SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello. My name is Mary. The Old Testament reading is found in Psalm sixty-seven, verses one through four. May God be merciful and bless us. May his face smile with favor on us. May your ways be known throughout the earth. Your saving power among people everywhere. May the nations praise you, O God. Yes, may all the nations praise you. Let the whole world sing for joy at the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Hello, my name is Jay. The New Testament reading is found in Acts 11, 22 to 24. When the church of Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was filled with joy. And he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord. Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, and strong in faith. And many people were brought to the Lord. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Thank you for standing up for the gospel reading found in Luke chapter twenty-four, verses forty-six to forty-seven. And he said, Yes, it was written a long time ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of his name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem. There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent. The gospel of the Lord.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

Please remain standing as we pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. You may be seated. Oh. Settle down, class. Settle down. Oh. I'm so thankful to be here with a voice. I was not in church last week, had a what turned out to be a significant infection, uh, chest and all that. And Monday morning got an appointment with my physician who's a believer. And I went in and I said, Here's the deal, Doc. I'm preaching next Sunday and I'm praying, but you got to do your part. So he gave me a script, strong antibiotic, and the last 48 hours or so I've been feeling great. So excuse my voice, but I'm thankful to be here. I have lived now seven decades, and I've only been a member of six churches in my entire life. And I was on the pastoral staff of four of those churches. I'm not a member of the paid staff of our church, but like many of you, I'm a volunteer and I love our church. I want you to know how blessed we are to be a part of communion of saints. Our pastoral team is amazing. Pastor Jason is not only a dear friend, I'm proud to tell people he's my pastor. And I want to, and I I should say also, the process we entered into that Pastor Jason mentioned to become an autonomous congregation was a challenge. As we transitioned from our wisdom council, where Linda and I served, along with a number of others that I see here, one of the real challenges we had was to write bylaws. And we had lots of fun meetings, I can tell you. And one of the things we had to do was figure out what that would look like with regard to establishing a formal elder board. And we finally came to a plan where we would allow the congregation to submit uh nominations for an elder. Now, I've been on a lot of elder boards. I was the chair of an elder board where I served as the lead pastor. But I have to tell you, this was a new approach to me, but it worked. Uh, your elder board for this church is an incredible and amazing group of godly, wise, and discerning women and men, and I am so proud to be working alongside of them. So I just want you to know you guys are, if I can say this, well covered spiritually and in every other way. So I want to thank Pastor Jason for the opportunity to preach today. Some people golf, some people enjoy online gaming, some people have hobbies and crafts. I love theology and I love to preach. So open your Bibles, your apps, or just look at the screen. Because today we're going to be in the 11th chapter of Acts in our ongoing summer series, Kingdom Movement, where we're slowly journeying through the Acts of the Apostles, seeing how this group of Jesus followers began to literally turn the world upside down with the power of the gospel. Pastor Jason did a great job last week, which I watched online at home, uh setting us up for this portion of scripture. God telling Peter, don't call anything or anyone unclean that I have called clean. This is a turning point in Acts. Uh, and for the whole history of the church, and the author of Acts, the follower of Jesus named Luke, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke, he seems to be starting a new thread now in the development of the church. God is pouring out his spirit upon Gentiles, upon non-Jewish people, which was at first scandalous and now seems to be the norm. This is a new, a new chapter in the church. What happened was that, and we'll read this in just a moment, the persecution in the church led to what's called a diaspora. That's a word which means people having to flee their homes, flee their country of origin because of persecution and violence, and move somewhere else. We see that today, don't we? It happens all over the globe. Well, let's read chapter 11, verses 19 through 21. Now, those who had been scattered by 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 Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. So now we're going to continue with verse. This is new for me, Pastor Jason. It squeaks when you're right here, doesn't it? Yeah. So it's not just me. I'm not hearing something. Okay. You're missing it. I'm enjoying it. So now we continue with verse 22, the one we just heard, read to us this morning. When the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the evidence of God's grace, he was filled with joy and encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord. Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith, and many people were brought to the Lord. We know from earlier in Acts, Barnabas had a nickname. What was your nickname? Y'all have a nickname? My last name is Todd. Can you guess what my nickname was? Toad. My grandsons have come to me kind of upset. Papa. They call me Toad. Or toddler. Yeah, I've heard that one too. And I say, you know what? Your grand, your great-grandpa had it. Your great-great-grandpa had it. It's consider it a legacy. You know. But Barnabas's nickname was Son of Encouragement. What a legacy. Can you think of somebody in your life right now who was always that word of encouragement? You know who comes to my mind immediately? Pastor John McClure. He passed away very tragically about 10 years ago. He was one of the founding pastors in the vineyard movement, and I was a vineyard pastor for many years. Pastor John had a large, successful church in Southern California, speaker, writer. But he was the kindest, gentlest, encouraging man I think I've ever met. I was just this young, insecure pastor trying to figure out this stuff. And I'd go to these, our big national pastors' conferences, and Pastor John would take me to lunch, and he would listen to me and he would encourage me. And sometimes he'd encourage me with goofy analogies. I was complaining about complaints that people in the congregation would have for me, and I'll never forget when he said, Stephen, when you're the lead pastor, you're kind of like the lead duck at a shooting gallery. Don't be surprised when a few of the bullets hit you. Now, sorry, Jason, but I still remember it. But he had such words of life and encouragement. And you know what that did for me? It made me want to be an encourager to other people. You know? Isn't that maybe a little bit of a legacy we can all move towards? To to intentionally and maybe even uh aspire to be an encourager. They sent the right guy. They're not sure what's going on in this in this distant land of Antioch where Gentiles are now coming to Christ and this church is being formed. So they sent Barnabas, the right guy for the right job. May we, maybe we can even start practicing today after church. Let's be sons and daughters of encouragement. There, Lord knows the world needs more life-giving encouragement and less criticism and judgmentalism. Amen. So let's get back to the text we just read. It says, when Barnabas arrived, he saw the evidence of God's grace. Social scientists in the last 25, 30 years have established, they commonly talk now, something called EQ or emotional intelligence. In fact, we all act like we're experts in it, don't we? Now we say, well, I know, but you know, she kind of has a pretty low EQ, doesn't she? And we all kind of wink at one another. Well, all of the original studies to study emotional intelligence were looking at people who seem to excel at what we would call reading a room. You ever done that? You walk into a some kind of social setting, you don't really know anything or anybody, but you we would say in our parlance, you pick up the vibe. You know, you just you pick up something. Well, that's a little bit of what's going on here, I'm sure, with Barnabas. Um he it says he saw the evidence of God's grace, and that's an unusual word. It's translated differently if you have another version that you're looking at, and that's because it's rarely used. Um, I did do uh a deep nerd dive, Pastor Jason, and dusted off my kittles for you that are other theology nerds. Yes, I have a whole set of kittles. Um, the rest of you, don't worry, you're not missing anything. Uh but I found that this very unique word might be best translated into English into something we say, but it's an unusual term. I see what you mean. How can you see what I mean? How can someone see what another person means? That's kind of the idea here, because he saw something beyond the obvious that was going on. What, you know, what did he see as he went into this new Gentile congregation and looked around? It begs the question: what exactly did Barnabas see? He didn't see a beautiful building, he didn't see a great uh worship band, he didn't see a polished speaker, he didn't see comfortable chairs and air, you know he didn't see air conditioning, we didn't see it until five weeks ago. Praise God. Oh uh you wouldn't want to see me in my bathing suit. Uh what did he notice? What did the Holy Spirit show him? And what did he just pick up? You know, as an insightful person, what was it? What were the evidences of God's grace? I'm gonna suggest from this chapter that there were at least four evidences of God's grace on this new church, and we might even find some parallels for our congregation. I'm gonna quickly present all four of them and I'll just briefly unpack each of them. What Barnabas saw was a church formed out of persecution and difficulty. He saw a church filled with the Spirit of God. He saw a church that embraced and included outsiders, and he saw a church generous to the needs of others. So let's unpack that first one. A church formed out of persecution and difficulty. Our text began in verse 19 describing the persecution and the diaspora. As I described before, it's people being forced from their homes, from their countries of origin because of persecution, many times religious persecution, but because of persecution and violence, and they're forced out, they're called refugees. We know refugees in our own midst today, don't we? While I've had the honor of being in full-time ministry most of my adult life, the most spiritually formative experience in my entire Christian life was my time working inside the Nyargusu refugee camp in Central Africa. In a refugee camp with over 60,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were