Acts 13:1-3: Sending Out for the Sake of the Gospel

Acts 13:1-3: Sending Out for the Sake of the Gospel

Today’s message will come from Acts 13:1-3. It says, 

1 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 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.” 3 Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. 

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Acts. And typically, we simply look at whatever passage comes next in the book. However, this Sunday is a special occasion in that we’re sending out Kevin and Beth Godin to the work God’s called them to in Michigan. This is their last Sunday with us before they begin being fully engaged in ministry there. So I thought it’d be good if we skipped ahead a couple of chapters in Acts and looked at Acts 13:1-3. We’ll circle back around the next couple of weeks and look at the two passages we’re skipping. But for this week, Acts 13 just seemed to be the right passage for this occasion. But before we dive into it, let’s pray. [Prayer]

The theologian A. W. Tozer famously stated that “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” So how do you picture God? 

You know, I think a lot of people have this view of God where he’s a lot like a retired grandfather who’s just sort of hanging out up there in heaven. I do a lot of my work in Panera and frequently see these older guys who come in there for a few hours every morning and just shoot the breeze. The distinct impression I get is that they don’t really have much pressing business to take care of in their lives, so they just like to putz around town, maybe run a few errands to keep busy, and hang out with each other over coffee. And I think a lot of people have a similar view of God—that he’s just up there, hanging out and enjoying his heavenly existence. Of course, he’s often willing to lend a helping hand to us once in a while since he has nothing better to do, but he doesn’t really have any larger goals for the world. 

However, if you read the Bible, that’s not at all the biblical view of God. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible pictures God as being on a mission. And that mission is to make himself known and worshiped throughout the world. This mission is expressed quite well in Habakkuk 2:14, where it says, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” That’s God’s mission. He wants everyone everywhere to see his glory and worship him and discover the joy that’s found only in him. And in his grace, God uses his people to accomplish that mission. He gives us the privilege of spreading everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. 

And here in Acts 13:1-3, we see God leading the church to do that in a very deliberate way. Look what it says: 1 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 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.” 3 Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. 

Now, understand that this passage marks a major turning point in Acts. Up to this point, the narrative has been focused almost exclusively on Peter and various mission efforts in Jerusalem and around that region. However, the focus now shifts to Paul and his associates as they seek to spread the gospel throughout the rest of the Roman world.  

Also, the church we see mentioned in this passage is the church of Antioch—which, as you can see, is located a good bit to the north of Jerusalem and all the other cities we’ve encountered in Acts so far. We also get some very helpful background information about the church of Antioch in one of the passages in Acts that we temporarily skipped over in order to get here, Acts 11:19-26. This passage records how the church of Antioch was established. It says, 19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. 20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 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, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. 25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 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 that’s how the church of Antioch was formed and what had happed so far in the church’s brief history. And returning to Acts 13, in verse 1, we see mention of two kinds of leaders in the church of Antioch: prophets and teachers. Prophets were people in the church who would receive revelations from God. As we see numerous times in the book of Acts, these revelations weren’t doctrinal in nature but rather were practical. Doctrinal revelations—containing doctrinal and theological content—were given to apostles, whereas practical revelations—containing timely insights and guidance—were given to prophets. So the prophets received these timely insights and guidance from God and reported them to the church. Then the second kind of leader mentioned here, teachers, had the responsibility not of receiving new revelation but of explaining existing revelation. They sought to help people come to a clearer understanding of biblical truth. 

And of the five leaders mentioned here in verse 1, only two of them have come up before—Barnabas and Saul. Saul, of course, has already been prominently featured in Acts 9 for his conversion on the road to Damascus and likely needs no introduction. He also went by his Roman name Paul and is the focus of the entire rest of the book of Acts. And Barnabas has also been mentioned several times. It was Barnabas who convinced the skeptical church leaders in Jerusalem that Saul was a sincere Christian and not out for their blood any longer. It was also Barnabas who was sent by the Jerusalem church to investigate rumors about Gentile converts in Antioch—which shows that he was a notable and trusted leader in the church. He also took Saul under his wing and guided him through some early ministry endeavors. So Barnabas and Saul are especially prominent as leaders in the church. Then two of the other guys who are mentioned in this verse—Lucius and Manaen—don’t show up at all outside of this verse. And Simeon only receives a passing mention a couple of chapters later. So the spotlight is very much on Barnabas and Saul. 

