Good morning. So we're going to be looking in the Scripture today in Acts, chapter 11, and it's going to be verses 19 through 30. If you want to turn there in your Scriptures, we're going to be looking at a few moments in the life of a man that we know throughout most of Scripture as Paul. We talked about him a week ago, and we're going to be referring to him as Saul, though, because throughout this portion, he still goes by. What's his Hebrew name?

Saul. Paul was kind of his Roman name that he would go by. This was typical for a lot of men that might have been Jewish men. They lived in the Roman Empire, and they might have had two names, one that was their Hebrew name and one that was their Roman name they went by for legal purposes in the Roman world. But we'll get a little bit into that in a few minutes.

So just know that when I say Saul, we're talking about the same guy that you might know quite well as the Apostle Paul. And I want to read the Scriptures to you and then tell you a little bit of his story about his life and his upbringing and how he started out and kind of look at what made him who he is, and just kind of looking through some of the rest of the Scriptures that talk about him and that he talks about his own life. So in Acts 11, starting in verse 19 now, those who had been scattered because of the persecution that took place over Stephen, they went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the message to no one but Jews. But there were some men from Cyprus and Cyrene among them who came to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks, too. They proclaimed the good news of the Lord Jesus.

The hand of the Lord was with them. And a great number who believed turned to the Lord. A report about them came to the attention of the Church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts, because he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a significant number of people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas departed for 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 a significant number of people. Now it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians. Before that point, they had been called followers of the Way.

They were followers of the Way of Christ because to the Jewish People there was the prophecies from the Old Testament about the coming Messiah. And now that they identified that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of that, that he was the Messiah, they said there's a way of living as a Jewish person that honors the Messiah. And so they had adopted their way of life that honored Christ. And so they simply were called followers of the Way. But here in Antioch it's not just Followers of the Way because there were people, it says that we're Gentiles, they were not Jewish people that had become Christians.

And so they said everybody started kind of mocking them. People that had been just kind of going about their kind of Greco Roman way of life. And now all of a sudden they've heard the good news that Jesus is the Messiah, not just for the Jews, but for Gentiles as well. They start following his life and teachings. And everybody says, well, they kind of left, you know, all the Roman gods behind.

And now they're just like that Jesus guy. They're little Christs, little Christians, little Christs. It was a mocking term at first and they wore that proudly. They said, that's fine, we'll take it. Saul, his life story, we don't have all the details, we don't know everything.

But as we read bits and pieces throughout his own testimony and throughout the story in the book of Acts, we see a few things about him that I've done the lovely research work of pulling together in a few brief sentences for you. Saul was a few things we know about him. He was from the Jewish tribe of Benjamin. By the way, if you go in the Old Testament, anytime you find a Benjamite, they're left handers. Normally I mock that my sister was a left hander, I think that's why.

But anyway, I say left handed weirdos, but you know, whatever. They were warriors though. And if you're a warrior, that's a lefty, nobody sees it coming. Like you can go on the attack and they're watching your right hand. You know, they're watching for if you're going to grab a sword or something and all of a sudden you come up with that left hand, they're not paying attention to that.

They were excellent warriors. Nobody was trained to fight left handed warriors. There's only like 7% of you in the population. So there's probably like one or two here in the room. Saul was or.

Yeah, Saul was a Benjamite. So he's from the tribe of Benjamin. I don't know if he's a lefty or righty, but he's from the tribe of Benjamin. They actually trained themselves to be left handers, so they would be good in battle that way. So they were a very disciplined group of people, A very, you know, they were militant when needed.

And they were an elite tribe of people. So he figures he's an elite guy. Like he's from an elite tribe within Israel. He was a Pharisee, which were elite in the religious landscape. They were the ones that said, we're gonna take what God has told us in the Word.

We're gonna take everything that we've interpreted that to mean as far as it comes out to the way we live. And we're going to live according to the strict laws of God so that we maintain our ritual purity and cleanliness distinct from non followers of God, non Jewish people. And so he was very zealous for the law. He had started his life. He was born as a Roman citizen, which was of a high honor and value in those days.