forced to live in incredibly difficult conditions, and I traveled there every year for 11 years. Linda went with me a number of times, and she even helped start a vocational school for refugee women, teaching them sewing so they could develop an additional income stream beyond the meager UN rations that they were forced to try to live on. And had the honor of teaching and helping equip several thousand refugee pastors and leaders. In many ways, what I learned working with these dear saints, some of whom I am still in contact with, some of whom passed away, some of them I would consider deep and dear friends, that I know I will never see again on this side of eternity, but forever made a mark. I have an old Bible that I used to use all the time. In fact, it's in my my little bag there, a little NIV Bible, and it's stained many pages with the bright red soil of Nyaragusu. And I used to tell people that same stain is in my heart. And I carry it all the time. There's movies I can't watch because I feel like those are my people, those are my friends. I can tell you that when I read this chapter in Acts, in fact, I've preached from this text a number of other times in other churches. When churches are formed out of persecution and violence, I can tell you, you can see the evidence of God's grace in their midst. The second observation going along with this, what Barnabas likely saw was a church filled with the Spirit of God. We read in the passage, the Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Now I've spent a lot of my life, not just in Yarugushu, I was in had the privilege of being in Rwanda shortly after the genocide and um Burundi and many other countries during those times. And I'm often asked, why does it seem that the church located that is located in persecuted and difficult places seems to see so much more of the miraculous touch of God's spirit than the American church? And I think what I would say is because they have nothing else. They have no resources, they don't have the luxury of cleverness, and they don't have a hundred other distractions, but they have a God who loves them and provides for them. But I would also say, I see the Spirit of God in our congregation, Communion of Saints, right now. I see the evidence of God's grace when I walk in here. You know, I've been Pastor Micah and I, we I'm an old worship leader from the Jesus movement days. Pastor Micah and I often, he probably doesn't appreciate it, but I'm always sending him suggestions on songs. He's so kind. He just, oh, thank you, Dr. Stephen. Yes, like in his mind, he's got to be thinking, would the old guy just shut up? But have you noticed some of it's the acoustics, I know, but have you noticed since we've been here how we can hear each other singing so loud? It is well with my soul, took me out. You know, the anticipation of the final verse. I mean, we all know the hymn, we all know what the words are we're going to sing. The hymns, you know, 150 years old with such a tragic and incredible history behind it, of course. But I sense the presence of the Lord in our midst. Linda and I, since the beginning, and some of you as well, uh, since the beginning, we've been communion or Eucharist servers. And all of us that are in the communion and prayer team, we regularly see people weeping when they come to receive the sacrament. They do. I we it's amazing. I mean, not all of you, but we see every week when we're serving, we will see some people just touched by the Spirit of God as they're coming forward. The Spirit of God is in our midst, and we should be thankful for that. There's an evidence of God's grace uh in here, and and I'm so thankful for that. Another evidence of the grace of God that Barnabas obviously would have seen was a church that embraced and included outsiders. Again, in the earlier verses, we read that most of the Christ followers who were dispersed were telling other Jews about Jesus. It was, however, these men from Cyprus and Cyrene who went with an intentionality to speak to Greeks. That was not the standard operating procedure for planting new churches. Um I'm looking at verse 25 and 26. It says, 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. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. I want to make an observation. This congregation of refugees, misplaced people, and multiple ethnicities were the first Christians, the first people on the planet to be called Christians. Let that sink in. What's a Christian look like? Well, originally I guess it looked like a refugee, a misplaced person, and a bunch of different ethnic groups. Whoa. But that's okay. Let's let's I won't go any further. Oh, I can have fun with Oh, I can have fun with this one, but it's not a um, it's not an American history class. Um okay, I think you know what I. Me. This is hard embracing those who are so different from ourselves. You know, people ask me, like, you know, what kind of stuff do you all those years? I'm retired from that mission organization now, but uh for 25 years traveling, I went 48 times to Africa uh over that period of time. And most of the time, people always wanted to know what did you eat? And I said, for the most part, uh, some kind of starchy potatoes or corn meal and burnt chicken. I mean, that's the most part. But I do remember in the refugee camp when they had a special dinner, we would provide the food for these weeklong gatherings, or provide the money, and they would get the food. When I had a pastor friend of mine from Boulder who grew up on a farm in the Midwest, and they brought to us a big, there was rice, a big steaming bowl of goat entrails. I mean, you could tell, oh, that looks like an intestine. That's