of your own life have now

started putting up posters. Have you seen the man in white

phone this number for reals. I've been listening to, I listen

to sermons every day from around the world and I've, I've heard

time and time again the pastors in the UK preparing their people

for the influx of curious people coming to church because God is

up to something. God's hand is upon them and

multitudes believed. Multitudes believed.

Our problem, though, is that we're rather comfortable.

One more person and we're going to think, you know, and I know

Dennis and any have mentioned many times they ain't giving up

their seat. So you wore a Man United shirt.

They've got to go see you. But you're going down.

Yeah. Or, or we let's let's outsource

it, you know, let let the pastors do it.

You know, I was told the other day someone said to me, you know

what we need to do? Like what if one's a term we

have a big like outreach, you know, we invite all our

estranged family and unsaved people.

Imagine we do this like 4 * a year.

What if like 2000 people got saved in each one of those

nights? That would be beautiful.

I can't agree more, except we're in a city of 3 million people.

You do the maths. If we were to get 8000 people

saved a year, it would take us more than 350 years to reach the

city. But if you and you and me just

reached out to one person and we just put their name on our hands

and their name in our journals and we prayed for them every day

and we invited them to church or maybe had them over for a bra,

we got them to know some of our friends and we cried out to God.

We stood in the gap as the Bible says, and cried out to God for

their salvation. And if they got saved and the

next year we all did that, plus the new guys who got saved and

did the same. And the next year, you know, in

10 years time, not 350 years time, in 10 years time, we would

have reached the city of Pretoria twice.

Beautiful. But we love to sit in our La Z

boy Christian chairs and we love to think someone else is going

to do that. But it says in verse 20, not the

pastors, not the apostles, not the high priest.

Acts 1120. Some of them, some of them.

Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Surrey and went to

Antioch and began to speak to Greeks telling them the good

news. You know that city was turned on

its head by some of them every day run of the mall.

Christians just share their faith.

And this is my first reminder to you.

The gospel needs to make its way into the city.

This could be a hinge moment in history.

This could be why you are here for a moment such as this.

And it is the prophetic call upon 3 CR and upon you and I

radical salvations and covenant community.

Sure. I'm troubled by this because I'm

a I'm an introvert. I don't like people.

So this one really bothers me. I let Rory do the the past that

they you know, you meet with the people.

But it says here news of this news of this revival this what

was going on in Antioch reached the church in Jerusalem.

They sent Barnabas to Antioch. This is verse 22.

When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was

glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all

their hearts. And a great number of people

were brought to the Lord. Now when you read that, you sort

of think, OK, Luke is saying the same thing.

You know, more people are getting saved, which is true.

But what he's trying to emphasize here, the, the Greek

word that he used there is prostithemi.

And prostithemi is kind of like you would use when you graft

something into a van or when you Weld something to the fence.

It's this, as ROM mentioned a little earlier, those who plant

themselves in the House of the Lord will flourish.

This is what was happening. It wasn't just that people were

getting saved. Wonderful.

You got your get out of jail free card passcode.

Do not collect 200. You're going straight to heaven.

No, no, no. They grafted themselves in.

They formed a covenant community in Antioch.

It was one of the key Kingdom attributes about these people.

Because what I failed to mention was I mentioned how this was

kind of like a ethnic racial melting pot, but it was a very

divided the, the, the ethnic tension was unprecedented.

They used to build walls across the streets.

Imagine if we went down and we just built the wall across

Lynwood Road and say, sorry, you're silver like shady Oaks,

you know, you're not welcome here.

That's essentially what they did.

They built walls to keep other races out.

Think the Berlin Wall. Think Northern Ireland.

I don't know how if, if you have to speed on your, your Northern

Ireland history and, and the the 60s and the Protestants and the

Catholics, they were, you know, throwing petrol bombs at each

other. That's what was happening here.

To the point that they built walls to protect themselves from

violence and attacks, to look after their families, except the

Christians climbed over those walls.

They would not allow them to live without hearing the Gospel,

climbed over the walls, looked after them, cared for them,

reunited and unified the city. It was just unprecedented and

how they did it. Now imagine you're going to life

group in Antioch or you're the life group leader.

You've only been saved a couple weeks, but these guys have only

been saved a couple days. So you've got a bit of a head

start. And so you've got this group and

you're introducing everybody. And on this side, you've got

Debbie, a former prostitute. Hi, Say hi to Debbie.