And, as we’re going to see, they were the ones chosen in a special way by the Holy Spirit to spearhead a new missions endeavor. And that actually brings us to the main idea of these verses—that the Holy Spirit initiated the church’s first organized missionary outreach. The Holy Spirit initiated the church’s first organized missionary outreach.

Up to this point, the gospel has been relatively confined geographically to the region around Judea. Also, it’s spread not because of some organized outreach effort but primarily as a result of Christians being persecuted. We saw back in Acts 8 how Christians in Jerusalem experienced severe persecution, so they fled to the surrounding cites, taking the gospel with them wherever they went. That’s how the church of Antioch was formed and how things have been progressing so far. But now, in Acts 13, we see a much more proactive and organized missionary outreach. And as we look at these verses, we find two requirements for faithful engagement in missions endeavors—and we’ll spend the rest of our time looking at these: sensitivity to the Spirit and readiness to sacrifice. 

Sensitivity to the Spirit 

So first, sensitivity to the Spirit. Verse 2 states that it was “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting” that the Holy Spirit spoke to them. It’s not entirely clear if this gathering for worship and fasting was limited to the leaders of the church or if it included everyone. Commentators differ on that point, but regardless, these were Christians who were very much oriented toward God and therefore sensitive to the leading of his Spirit. 

And let’s not read too quickly over the fact that they were fasting. Fasting was a key practice in the early church but isn’t really spoken of very much these days. So I’d like to very briefly give you an overview of the practice of fasting as we see it in the Bible and especially in the New Testament. Even though we’re never directly commanded to fast, Jesus does assume in Matthew 9:15 that his people will fast. And if we’re going to fast in a way that pleases God and actually accomplishes something, we have to understand what fasting is all about and what its purposes are. Because I don’t know about you, but I like food. You probably can’t tell since I’m blessed with a high metabolism, but I actually like food a lot. So if I’m gonna go without food, I really need to know why. I don’t want to subject myself to such an uncomfortable ordeal without having a clear sense purpose for doing so. And I assume most of us feel the same way. So here are four purposes of fasting. 

First, we fast in order to communicate to God how much we long for him. Fasting is like saying, “God, I want you more than I want food.” And as we fast with that mentality, we worship God by expressing the depth of our desire for him in a very visible way. Also, we fast in order to practice preferring God to his gifts. So often, it’s not bad things that keep us from God but rather good things that we enjoy too much. We enjoy God’s gifts so much that we forget about the One who gave us those gifts. But when we fast, we get much-needed practice preferring God above everything. As often as the thought of food enters our mind, we get to choose God all over again. And hopefully, the more practice we get, the more of a habit it will become.

Then third, we fast in order to confess our emptiness and our need with the expectation that God will put his glory on display by meeting that need. Essentially, we give God occasion to show forth his glory by helping the helpless and meeting the needs of the needy. And when God sees such an occasion, he acts. Then finally, we fast to add intensity to our prayers. We’re demonstrating how deeply we yearn for our prayers to be answered and communicating to God our utter desperation for him to move. And this glorifies God by showing that we really believe prayer is a powerful thing and that he’s both able and willing to answer our prayers. 

So, as you can see, biblical fasting is tied to prayer. It’s not something we do for dietary or health reasons. All of the main purposes for fasting are spiritually-oriented purposes and are connected in various ways to prayer. So hopefully, all of this is an encouragement for all of us to engage in fasting as often as the Lord leads us. And, again, the Bible never gives us specific commands related to fasting or a required frequency for fasting, but here’s a question for you: if you’re never—or hardly ever—burdened enough for something related to God or God’s mission in this world to go without food for even a brief period of time, what does that say about your heart? Is your heart aligned with God’s heart? If our hearts are truly aligned with God’s heart, I’d think we’d yearn so deeply to see God move in various ways that we’d find ourselves fasting more than most of us probably do. 

And, returning to Acts 13 here, we see that it was as these Christians were fasting that God made his will known to them. Again, verse 2: 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.” Now, the way that the Holy Spirit spoke to these Christians was most likely though one of the prophets. However, I believe this verse reveals an important principle for all of us when it comes to hearing from God. If you want to hear from God and have an understanding of God’s will for the various situations you encounter in life, the way to do that is exactly what we see these Christians in Antioch doing—simply seeking closeness to God. 

You don’t have to look for obscure signs or spend endless hours trying to interpret mysterious dreams. Instead, simply focus on cultivating a closer relationship with God through things like worship and prayer and fasting like we see here in verse 2—as well as other practices commended in Scripture such as studying the Bible—and that’ll put you in a position to hear from God. Your mind will be saturated with biblical principles for living and your heart will be shaped to be more in line with God’s heart. And if you’re doing that, ultimately, you can trust that if God has something to tell you or show you, he’ll make that clear to you. 

