59 Acts 11:27-30 ANTIOCH AN EXAMPLE OF A GENEROUS CHURCH Introduction: The church at Antioch was the first church to preach the gospel to Gentiles. In doing so they set a worthy example for other churches to follow. In our text today they set another worthy example for other churches and individuals to follow. They set a worthy example in their generosity to others. I. Men with the gift of prophecy V. 27, “And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.” The word, prophet, as used in Scripture, can have slightly different meanings. It is sometimes used to refer to one who is endued with a special gift which enables him to foretell future events. It is sometimes used to refer to one who cannot foretell the future but has been endued with a special gift of teaching and proclaiming the word of God. It is sometimes used to refer to someone who has been given special powers to teach the word of God and also the power to foretell future events. Such was Agabus, one of the prophets of God who came from Jerusalem to visit the church at Antioch of Syria. The gift of prophecy was a special miraculous gift which God gave first to the church at Jerusalem and through them passed this gift on to other churches by the laying on of hands. It, along with other miraculous gifts, was given to the early Christians on a rather short term basis. It was not a gift which would continue long in Christianity. In I Corinthians chapter twelve we read about this miraculous gifts being given to the early churches. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another [divers] kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will,” 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. So this gift of prophecy was named among the miraculous gifts. In I Corinthians chapter thirteen we read that this particular miraculous gift, along with all other special gifts of the Spirit, except faith, hope and charity, would be done away. They would cease. They would stop. They would no longer be given to anyone who did not already have them. In those early stages of Christianity, the revelation of God’s will for His people was given in parts --- one part at a time. But when all of the parts had been given and the Bible in its completeness had been written, then there would be no further need of any new parts added to it and this special gift would cease. Only three special gifts from the Holy Spirit would continue to be given to exist after the writing of the Bible would be finished. . Those three are named in I Corinthians 13:13. They are: Faith, hope and charity. The word, charity, here means “love.” The special spiritual gifts of faith, hope and love would continue and the others would cease. We note particularly in verse 8 that prophecies would “fail.” Not that a prophecy given by one of God’s prophets would fail to come to pass, but rather that the gift of prophecy would fail. It would cease like in the same verse it is said that the gift of tongues would cease. II. The prophecy of Agabus It is said in verse 27 of our text that prophets came to Antioch from Jerusalem. Agabus was one of those prophets. V. 28, “And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.” Agabus prophesied that there would be a great drought. Luke makes it clear that this prophecy was given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. Luke wants us to understand that Agabus was not a false prophet and that the drought which was prophesied by Agabus was sure to come to pass. In fact, since the drought had already taken place before Luke wrote the Book of Acts, he just informs us that this drought did come to pass and that it come to pass during the time that Claudius Caesar ruled the Roman empire. Luke says that Agabus informed the church at Antioch about the drought and that it would be a drought that would affect all of the land. But in view of verse 29 Agabus must have also told them that the drought would not affect Antioch nearly as bad as is would affect the land around Jerusalem and in all Judea. The reason we can be sure that Agabus informed them that it would be much worse around Jerusalem is that immediately the church at Antioch made the decision that they would do all in their power to send a special offering to the Jerusalem church to be used to help the Christian brethren in all the vicinity of Jerusalem. III. The decision to send generously to the aid the church at Jerusalem V. 29, “Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea...” I want you to note the greatness of their generosity. In the first place, it was especially generous of them in view of the fact that they, themselves, would be affected, at least, somewhat by the drought. They would not be hurt as badly as the brethren in Judea, but they would be hurt by it, because Agabus said that the drought would be throughout the all the world. If they had been looking for an excuse not to send help to the church at Jerusalem they certainly had an ready made excuse. They could have said, “We are going to need what we have here at Antioch. We don’t need to be sending what we have off to some other place.” Another thing that points out the great generosity of these Christians at Antioch is that every man among them purposed to send “...according to his ability.” To put it another way, it means that every man purposed to give all he could to the church at Jerusalem. Now this is a rare thing. It is not rare for Christians to give to help other people. That is quiet common even today. The people of our church has recently given generously to help Sis. Lucille Thomas. The Missionary Baptist Church of Overton sent a car load of goods to our house yesterday for her plus a check. So Christian people do give to help those in need and they give generously. But how many Christians give all that they can to help others? I think we can safely say that it is a rare thing even for any of us to give all we can to help somebody else. We almost always reserve the biggest portion for ourselves. But at Antioch every man purposed to give according to his ability. This means that the more affuent would give all that they could give. That would be a lot. And it means that those who had little would give what little they could give. They would not use the fact that they had only a little to use as an excuse to not give at all. Even the poorest man among them would give what little bit he could. All of this was decided by the people of the church at Antioch when they heard the prophecy even before the drought came. You might normally think, “Well, its easy to promise. But when it comes right down to the time to give, that’s another matter.” You might think, “Most of them will renege when it comes time to take up the offering.” But they didn’t. They were as good as their word. When the drought came they were just as generous with their deeds as they had been with their words. V. 29, “Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.” They sent their offering to Jerusalem by Barnabas and Saul who put it in the hands of responsible men who