"A n d the disciple
| u r t e x t answers four questions. WHO were called Christians? The disciples. WHAT were they called? Christians. HOW did they get the name? They were called Christians by others, they did not name themselves. WHERE were they called Christians first? In Antioch, of all places! The first church was at Jerusalem and it was a Jewish church. It never got over being a Jewish church. It was becoming an ingrown, self-sufficient closed corporation when persecution broke out scattering the church in all directions and turning members into missionaries. Maybe we need some persecution today. Somebody has said, “ The church began as a company of lay witnesses; it has become a professional pulpitism, financed by lay spectators.” Nowadays we pay the pastor and his staff to do “ full-time Christian service” while we come out on Sunday and watch them do it. Every Christian is in full-time1service for he should serve God all the time. We read that some of these dispersed disciples came to Antioch and preached to the Greeks. It was a laymen’s movement. They were not apostles for the apostles stayed in Jerusalem. They had no ecclesiastical orders. They were just Christians “ gossiping the Gospel” and telling everybody about the Lord Jesus. They preached to Greeks which was a departure from standard procedure. It had been general practise to preach to Jews only. These amateur preachers didn’t know any better than to preach the Gospel to anybody and everybody. And it worked for we read that “ the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord.” Some of the greatest Gospel advances have been made by “ irregular” preachers, not sent out from headquarters but scattered from headquarters, just Christians who didn’t know any better than to go everywhere telling everybody that Jesus Christ is Lord. Of course word got up to headquarters and they sent Barnabas to investigate. “ He was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith,” we read. That is the kind of man to send if you are investigating any work of the Lord. Some investigators we have known would have called the Antioch meetings “ off-brand.” We read that Barnabas “ when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.” He saw, he felt and he said. He saw the grace of God. Are we seeing the grace of God in our churches today or just promo tional wheels within wheels? He was glad. Would your church make Barnabas happy? Would our Lord say, . “ Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead?” Then he exhorted them to cleave unto the Lord. That is great advice for brand-new Christians. He would have the believers become disciples and keep up what they had begun. Many evangelistic movements fail because those who come to the Lord do not afterward cleave unto Him. We are told that much people was added unto the Lord. Numerical results are important when they are the genuine fruit of the preaching of Christ in the power of the Spirit. Today we have made numbers a goal instead of a result and we are not too careful how we get them. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. That flaming preacher had made a beginning at Damascus and had gone up to Jerusalem but the believers were afraid
THE KIN G 'S BUSINESS
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