You see, God doesn’t play games with us. It’s not like he’s entertained by seeing us try to figure out his will like we’d approach some murder mystery game. If we’re simply seeking closeness to him like these Christians in Antioch, we have every reason to believe that God will make his will abundantly clear to us. And if we don’t receive clear guidance from God, then we can assume that we have liberty in that area and can do as we desire within biblical boundaries. So our role is simply to cultivate a heart that’s sensitive to the Holy Spirit, like we see the Christians of Antioch doing in verse 2. That’s step one to being faithful in missions endeavors. If you’re going to be faithful, you need to cultivate a sensitive heart to wherever God might lead you to go, whomever he might lead you to talk to, and whatever he might lead you to say. 

Readiness to Sacrifice

Then, in addition to cultivating sensitivity to the Spirit, we also need a readiness to sacrifice. That’s the second requirement if we’re going to be faithful in missions endeavors—readiness to sacrifice. Having heard from God, we need to be prepared to do what God says no matter how challenging it might be. Here in Acts 13, God told these Christians, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Can you imagine what it must have been like for these Christians to hear God say that? Remember, Barnabas and Saul were the two most prominent leaders in that church. They were the most gifted, the most anointed, and the most influential leaders that church had. And now, God tells them that those two guys—Barnabas and Saul—have to go. Do you think that, just maybe, that would have been a hard pill for the church to swallow? I mean, for God to call one of them away would have been difficult enough. But both of them? Are you kidding me? And yet, the Christians of Antioch were obedient. As verse 3 says, “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” Their two best guys—sent off for the sake of the gospel. 

And you know what that shows us? It shows us that the mission we’ve been given of telling the world about Jesus takes priority over everything. It takes priority over our comfort, it takes priority over our preferences, it takes priority over everything.  And hopefully, that’s the way our church is oriented as well—where our hearts are preoccupied first and foremost not with our comfort or our preferences but with reaching people with the gospel. Oh that our church would never turn into some sort of country club but rather would always be a center for missionary mobilization!

You know, growing up, my family liked to go on a lot of camping trips in the mountains. And I’m talking about real camping with actual tents and meals over a fire and the whole nine yards. And on these camping trips, we would bring our canoe and find a nice river to go down that had several good rapids but also had a good number of spots where the water was calm so we could go fishing along the way. And to the side of a lot of these mountain rivers, there would be pools of water that formed in the depressions of the rocks. And quite honestly, these pools were disgusting. They were green, they smelled funny, and the only thing that could survive in those pools were mosquitoes. We knew better than to look for any fish in there. And the reason they were so stagnant was because they had water coming in but no way for the water to go out. As a result, the water just sat there as all sorts of undesirable yucky stuff grew in it. That’s the scientific term for it, by the way—yucky stuff. So, in order to be healthy, it’s necessary for a body of water to not only have water flowing into it but also water flowing out of it. There has to be a constant exchange of fresh water in order for things to be healthy.

And it works the same way with Christians and churches. Even though it might be easy at times to drift toward more of an inward focus and get settled down with the way things are and the people we already have, that’s actually quite hazardous to our spiritual health. Eventually, we’ll become like one of those stagnant pools of water—deprived of a fresh filling of God’s Spirit because we’re not being faithful in the mission he’s given is. The fact is that God calls us to be a missionary congregation. And as we see here in Acts 13, that requires sacrifice. 

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean every single one of us has to go to the other side of the world as a cross-cultural missionary. Remember, there were only two people in the church of Antioch that God called to that kind of ministry. However, the rest of us are called to support that effort. William Carey, who’s often called the father of the modern missions movement, once said this to an associate of his named Andrew Fuller: “I will go down into the pit, if you will hold the ropes.” Carey spoke those words right before going to India as a missionary in 1793. “I will go down into the pit, if you will hold the ropes.” So even if we’re not called to go down into the pit ourselves, we are called to hold the ropes for those who do go down. And we do that primarily through our prayers and through our giving. Our church prays for international missionaries just about every Sunday during our mission moment, we send out prayer sheets every month for the missionary we’re highlighting so that you can pray on your own, and we tithe our church budget so that 10% of all the money our church receives helps fund missionaries around the world. That’s how we hold the ropes.