If you were a Roman citizen, you got a lot of protections under the law that you weren't afforded you if you were a non citizen. And so a lot of his Jewish brothers didn't have the same protections that he did. It would get you out of a lot of lot of things. It would ensure a more fair trial. It would ensure they couldn't beat you before being, you know, being tried.

And like, if they thought you were lying sometime to the court, they would just beat you. And they thought maybe you would be more honest after getting a beating. You know, like, most times that doesn't really work. But anyway, that's what they had gone by. But they're like, if you're a Roman citizen, we can't beat you unless we have a court order, you know, like, isn't that great?

Anyway, all right, so he was a Roman citizen. He was born in a place called Tarsus. And yet as a young boy, his family had moved to Jerusalem. We know he had relatives there, at least he had his sister lived there as an adult. He had a nephew that lived there.

He had relatives in Jerusalem. And he had lived there and grown up learning at the feet of a Pharisee and a rabbi named Gamaliel. He was a very well respected man, very, very highly loved and adored by the people. And Gamaliel was Paul's teacher. He was his rabbi that Paul was.

Or Saul was probably ordained under. And Saul was. He took up a role that was kind of almost like a prosecuting attorney. We talked about when Stephen was martyred or killed recently and they had laid their cloaks at the feet of Saul. And so he would have been the one that was kind of.

He wasn't the one that cast the judgment. He was the one that would have been prosecuting the case. In fact, as you read, some of the men that argued with Stephen that day that led to his little mock trial, it says that there were men from different regions, and one of those were men from Tarsus. So Saul was one of the ones leading the charge against Stephen to. For the Sanhedrin Council to pronounce judgment on him as somebody that they believed was endangering the people of God and falling into false teachings.

So this is some of who Saul was and some of what he was doing. He was very zealous for the things of God. And he also had a trade that came into play later. Every Jewish father was required to teach their son a trade. They were required to teach them a skill, a job.

And he was what was known as a tent maker. It was something that, you know, was good for people, that it wasn't like camping tents. But some of them they would live in because they kind of moved a lot and they would live in them. And they might have used them for certain religious purposes at different times. And so he might have even worked in seaports, because, you know, working with cloth and sewing and all these things, he could also do repair of sails on boats and things.

We're reading into it a little bit. We don't know that, but. But it's quite possible. And so he had all this stuff at his disposal. And there were times where he went and would provide for his own means, actually, through most of his ministry, he provided for his own financial requirements so that he wasn't a burden to the congregations that he was ministering to.

And so he did that as a tent maker so that they didn't have to support him so they could support the needs of the people of their church. So that's a little bit about who he is. Later, his name, I kind of hinted at this. His name becomes Paul, or he starts going by Paul. And it happens right after he has this interaction on a missionary journey with a man named Sergius Paulus.

Sergius Paulus is a Roman proconsul over a region. He kind of has authority to collect taxes, to build infrastructure, to command soldiers, or to command battalions of troops. He has a lot of authority in that region. And Sergius Paulus was kind of under the spell of a sorcerer named Elymas. And Elymas had him just kind of like, eaten out of the palm of his hand.

You know, he just was enthralled by this guy's abilities. And Paul comes in there with his traveling companions, and they're telling people about Jesus Christ. And he looks at the sorcerer and he just kind of condemns him for what he is. And all of a sudden, he's struck with blindness. Sergius Paulus turns to Saul and follows the way that he's been proclaiming.

He becomes a Christian and he starts following God. And it's after that, Saul becomes known throughout the book of Acts as Paul after that. So we think it was at that moment. So he might have taken his Roman namesake after Sergius Paulus. Sergius Paulus might have actually helped fund some of Paul's missions.

Like, he had a lot of giving capacity. Like he had a big bank account to dig into. And he might have supported Paul's missionary journeys. And so he kind of said, cool, I'll kind of go by a name that honors him. Like he goes by Paul to honor Sergius Paulus.