And, you know, some of you know Debbie, but she got radically

saved the other day. And it's, it's good to have you,

Debbie. Yeah.

On this side, we got Michelle. He's a Torah observing Jew.

Excuse the fact that he's twitching because he's never

been around a prostitute, let alone in a gentiles home.

And then we got this poor Persian sorcerer who wants to

burn all his witchcraft and everything tonight.

We're really looking forward to that.

That's that's the love group. Wild.

And when I read that, I was reminded of Jeff and Jane, you

know, the guys who planted into Lisbon.

He made a statement. I mean, yeah, I won't go there

because we got children in the building what some of these

people are getting saved out of. But he made the statement.

He said they were saved out of their past with absolutely no

sediment. Absolutely no.

Said nothing, left behind. Completely set free.

And this is what we start to see here.

So only way you can get into this covenant community now.

Nona did a released research on covenant community.

I don't know if it was particularly on Antioch, but

this is interesting. You know me and my stats, they

said that adults take 164 hours to go from sort of like a

business acquaintance to real friendship, 164 hours to go from

an acquaintance to Prosti Fermi, this covenant community.

Now again, I did the maths. 164 hours.

I mean, imagine you meant meet Dennis for the first time or

Carl for the first time and you decide, you know what, I want to

build a relationship here, never met you, don't know you from a

bar of soap and you just put an hour aside every week for an

entire year. It's going to take you 3 years

to get in those 164 hours. But NONA, which is a Christian

organization, says, however, if you and I were to join a life

group and to be part of a serving team, you get there in a

year. And not only that, they added

this little caveat that if you do that, you are 500% more

likely to still be in church five years later.

In other words, if you don't, it's not likely that you're

still in church five years later.

It's planting yourself in the House of God and you will

flourish 500% more likely to still be in church five years

later. And you know who knows this

best? Satan himself.

And in this church which is called to have covenant

community, this church which is disproportionately top heavy

with a top personality, broad shouldered, big hitting leaders.

He doesn't have to make you bad. He just has to make you busy.

And slowly but surely we fall by the wayside as he whittles us

away and keeps us from the fire. You know, even Jesus needed

friends. He needed brothers.

This is the Son of God who surrounded himself with

protesthami. I was looking in Matthew 26.

Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He says, wait here and keep watch with me.

So he says, there's disciples here, wait here and keep watch

with me. I'm just going to go and pray.

And he comes back. He's like, they didn't either.

They fell asleep. And he's like, couldn't you even

keep watching me for an hour? But the phrase that he uses

there, it can be translated into English as intertwine yourself

with me. You see, Jesus is about to face

the darkest moment, the toughest moment of his life.

His life is about to unravel. And he turns to those he's

prophecy familied with. And he says, intertwine yourself

with me. If you do that, if you stand

with me, if I'm in a covenant community, I can face this.

And you know, the city is saying exactly the same.

The city is facing darkness. The city's, the lives are

unraveling before our very eyes. And the cry of our city is,

would you just climb over those walls and entwine yourself with

me form the covenant community? It's God's charge, it's his

'cause his prophetic voice over us as a community and over us as

sons and daughters, Radical salvation, covenant community.

And another thing I loved was the Kingdom generosity.

Verse 27 says during this time, what time?

Well, the time that church was forming in Antioch.

Now if you remember, I said the poor and and Barnabas were only

there for about a year. So it was maybe a couple months

into the very first person getting saved.

During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to

Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood

up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine

would spread over the entire Roman world.

And this did happen during the reign of Claudius.

The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help

for the brothers and sisters living in Judea.

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

and Saul. I'm amazed by the fact that

here's a bunch of people that just gotten served.

They've just been introduced to this prophetic gift.

Never seen it before. Someone gets up and says there's

a famine coming. You know, I mean, they didn't

have weather men. They didn't have any climate

models or nothing. There's a famine coming and it's

going to strike the entire region.

So now they're going like, OK, this is new.

And then he says, we want your money.

And they don't go like, ah, no, they sell.

They still buy home and they give lavishly Kingdom

generosity, Tim Keller says of this.

He says the early church was strikingly different from

Pretoria E culture. The Pagan society was stingy

with its money and promiscuous with its body.

A Pagan never gave anyone their money and practically gave

everyone their body. The Christians came along and

were stingy with their bodies and gave everyone their money.