would distribute it fairly to those in need. IV. How fitting for the church at Antioch to help the church at Jerusalem It was fitting for the brethren at the Antioch church to help the brethren of the church at Jerusalem. In the first place, it is always fitting for Christians to help anybody who is in need. Later Paul would tell the church at Ephesus“I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive,” Acts 20:35. Jesus said that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive. Secondly, it is especially fitting for Christians to help fellow Christians who are in need. “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all [men], especially unto them who are of the household of faith,” Gal. 6:10. For another thing, it was fitting for the church at Antioch to help the Jerusalem church because the church at Jerusalem had been very generous in assisting others. On the day of Pentecost the church at Jerusalem had helped Jews from all parts who had come to Jerusalem. About 3000 of them had gotten saved on Pentecost and had decided to stay and serve Jesus instead of returning to their homelands. A small handful of people in the Jerusalem church had taken on the task of feeding about 3000 people until they could make arrangements to feed themselves. Then later, they had done the same thing for another 5000 people. Yet not only had the Jerusalem church provided material assistance to many people in need, but they had provided spiritual assistance to other churches. We know that they sent the Apostle Peter and other brethren to Samaria to assist Philip in teaching and training the people in spiritual matters. We also know that they had sent the Apostle Peter on another tour of churches including the one at Joppa. We know that they had sent Barnabas as far away as Antioch to teach and train people there in spiritual matters. So it was very fitting now for someone else to return the favor and give the Jerusalem church some assistance in their need. And this, the church at Antioch did. V. The church at Antioch setting a worthy example for us to follow The church at Antioch has set a worthy example for other Christians to follow. They set a worthy example for all Christians to follow. They set a worthy example for our church to follow. Our church has long been a generous church. It should always remain a generous church. We should remain generous in our giving to help people of our own membership when they are in need. May the time never come when any of us would refuse to help our fellow church members when they are in need. May we always be generous in doing so. That is what God would expect of us and that is what God would be pleased with. Our church should always be generous to help the needy who are outside the membership of this church. I know that we cannot take on the task of feeding the world. But we do have opportunity from time to time to help someone in need who is not in the membership of our church and who may never be in the membership of our church. But when there is a genuine need and when we have an opportunity to help and have he ability to help, we should open up our hearts and open up our pocket books and help those who are in need. Our church should always be generous to help pay the way for missionaries to go on the mission field and preach the gospel to the lost and to teach and train new converts there. I may not remember the figures correctly, but I do remember an account that Z. N. Morel wrote in his autobiography about the early settlements of Texas. He reported that someone up in the northeastern part of the United States gave (I think) $400 to help a Baptist missionary come to Texas to do mission work. Z. N. Morrell said that the first two people who were saved under the preaching of that missionary were blood brothers to the man who had given $400 to help the missionary to come to Texas. We never know how much good will be accomplished by what the give to support missions. May our church always be extra generous in the support of missions and may we as individual Christians be very generous to missionaries. Occasionally there are sister churches who have unexpected great needs that we can help with. A church can have a fire which will suddenly leave them without a place to meet. It is not likely that their insurance would take care of all the expense of replacing their church building. Or, a church may suddenly have a storm, as we did, which did thousands of dollars worth of damage. We were blessed in that we received a great deal of help in clearing away the damage. We also received some financial help. One woman stopped her vehicle, got out and handed me a $100 bill. Then she got back in her car and drove away. We still do not know who she is. We received enough help that with what monies we had on hand plus what the insurance paid and what we raised here locally, we were able to pay for all the repairs. Not every church is as fortunate as we were and are in greater need of outside help when catastrophe strikes. We should be willing to reach out to our sister churches who have such sudden great loss and help them. Let me mention another thing in which the financial need may not be as great, but it is one in which the emotional need and spiritual need is great. We, as a church and as individuals, should always be ready to help the families about us who are stricken by sickness or death. There is no way that we can know the amount of good that this church has already done by helping families in their time of bereavement. There is no way we can know the amount of good that we can yet do by helping those who have lost a loved one. Death provides us an opportunity to do good for the families of our membership. But it also provides us a great opportunity to reach outside our membership and help people that we might not be able to reach and help any other way. It might even open up doors of opportunity for us to help people in a spiritual way when we help them in their time of bereavement. VI. The greatest need of all Let us not forget that the greatest need of all for any people is their need of salvation. We are all here in this world for only a little while. We are all just passing through. We all need to be saved so that when we go out of this world we will spend eternity with God in glory. If you have not yet made peace with God by trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ to save your soul, then you need to be save without delay. You really need to be saved today. You really should not put it off until some other time. I think that you know that if you keep on putting it off until some other time then one day it will suddenly be too late. You will go out into eternity unprepared to meet God. What you need to do is to get saved today. If you are saved, then you need to help reach somebody else so that they can be saved. I might not be able to reach the ones that you can reach and you might not be able to reach the ones that I can reach, but if both of us work at the job, then we will likely both reach somebody.