We're not sure that, but we think that that's a custom that might have been followed there. So that's why, if you've ever wondered the name change all of a sudden from Saul to Paul with no explanation. You look at the details of the story right around it, and it kind of makes sense. But one of the things that's hard to track down is a timeline of Saul's early years of ministry after he had his conversion moment on the road to Damascus. Like, we looked at this last week.

You know, you flip over a page in our sermon guide, and we're like, okay, you know, he was ordained to suffer. We talked about. We were in Acts chapter nine, and he had spent three days blinded, and he was praying and fasting and. And God sent Ananias to go lay hands on him to receive his sight. And he said, I've been showing Saul in this period of blindness, I've been showing him the ways he will suffer for me to carry the gospel to the Gentiles.

So the time after that, and then until our scripture today in Acts, chapter 11, we kind of want to look at that and be like, hey, what was going on with him during that time? Like, what things happened during that time? And Paul gives us a little bit of his timeline during there. He gives us a little bit of his actions during that time of where he was at. Immediately after he got converted, he started preaching to the people in Damascus.

And they were thinking, this guy's a Traitor, Right? Like he was just coming here with letters of authority to, you know, to lock us up. And now he's proclaiming the Christ that he was fighting against. What gives? But then Ananias, who had laid hands on him, kind of vouches for him, and they accept him in and they listen to his teaching.

But then Paul tells us that immediately after that, he went out to Arabia. That's nothing. That's desert, that's wilderness. There's nothing there. Why would you do that?

That's the reason why there's nothing there. He went out to specifically focus on getting to know the. The Jesus that he had just started following. He went directly deliberately into the wilderness to spend time getting familiar with Jesus Christ. And so he did that.

And then he spent three years, we believe, back in Damascus, preaching and proclaiming Christ, but also learning from him and studying the Scriptures and growing in his newfound faith. He went after that, he. He went to Jerusalem for just a short time, about two weeks, he said, 15 days. He went down to Jerusalem from Damascus and he says he only met with Peter and then with James, the brother of Jesus. He didn't meet with the rest of the apostles.

But what he wanted to know was that this learning that he had been doing for three years about Christ, he wanted to make sure that he hadn't gotten it wrong on any point. He wanted to make sure he had their right hand of fellowship, that they said, you're approved. You're doing the right stuff, brother, keep doing it. And he said they had no problem with what he was doing. And they commended him to continue going and preaching.

And so what he did was he went back to his hometown where he was born. He went to Tarsus, into the region around there, and he lived in that region. And for what we believe is about the next 11 years, he preached in relative obscurity, didn't write any books of scripture that we know of, didn't have communications back and forth with Jerusalem and all that. He just ministered in that region. And he wasn't, like, real popular or well known.

However, when we look in Galatians chapter one, there's some hints here. And this is, like, to me, this is one of those, like, big moments. And like, just bear with me for a couple seconds here for a few minutes. In Galatians 1, verses 21 through 24, Paul is talking a little bit about his own journey. And he says that there in that time, he was preaching in those regions.

And he said the brethren in Jerusalem had heard about it, that the one who formerly persecuted the church, was now proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ. And they heard good things were going on there. And that's pretty much it. But it tells us that for years and years he was just ministering there in relative obscurity, but that a slight little bit of trickle down, like news reports, had come back to Jerusalem, which is where the kind of the center of the church was, like where the, the decision making and the leadership and the guidance all came from Jerusalem. But he was ministering there and just thought, probably, like, okay, this is it for me.

Here I am. This is where I'm serving, this is where I'm ministering. And so then meanwhile, some people had gone over to this town called Antioch. And Antioch was a city that was, of course, multicultural. There were Jewish people, there were Roman citizens that were there.

And so they kind of lived in the same area. And the Jews would have had their regular gatherings in a synagogue. But some men came. The scripture tells us that we read they came from Cyprus, which is a nearby island. Like, if you have a Bible map, some of you have those in the back of your Bible, you can look at some of these.