Amazing. What side of that do you fall?

CS Lewis, I don't know if you know him, prolific author from

the 50s and 60s. He realized once the money

started pouring in, he realized, oh, I really need to plan my way

forward. And so he set up an agape fund

where he gave away 2/3 of all his earnings, 2/3.

And the reason behind this, he says, was because he realized if

the love of money is the root of all evil, what would the love of

generosity be? Maybe the route of revival.

So how? No, let me give it a try.

Imagine 5003 CRS walking through the streets of Pretoria with an

agape fund, the generosity fund in their back pockets drawn a

couple 1000 Rand. And it's just there and you're

just listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and you're

giving and you're caring and you're loving on as we left

still by we're putting petrol to return the rental vehicle and

hours. I love to give these guys lots.

OK. And he did a little dance.

Beautiful made some moves. He was like what?

And we actually we had to go for sort of paid and I was reaching

for the tip and he disappeared. So we had to ride around, chase

this poor guy down. I don't think he knew what was

coming. Next thing we handed out, just

like, you know, we just robbed the bank.

It's all yours. Cheers.

But this is what you see. The city will feel it, the city

will feel it. The city will sit up and take

notice, especially in the east of Pretoria.

Well, it's all about me, myself and I.

And that's Ferrari, Your, your, it was one home that we saw.

The garage was glass on the one side so that you could see this,

the Ferrari. But I don't know how often they

go there because the shutters were closed and the Ferrari was

covered in this beautiful red cover.

This thing you like, but the generous people catch the eye of

the city. They don't know what to do with

that. They know what to do with fancy

cars and bling. They don't know what to do with

generosity, Kingdom generosity. But The thing is that every time

there's a significant move of God, there's Kingdom generosity.

And one of the commentators said it's hard to tell whether the

move of God releases the generosity or the generosity

releases the move of God. I'm saying let's give it a try.

What's the worst that can happen?

So we've seen some unbelievable radical salvations.

That's what God has spoken over us, what we can trust Him for,

what we can hold Him to. We've seen covenant community,

which he calls us to. We've seen this Kingdom

generosity and the last one I want to put on and I want to

spend just a little bit of time on this because essentially this

is where I see it moving from a Sunday to a Monday.

And that's essentially what I've called life changing leadership.

I was just I want to till the soil just a little bit, so bear

with me. It says in verse 25.

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul 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 don't know if I've ever noticed this before, but in

prepping for today, I noticed that he went and called Paul

instead of Peter. I don't know if you know Peter.

Peter was trending at that moment.

Yeah, he he he was a bona fide hashtag.

He was, you know, his Insta account is blowing up.

Everyone knew Peter. He was the Golden Boy.

You know, he had preached one day and 3000 people got saved.

Why not go? You've got another revival.

He's the guy. I mean, tried and tested.

But notice it doesn't say he went and called Paul.

It says he went and called Saul. So if you don't know your church

history, Saul was the guy who persecuted the church.

He had blood on his hands. He was the black sheep of the

family. Yeah, I'd been saved.

But I mean, can God really use that guy?

Later on, he gets he he goes by his Greek name, Paul, but it

says he went and fetched Saul. I'm not.

What's going on here? I read a crazy article.

I don't know if you know who Gen.

Z is. Gen.

Z are people from between the ages of 20 and 3020 somethings.

And the article is was a business article all about how

businesses are currently quietly purging the staff of all 20

somethings, getting rid of 20 somethings.

And he goes on to explain why I might hit a nerve or you might

be going like, that's why. But it, it was a rather long

article. So I'm going to just give you

like two or three of them. First reason why businesses are

purging their stuff of Gen. Z.

Number one is the iPad syndrome is what it's called.

So iPad syndrome is you've got a generation that are so used to

constant dopamine hits and constant likes and applauses

that now they're doing everyday mundane, real work.

And no one's applauding them for coming to work two days in a

row. And so they are saying this is a

toxic environment. I don't know if I can endure

this. You know, where's the care room?

The second thing is feedback and tolerance among Gen.

Z. They can't handle constructive

criticism, see it as a personal attack, microaggression.

And HRCEOS are going like, you know what?

I can't handle these, these fickle, sensitive egos.