gotta be a liver, that's a heart, that's a who knows what that is. And I insisted that the uh refugee brothers feed themselves first, and I kept passing it around. And it came to Pastor Walt, you know, old farmer, he goes, I'll take one of those, and just stabs this fork in. And and I'll I confess when Pastor Brock leads us to the table, uh, you know, for the I lied. I said there was I was having stomach issues. I wouldn't lie, I just knew that if I ate it, I would have the stomach issues. So it was fair. It wasn't you, but you agree, yeah, I'm covered. Uh and so I thanked them for it, but I just would have the rice by myself. That's it. So, but it, you know, that's funny and that's comical. But it's hard when you got people that are very different from you doing something together so intimate like worshiping the living God. That's that's a challenge. That's hard. I want to share a very personal moment with you on one of my times with the Congolese refugee pastors and leaders in that camp. That year, when I arrived, I was told that several thousand refugees from a neighboring UN camp that was filled with people from Burundi had been placed over into this camp in the Aragusu. And of from that group, there were about 60 Burundian pastors who then had been invited for our week-long gathering that that we had in this huge, you saw a picture of it, I believe, all made out of that red dirt and mud and sticks. It held about 3,000 people that that that building. Um, and let me tell you, when they worshiped and and they started dancing, that red dust just billowed up. You know, it got everywhere. But they were there, and and so um I began to teach or preach, and in Africa, even if you're teaching, you're still doing it like a preacher. That's kind of their style. I don't know if any of you have ever spoken through an interpreter, a live interpreter, to a to another group of people who don't understand your language. Um, it's a learned skill. And I've done it hundreds of times, literally, but uh you you develop certain rhythms. And one of the rhythms I develop is I can't actually live. It's interesting to listen to their language, but I can't listen to it because I've got to think about the next thing I'm gonna say, or there'll be too much of a lag. But the one thing that's always kind of interesting is that formal nouns and names aren't translated. So if I say my name is Stephen, Stephen, I'm from Colorado, bada da da da da, Colorado. You know, you you get used to kind of hearing formal names like that. But something was wrong in this opening session. Because now I would say Burundi, but in Africa they would say Burundi. Um, one little common note I learned early on. I'm I'm moderately good at languages, but I found that they could not understand my American accent. So when I'm in Africa, I speak like an African speaking English. I just thought the entire time I'm talking like this with Africa because they cannot understand English from me. The other thing is they don't call me Steve or Dr., they call me Stiff. So Pastor Stift or Dr. Stift. So uh, but I didn't hear Burundi. And so then I started kind of adding it multiple times in the next couple of sentences to see if I would hear Burundi, and I heard nothing. So we took a break. Uh, we would really try to honor and show dignity to these pastors and leaders. We we would obviously bring the resources from the US, you know, money basically, and we would provide uh meals and even a tea break. And they would actually have these little chipped plastic teacups and tea service and little, they would, of course, they would call them biscuits, you know, uh tea uh cookies, and just just to honor them, you know, even though they're in a refugee camp, they're in they're having an enjoyable time at this conference. So we had a tea break. And I gather all of my leaders, the the key refugee pastors who were helping put this together, and my interpreter, and he was an educated man, he was not a pastor, he was a strong believer, but he had been a college professor in the Congo, he was multilingual, and I said, I noticed you're not saying the word barundi. What are you saying? And he paused, and one of the other pastors says, He is saying people from another place. And I said, Why are you saying that? He said, Because of their people killed my people, and I will never say that name. And I thought, okay, Houston, we got a problem. So I said, Okay, we we've got we got to deal with this. So I gathered everybody in, and I said, I think I need to teach on something, and I don't know how we're gonna do this, but this afternoon we have to have a communion service. Now that's not as easy as going over to Walmart and getting some gluten-free crackers and non-alcoholic wine or wherever we buy it, I don't know. Um, but so you know, I we started assigning jobs. Uh, there's in the refugee camp 60,000 people. They actually lived in quadrants like little villages within the camp. And so we we gave local currency money to a number of the guys to go in the different villages and start buying freshly baked bread. It was always unleavened bread, from enough to uh provide communion for about 1,500 people. And so uh they went and did that. And I said, What are we gonna do about you know juice or wine? I mean, this was not Napa Valley, nor was it Tuscany, you know. And one of the pastors runs, he goes, I I know, and he runs out, he comes back with this large canister jar from the United Nations uh uh World Food Program. It was called Kimicola, C-H-E-M-I-Cola, like chemical cola. Black currant juice concentrate. I don't know, but we it had a bunch of basins and they had well, so we got some well water and they mixed