But Cyprus is an island just a little bit to the west, or left, as you're looking at it, a little bit to the west of where the city of Antioch was. And some men came from there and preached the gospel. But they also came from a place called Cyrene. Now Cyrene is over in Africa, further west of Egypt, and it was known as the Athens of Africa. They were educated, they were wise, they were, well, you know, well endowed with knowledge.

And some men came from there, probably took a boat, leapfrogged onto the island of Cyprus and then went from there, and they went over to Antioch and they proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you're thinking through this whole thing, you're like, how did the Gospel of Christ get all the way down, all the way down south of Israel, all the way over into Egypt, all the way past Egypt, and all the way over into that region, like into Cyrene? There's something happening that God is doing exactly what Jesus said to do. He said that the disciples would go and carry the good news to all points, all ends of the earth. And it's been happening already.

And these men have gone there. In fact, on the island of Cyprus, that's just over there, near there, they found the tomb of Lazarus, you know, the guy that was a friend of Jesus that they raised from the. That he raised from the dead. After four days, Lazarus had gone to Cyprus, and he was actually the first bishop of the church in Cyprus, of the Christian church. And he lived and died there.

And his second tomb is in that place. The first one he didn't need anymore. The second one was his final tomb, and they found it there with the inscription, lazarus, the friend of Jesus, twice died or something like that. It's a really cool inscription.

So he lived and died there. So Antioch has all these people there. Maybe Lazarus had had an influence on some of the people on the island of Cyprus, and they were the ones that went to Antioch. We're not sure. But the picture is that the Gospel is spreading rapidly, and some people are going to get educated by it.

Some people, like Saul Paul, are spending time digging in. In a small environment, digging into the word of God and then going from there. But here's what happened. The church in Antioch started growing. And it was growing not just Jewish believers, but non Jewish Gentile believers.

And this was the first that that had happened. This is like more than 10 years after Jesus Christ has died and rose again and ascended into heaven. And now finally somebody's like, you know, Jesus kind of said that we should take this not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles too. And so sure enough, they go after it. And the report of that hits Jerusalem.

Uh oh, somebody gets called into the office. Isn't that great? Like, you know, when you're like, all right, come see the boss, or come see HR who has to deal. Who's ever had to deal with hr? Like, you ever had to be in the HR office.

It's never fun, you know, never fun. And so, like, HR gets a hold of this, and they're like, there's some Gentiles that are. That are getting baptized up in Antioch. What's up with that? We got to make sure the right stuff's going on here.

So they picked a guy named Barnabas. We first got introduced in, to the kind of the life of Barnabas in Acts, chapter four, just at the very end of it, that he was. He was from the tribe of Levi. The Levites were the priestly tribe. He was a Levite.

He owned some land. He sold the land, brought the money, and put it at the feet of the apostles. And he did that because he understood that there were needs in the community around them, the community of believers, and that he wasn't the one that was equipped with the wisdom and knowledge to give it out individually. So he brought it to the apostles, he puts it there, and he's like, hey, this Isn't mine anymore. It never really was mine.

But I've sold. I've divested myself of this financial interest that I had. And now here's the money for it. And you guys take it and distribute it as you see the need. So that's where we first meet this guy.

His name was Joseph, but he went by Barnabas, which was a nickname they gave to him, called, which calls him the Son of Encouragement. He's an encourager. So they pick him to go up to Antioch to see what's going on and to bring back a report. Now here's the interesting thing about where Antioch is. 300 miles north of Jerusalem.

How many of you have walked 300 miles? Yeah, okay, Like, I mean, not at once, you know, I'm saying, like, maybe in your life, you know, it's like I could do, you know, I could do 500 push ups, no problem. It might take two weeks. I could do it though, you know? Like, I promise I could.

Okay, you guys have heard that one before, man. So they send Barnabas up there. He goes up there and if you're reading about what's going on, he shows up and he sees what's happening. He sees the Holy Spirit at work. He sees the grace of God in this place.