And the other one and this we have had the privilege of

experiencing is the ghosting culture with within the

workplace. And for the older generation,

ghosting is like when someone Whatsapps you, you see it and

you see that they've read it because it's 2 blue ticks.

But you know, days later, they still haven't replied.

But now ghosting has come into the workplace.

And there's this trend among Gen.

Z to not arrive on day one after being the new hire just doesn't

arrive. Or as we had, you know, they

worked 3 or 4 days and then their WhatsApp, you said, no,

it's not for me. Now, I don't know if you've ever

hired anybody. But you, you write together, you

know, everything that they need to do and then you start

publishing it. And then you get this flood from

LinkedIn. Thanks, LinkedIn, everyone.

Can we work from home? And so you filter out all of

those, and then you finally get to maybe your top five,

hopefully, maybe just one or two.

And then you have interviews and you sit with them and you

finally decide you get it and you sign the contracts.

And then they don't pitch up on day one.

And so he goes on to say, says the marketplace no longer PANDAS

to infantilism. Either they grow up or they get

replaced. Yeah, my therapist says I need

to speak. OK, Life changing leadership.

You've got Gen. Z on this side.

And if I could just step into your office for two minutes,

I'll tell you about Gen. Z on this side.

Barna Published over the December holidays stats on Gen.

Z. They are considered the most

open generation to the gospel in recorded history.

They are a seeking generation. They're called the Seekers.

They are more curious than you have ever been in your whole

entire life. The number one Christmas present

request was the Bible. 87% increase in Bible sales because

of Gen. ZI was actually one of the

sermons I heard yesterday. The guy was talking about

someone in the community who didn't get a Bible for his for

Christmas and he threw his toys, ordered one off Amazon and said

I'm not coming out until I've read this thing and halfway

through got radically saved and is in their church.

This is what's happening with Gen.

Z. See the culture.

The secular think says, you know what, wash your hands, go get

Peter. But Barnabas was a man familiar

with the grace of God and what the grace of God could do.

And so he went and got saw he went through all those CVS and

he sat down with HR and said, can we give so And so just

another chance because I could build a little bit of a rapport

with this person. And actually, unbeknownst to

you, that's the name God has placed on my heart to pray for

and trust for salvation. And if they can just hang around

and get a little bit of the culture.

Let his mistakes be to my account.

That is why Paul or Saul gets renamed Paul and because

Barnabas gave him this is the very first ministry moment,

official ministry moment of Saul Paul and because Barnabas gave

him that moment, because Barnabas said, listen, I'm not

going to quiet purge. I'm going to quiet time over

this kid gave stall the opportunity, became poor.

You know, he wrote 13 of the books in your New Testament.

There's black sheep planted churches turned cities upside

down, saw thousands of people saved and then raised another

generation of leaders like Timothy and Silas and Epaphras

and Mark and Luke who also themselves wrote portions of the

Bibles and other three that could be attributed to Paul.

And so this is a call upon us as three CR I think because we are

so top heavy with influential decision making businessmen and

women, C-Suite executives that have a say of who comes and goes

tempers the secular think of just you know what 3 strikes in

their arts, but rather carry a grace into our city so the

gospel can follow suit. Unbelievable.

And this is what God calls us to.

He calls us to radical salvations, covenantal

community, Kingdom, generosity and life changing or should I

say future dictating and forging leadership.

Now I've covered all of this and Paul Luke writing the book of

Acts covers all of this. Not because he wants to set a

new gold standard, not because if you guys really aim high and

if we can just drill this into, you know, this is what you're

going to be measured by. This is the new aim, the new

goal. You know, 2025 was done here.

2026, we're going to go big. It's not because of that.

It's not like like you might find on Monday when you sit with

your sales manager and they say, oh, listen, we've doubled your

target for 26. He's not doing this.

Why am I hounding this? Well, we'll look at verse 26.

The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.

Yes, it is the prophetic mantle that we carry as three CI and

has been spoken of us and God has whispered it to us and

called us to it for decades. But essentially at his very

core, all I'm reminding you to do this year, just Christian in

2026, just Christian in 2026. And with that trust that God

who's spoken, the promise, who's called us to this, it is we

follow down that line of his prophetic future for us as

individuals, as sons and daughters and us as a community,

that on that road we find his presence, we find his power, we

find his provision, we find his purposes.

And on that day we can say, he will say, well done, good and

faithful servant, well done for being Christian in 2026.

Amen.