Also, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that, even if many of us aren’t called to be missionaries internationally, we’re certainly called to be missionaries locally. That means intentionally building relationships with those who aren’t Christians yet, faithfully praying for them every single day, and actively looking for opportunities to share the gospel with them. That’s what a missionary lifestyle looks like. And even though the sacrifice required for that kind of lifestyle might not be as dramatic as that of some missionaries serving internationally, make no mistake: there is sacrifice involved. Of course, there’s also plenty of joy involved. In fact, I’d even say that the joy’s pervasive. But there is also sacrifice—because embracing God’s priorities for our life inevitably requires relinquishing our own priorities. That’s what the church of Antioch had to do, and that’s what we have to do. 

Conclusion

And my prayer—that I literally pray almost every day—is that our church would be faithful to that. You know, guys, the need couldn’t be more urgent. I know it’s not really comfortable to think about or popular to talk about, but hell is a real place. And every single day, people are departing from this world without ever embracing the only One who can save them from such a horrific destiny. Even though many of them—especially here in the United States—have probably heard something about Jesus before, I don’t think most of them have heard biblical teachings about Jesus. In their mind, they just picture Jesus as a great moral teacher with a lot of helpful wisdom. They’re totally ignorant of why Jesus died on the cross—which was to pay for our sins. Our sins deserve God’s judgment, but Jesus suffered that judgment on the cross so we wouldn’t have to suffer it in hell. And that’s the only way any of us can be made right with God. It doesn’t matter how many good things we do, how many people we try to help, how much money we give to charity, or how nice of a person we try to be. It’s only through Jesus and his death and subsequent resurrection that we can be made right with God and have hope for eternity. And most people don’t have that hope. They’ve never renounced their sinful way of living and put their trust in Jesus to rescue them. 

Think about it like this: consider going home this afternoon and making a list of 100 people that you know outside of this church. I imagine most of us could probably do that. Even if we don’t have 100 friends, we probably have at least 100 acquaintances. Then ask yourself this: in 80 years or so, how many of those people will most likely be in hell? And yet, we have the message that can save them. We have the cure, and his name is Jesus. Do you see why sacrifices are warranted for this mission? This is eternity we’re talking about here. 

And hopefully we can be even more faithful knowing that our ultimate and highest motivation for reaching out in this way is Jesus himself. Notice back in verse 2 how the Hoy Spirit says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul….” “For me.” Our devotion should ultimately be devotion to Jesus, and our efforts should ultimately be expressions of love for Jesus. He wants us to be set apart for him. It’s his love that stirs our hearts, his worth that motivates our sacrifices, and his glory that drives our ambitions. This isn’t just devotion to a cause but devotion to a Person. That’s what all of our efforts should come back to. 

Sending Out

And this morning, we have an opportunity to put what we see here in Acts 13 into practice as we send out some of our very own for the sake of the gospel. Of course, it’s not exactly the same situation as what was happening with Barnabas and Saul, but there are certainly some very strong parallels. Kevin and Beth have been an integral part of our church for several years. Kevin, of course, has been serving very faithfully as an elder. And I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that our church wouldn’t be what it is today without Kevin and Beth’s ministry. You’ll recall me mentioning that the church of Antioch, in sending out Barnabas and Saul, were sending out their very best. And that’s honestly the way I feel about Kevin and Beth. 

Yet I’ll say that it’s a great comfort to me to see God’s fingerprints all over this transition. Even though I don’t believe anyone has received a prophetic word about Kevin and Beth like we see in Acts 13, there’s an exceedingly obvious alignment of circumstances that all point to this being God’s will. Things have fallen into place in such an incredible way, both here an in Michigan, that I just can’t see how this couldn’t be from God. So what a privilege it is for us to be able to send them out and then support them, in the days ahead, with our encouragement and prayers. 

nd on that note, I’d like to invite Kevin and Beth to come up here at this time. And while they’re coming up, I’ll go ahead and grab this token of our appreciation. It says, “Pastor Kevin Godin, thank you the ministry you have had and the impact you have made. Redeeming Grace Church.” So I’ll give this to you, Kevin. Hopefully, this can be an encouraging reminder of the incredibly significant ministry you’ve had in our church and how much we love you guys and appreciate the investment you’ve made in the lives of so many. 

And as we look at verse 3 of Acts 13, it says that “after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” Now, I’m not going to call everyone up here to physically lay hands on Kevin and Beth—that would be logistically challenging—but as we pray over the Godins, I would like to invite you to stand to your feet and simply stretch out your hand as a tangible way of expressing support for them and communicating that we stand with them in this endeavor. So, following the pattern of the early church, let’s pray together.