And he's like, hey, you know what? I know what's needed here. He didn't need to go like walk 300 miles, by the way. It would take about 15 days, I think. He didn't need to walk 300 miles down to Jerusalem to get help.

He didn't go down to like the hub of helpers and all that stuff. What he did was he says, you know what? I've heard reports about this guy Saul. Now, where Saul was working kind of close to his hometown of Tarsus. That is, it was about 150 miles, so half the distance.

But you could go over to the seaport, hop on a ship. It's a day's journey to get over there. He does the math. He's like, you know what? I can get help here real quick.

If I just go up there, I. I'll find Saul of Tarsus. I've heard good things about him. I'm going to go find him. So he sets off to find him. Now, can you imagine trying to find somebody that you don't actually know him.

You've never seen a picture of him. You can't like, Google him and you've just heard stuff about him. And so what he does is he heads up there and he's like, I'm just going to go find him by reputation. I'm going to find him by reputation. Like, I know what to look for.

So I used to have a friend like this before. Like, well, a lot of people had, like, cell phones, flip phones. Nextels. Nextels were the best. I missed them so much.

But he was. He just refused to get a cell phone. And so, like, we were still in college. We worked together there on the grounds crew sometimes. And when I needed to go find Kenny, I'd be like, you know, maybe wanted to grab lunch or something.

I knew, like, a few places to look for him because he didn't have a cell phone. And I'd try calling his apartment. If he didn't answer, I'm like, okay, I'm Country Cafe. If he's not there, I'm going to try this place. If he's not there, I'm going to try this place.

If I can't find him at any of those places, I'm going to give up. I wasn't supposed to meet up with him today. That's how Barnabas goes off to find Saul. He's like, I've heard he might be here, here or here. And he just starts hitting places until he finds him.

So he finally finds him and he says he brings him back to Antioch and they have a ministry there for about a year. They're ministering there for a while. And as they're ministering, some great stuff is happening there. They're seeing a lot of people come to faith. Everything's looking fantastic.

So they have this moment then where before I get there, I want to. Here's just a little insight into that. Saul, as I had mentioned, was kind of in relative obscurity. He wasn't well known. He wasn't prominent.

And yet in this moment where Barnabas goes to find him, we believe by the leading and power of the Holy Spirit is basically like time to say, saul, you've been kind of. You've been faithful. You've been ministering, but it's really time to step up. Like right now is the time that you have been training for. You've been preparing for.

You've been faithful in the small things. Now God's calling you to something big. And so this is that catalyzing moment that he answers the call to and shows up for and he reports for duty. So they spend a year there. And then it says that these prophets showed up.

They were traveling prophets and they showed up. And when we think about prophets, we think about people, specifically in the Old Testament, that would kind of tell the future. And they would say, here's what's going to happen to the people of God, Especially if they've been disobedient to the things of God. They would say, if you guys don't straighten up, here's what's going to happen. And so that was kind of the typical role that we assumed that they had.

But one of the things they would also do was they would look at the injustices of the people, the times where they hadn't followed the law of God. And they would say, you know, you haven't followed the law, and God's calling you to faithfulness in this. You're part of the covenanted people of God. You actually have a covenant that God had signed with Abraham for all of his generations after that. And you are bound by that.

You are to obey the law. And where you have veered off from that, God is calling you back to covenant faithfulness. And so that was one of the main major jobs of the prophets in the Old Testament. But another thing that they did was they pointed ahead to the coming Messiah, to the Christ. And now that Jesus had come, prophets aren't pointing people ahead to the Messiah.

The job of the prophets in the New Testament is to refer us back to Christ, to see who he was and the picture of the kingdom of heaven that Christ had painted, and to call us to live out that kingdom identity. That's the role of the prophets. They would also talk about things that were going to happen in the future. For instance, these prophets that showed up here in Antioch said, hey, there's gonna be a famine that's specifically going to attack our brothers in Jerusalem and in the Judean region. And we can do something about it.