the Kimicola, black currant juice concentrate, and it did produce a purpley liquid. Uh and said, So how are we gonna like distribute it? Another one, I got the idea. I'll be right back. He went to the infirmary, to the United Nations uh medical clinic. And the way they did that, if people, I mean, it wasn't very, it wasn't great medical care, but if you had a serious heart condition or something like that and you needed particular medicines, those pills were sealed almost identical to the the little individual communion things that we have, you know, where you'd peel the top off or try to peel the top off. Um and so when people there were one-time use only. So there were always several hundred of those in the trash can inside the infirmary. So they dug through and they found a two or three hundred of those, empty ones, and they brought them back. And then somebody filled up another basin with the well water, and they just started agitating them in the bottom of it with the water. And the plan was they would agitate them, they would kind of dry them out, stick them there, somebody else would dip them into the Kimmi-Cola black currant juice concentrate with water and set it there, and the person could take the piece of bread and the cup and have it, and when they drink the cup, they toss it back into the first water one, and then the couple guys were agitating and putting them back. So we had a plan. And yeah, and then we gathered everybody again, and I said, I need to, I need to share, and I need to teach on something. But what I first did, um they made this for me. Actually, it was the uh the the refugee uh women's school that uh training school that Linda helped plant uh or start, she raised the funding for it. She didn't teach them to sew. They had a tailor uh from the Congo who who took over that responsibility. She was able to just raise the money here. Um, and they called it by the way in Kiswahili, Linda means protector. So they called it the Linda Center, and it was there for many, many years. They made this for me. This is a pastoral stole. Now, some of you grew up in a traditional, you know, I grew up as a kid a Lutheran, Lutheran, Catholic, of course, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, Episcopal, some Presbyterians. You will see them wear these stoles. It's a sign of ordination or ordained ministry. Sometimes people call them preaching stoles. But in and Pastor Glenn wore his, you know, he he's an Anglican priest. He wore his uh earlier on in uh New Life Downtown when he would celebrate the Eucharist. In the African culture, many of the denominations and groups, the pastors will wear these. Okay, much more common. And I it's not expensive in the sense of the material, it's not, but it's it's a it's a prices heirloom for me. And so I wanted there to be a certain gravitas because I felt I had to speak into their spirits. We're talking about this third point, a church that embraces and includes outsiders. So I stood behind the communion table they had, and I put it on, and I began to preach. And I read, therefore, Jesus' own words, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift. And I began to expound on that. And we celebrated the Lord's Supper, a very long communion service. And Congolese pastors would take the bread and dip it in the Kimikola black currant concentrate juice. And weeping, we were going over to these Burundian pastors and kneeling on the floor and weeping. In several cases, they actually started to wash their feet. And everybody was crying, and everybody was weeping. And I remember thinking, this is the evidence of God's grace.

unknown 33:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

And I remember thinking, I would never, I would rather, I wouldn't want to be any other place on the planet than here right now. And then when we were all done, they worshiped. And they worshiped forever. And they the the Congolese and the Bruneans would put their arms in each other and were dancing, and the dust was so thick you could hardly see. And I saw the evidence of God's grace there. Every week we have the privilege of coming to the table. And this is one of the places where our church can extend this evidence because the table is open to everyone here. It doesn't matter if you're unhoused, it doesn't matter if you're struggling with addiction, it doesn't matter if you don't understand English very well, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what your papers look like or may or may not be, as to you being here in the United States. None of those things matter. If you want to come to the Lord's table, you are welcoming. Amen. And so my final observation is one evidence of the grace of God is a church generous to the needs of others. Now, don't worry, I'm not going to take an extra offering today. But generosity is a spiritual gift. It's a virtue and it's a part of spiritual formation and biblical discipleship. The Old Testament teaches it, Jesus taught it, Jesus demonstrated it. We see it in the early church. I want to affirm all of you and I want to challenge all of you. Over the next number of months and into next year, we're going to be making some intentional initiatives towards increasing our generosity here at the church. As we seek to have a permanent home where we can continue to thrive as a local congregation, reaching others in our community and beyond, may we be a church when people come and say, I saw the evidence of God's grace among them. So in the words of the Gloria Patri, the ancient Christian hymn or Christian prayer that Pastor Jason often ends with Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and never shall be a world without end. Amen.