We can help out. So what we need to do is we need to take up a collection, we need to take up an offering, and we need to send that down to Jerusalem where the apostles are, and we're going to give it to them so that they can take care of the needs of the people there. We're going to take care of Christians that we've never met or seen or heard of. But we know that this is what Christ has called us to do. This is the identity we have as Christians.

And so that's what these men did. So there's things today in the church where God is still calling people to a prophetic ministry. But a lot of times you see something on TV where you see people saying, oh, I'm a prophet this and that. I'll almost guarantee most of the Time they're not. Like, most of the time, they're not actually doing it.

Like, God has set forth a pattern in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts, in the Scriptures. They're probably just claiming a role so they can make outrageous claims and sell books. Like, I'm not calling them out by name because I don't pay attention to them, and I don't know, but probably not going to be accurate. The prophets today actually are usually working in the areas where people are hurting, where people are struggling, where we see, like, the works of the devil at play in their lives. And they're calling the Christian community together to help serve and meet those needs and see people healed and restored to the life which Christ has designed them for.

Amen. All right, we'll just move on then. Great. So the prophets would be doing that. You know, you've also got evangelists, those that are traveling to people that don't know Christ, and they're sharing the good news of the Gospel with them.

They're saying, like, listen, let me proclaim Christ to you. You're not in church, so I've got to get out to you. These people are usually sent from the local church to the different people. The prophets work within the local church. They're sent to the community, and they're sent there to bring the healing of Christ to the community.

The evangelists are sent from the local church body out to the world to proclaim the gospel to them, to bring them into the fold of followers of Jesus Christ. You've got your shepherds, which are usually called pastors in a lot of days, but your shepherds are the ones caring for the needs of the flocks. You got your teachers, which are teaching the word of God. And then you have apostles, which are the ones that were bearing witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But also they were the ones that were the fathers of the ministry that are fathering up all of these leaders and that are fathering up people in Christ and then sending them out into the world to these roles that God has gifted them in.

And so this is what's happening in the church in Antioch. All these things are coming to place there. And so the church in Antioch, the Christians there, Jews and Gentiles, have all come together under the bond of Jesus Christ. And they've started saying, we need to meet the need that these prophets have spoken about. So they take up a collection, they take up an offering, they give maybe what they can, maybe some more than what they could they sacrificially gave.

And Then they said, somebody has to take this 300 miles down to Jerusalem. By the way, have you ever had like sold a car and you had to take that money to the bank or something? And you're like, this is a few thousand dollars that I'm carrying. You get a little edgy, right? Little nervous, like, what's this gonna be?

Like, you know, if this is the time that somebody walks up to me with a gun, you know, like, you gotta have that thought moment, like, how much am I willing to risk taking a bullet over? You know, like, what's the number? Like, you know, if it's $10,000, like, eh, the gun looks pretty small. Like, what are you gonna do? Tickle me to death with a.22?

You know, like, I don't know. So, you know, you kind of have, maybe I'm the only one. Okay, but you have that conversation with yourself, like, what am I willing to risk it over? You know, like anything bigger than my pinky probably I'll be like, hey, you know what? You know what?

Enjoy that money. I guess I didn't need it that bad. So anyway, the.

Obviously he's just, you know, overprotect yourself from them and you'll be just fine. Anyway, okay, so they're carrying the money though. They're like the ones that are like, they're taking this risk. They got to go 300 miles through Bandit territory, through a couple different borders of national regions, and they got to carry what might have been thousands of dollars. We don't know how big their offering is, but they carry this money and now they're carrying it.

They have the responsibility to go and like keep it safe, but also not to steal. You know, like they got to have honor as. So they pick Saul and Barnabas, the guys that had been ministering to them. They said, you guys are faithful, we trust you, we believe the hand of God is on you and he's going to protect you. And so plus, I don't know, remember Saul was a Benjamite, so maybe he carried a left handed sword, you know what I'm saying?

I don't know, maybe that was his protection. I'm reading that into the scripture. It's not there, but I think it's there. So anyway, I think he was a guy that was ready to throw down if he had to, you know. So they carry this money, they bring it to the saints in Jerusalem.

This is about between 11 and 14 years after Saul was initially saved. Remember, he made one quick trip to Jerusalem, met with Peter and James, and that Was it. But now he spends some time there. This happens later in the scripture. We haven't gone there today.

We haven't read that yet. But I just wanted to share it with you. He spends some time there and he begins presenting to them the gospel that he has been proclaiming to different people. And they said, hey, continue in the grace of God on it. So what happens after this is Saul and Barnabas go back to Antioch and then during that time.

This is a couple chapters later, the beginning, I believe it's of chapter 13. I'm just going to read it to you real briefly here. It's just a couple verses. It says now there were prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch. Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius, the Cyrenian, Manaen, who was a close friend of Herod, the teacher from childhood, and Saul, while they were serving 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 they had fasted and prayed and placed hands on them, they sent them off. And so it talks about it after that, the first missionary journey that Paul had with Barnabas going with him and. And the helpers that they had with them and how they go around the world, around part of the Roman world, and begin planting churches and proclaiming the gospel. So my takeaway through all of this, like, there's a lot of explanation, a lot of story, a lot of history. The challenge is this.

There's some of you that have been working maybe quite faithfully in a capacity that to this date, Christ has called you that far and that's it. And you've been faithful to what he's called you into. You've been working kind of in relative observation within the kingdom of Christ. And you're not building a name for yourself. You're not behind anything big.

You're just. You're doing what he's called you to do. But now there might be a moment where he's saying it's time to step forward. I've got more planned for you to do. I got more people for you to reach more.

More people for you to minister to and to carry the hope of the gospel to. To have a part in that. And I'm calling you to step forward now. Like when Barnabas went and found Saul up in Annie or up in wherever he came from, Tarsus.

Then also there's the time, the part, the challenge, and this idea of giving. Nobody likes to hear the pastor talk about that. Nobody's like, you know, that's why I don't invite friends, because I'm worried that's the day they're going to talk about money. Great. You know what?

I don't necessarily care. We don't need their money. This is. If you're here and you're part of this church and you're a believer in Christ, there is need both in just the basic operations of a local church that has to be covered. I'm doing everything I can on my part.

I've actually taken on an extra job. Like it was supposed to be a part time job as a bus driver. I found that a part time bus driver job is like 43 hours is what my last week was, you know. And so, like, I'm doing that because I recognize there's a season of ministry that this church is embarking on and some of you feel it and we've talked about it, but it's like a launching point again that we're headed into in this church with this congregation that Christ is calling us to an effective ministry. And I want to do everything that I can to help make that happen.

I'm not trying to do it on my own power, but I'm saying, lord, if this is how you want to use me right now, then so be it. And so I'm asking you, what is it that you can do? I hinted at this on our 80th anniversary celebration a few weeks back in February. But what is it that you can do to give faithfully and sacrificially, even for a season? Like, what can you give up for a time?

What can you. Maybe not a whole lifestyle change, but what is it that you can do without right now? Maybe you've just paid off a car and you're thinking, you know what, it's getting old. I want to get a new one. Don't do it.

What if you could take that and keep the old car for a while? Guess what? The old ones are so much better than the new ones. Like, I'm driving a 94 Chevy because it's solid. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I love this truck. It has air conditioning and nothing else, like rubber floors and manual windows. I have to reach over to unlock it, you know, like I have to unlock it with a key. It's fantastic. It's from the 90s.

I wish we had more cars from the 80s and 90s still on the road today. They're there. They're just really expensive. They're collectors now. Anyway, like, what can you do to say, you know, what I'm going to trim some expenses because there's a season that I can sow into the kingdom and see where God blesses you with that.

Because these people, what they gave, they gave in this church in Antioch. They gave and knew that it was immediately leaving their region. It wasn't even helping the people right there. But they trusted the men that were carrying it and said these men are faithful and we know that it's going to go to the feet of the apostles. And they've had a track record of managing it faithfully.

And so we want to continue on in that. Where we're at right now, we're ministering to some people. Many of you have met Lawrence and talked with him and worked with him. I've known Lawrence for a long time and Lawrence needs some of your help. Some of you that especially that worked over the wintertime with our cold weather shelter.

We're ministering to a lot of the same people that we ministered to during that time. But we have opportunities for them to come here four times a week. Sunday mornings he's here early, about 7:30 every week or maybe even earlier. He's here before I am and he's preparing meals for them. There's showers that are opened up.

Then we have three other opportunities. Monday, Wednesday and Friday from. Is it three to seven? We just settled on this like on Sunday last week. So I'm still learning it.

But from three to seven on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we're open up. We have showers available. Just time to hang out in a little bit of air conditioning, eat a meal. We have a class on Friday. That's Life Healing Choices.

We're hoping to start a Celebrate recovery in the next months or years. Who knows how long until we get into that. But we're working with some people that are in a great need. There's other things that we want to do. It takes volunteers and it takes money.

And I believe what I saw in this scripture as I studied it this week was that I believe that there's. That God is raising up some of us in a way that we haven't yet committed to before. And I'm not trying to like, I'm not asking you to give yourself into poverty. I don't actually know that that's possible. I haven't met anybody that's given to God so much that they've ended up in the poorhouse.

I've known some people that decided to live a voluntary life of poverty of some way so that they could serve Christ and serve others in the name of Christ. And so if you see them poor, like, oh, they're not poor because they gave away too much. They're poor because they decided to live in an affordable way so that they could give to Christ and support the work and mission and ministry of the local church. And so whatever it might be that God's calling you to, here's how I'm going to sum it up. There's two opportunities to respond today.

Three. Maybe the third one is you need to spend some time like we see the believers doing in Antioch. They set aside people and they fasted and prayed for the direction of God to be made known to them. For sure, do. That is step number one.

But the two options that you have available to you today is one is, we're going to pass the offering plates in a minute. We do this every second week of the month anyway. So it just happened to coincide with this message. And it's just an opportunity. As a reminder every month that we pass the plates instead of just leaving the basket there that says, hey, our salvation is free.

Like Christ gave you salvation. But also out of a heart of gratitude, we respond that the other thing is next Sunday, the third week of the month, we have. This is our first one. And we'll keep doing these every month. A shape class.

And we've talked about shape for a couple weeks, but it's figuring out your kingdom purpose by looking into your spiritual gifts, your heart, your abilities, your personality, and your experiences, and looking at how those shape you and give you help inform your kingdom purpose in serving Christ in his kingdom. And so that's next week after service. And guess what? We'll be serving lunch. So you're kind of out of excuses, you know, like, it's right after church.

You're already here. There's lunch. Come on. If there's too many people, you look at the class and you're like, mm, mm, no thanks. You know.

Cause that part of your personality is the more introverted kind. Like, that's fine. We'll have it again next month. But the point is, like, don't be spending too long up in the relative comfort of your hometown saying, okay, you know, I'm just up here ministering. This is great.

Because when Barnabas shows up knocking and says, saul, it's on. We've got work, we've got ministries happening in Antioch. And you're the guy. Some of you people, you're the one for this moment. You might not know what that moment is or what that calling is yet, but Christ is calling.

Some of you right now to a ministry that you've never been part of before. So SHAPE is one of the ways that we explore that and figure that out and find that out. And I want you to be in on that. I want you to be part of that. My goal is to have everybody in the church go through that within the next few months.

And then as new people come along, they go through it, too. It's part of our next steps. If you looked at that little sheet on the back, that's like, step number two. First step is, come to a welcome lunch. Second step, go to a shape class.

So that's what we want to move people through so that we can see people fulfilling the roles to which Christ has called them.

It.