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We're wrapping up this series, or the I guess this this theme with a series on uh Paul's missionary journeys called Road Trip. Now, how many of you guys have taken a road trip this summer already? Anyone got one planned coming up? Yeah, a few of you guys, okay. Um I like road trips in some ways. In some ways, they're they're they're challenging, they're taxing. Uh, we've got six kiddos. Our kids are really awesome, they're road warriors, and they they handle it really well, but it can be a little crazy sometimes on the road. Uh but I remember taking road trips as a kid, and one memorable experience for me, I was five years old, and we uh we went with my grandparents. My my grandmother had just been diagnosed with Lugarrig's disease. They didn't know how much longer she was going to be able to travel and to be mobile. Uh, and so we went on this road trip. We left from Houston, we went all the way down the Gulf Coast and through all of those Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi, and and then we went to Florida and spent some time there, and then we went up the East Coast and got to go into South Carolina and North Carolina, got to spend some time in the Smoky Mountains. And man, I remember that road trip just vividly had these pictures of all these different spots we stopped along the way. Road trips are fun, aren't they? And you you kind of have these memories that you make along the way. And hopefully, with my kids, we can continue to do some road trips as they get older and see some places that we've never seen and do some things we've never done. And it's funny too that when you go other places, you do uh the things that are the touristy things to do, but in your own city you don't do them. So, like people come to Austin all the time, they're like, oh yeah, we did this, this, this. And I'm like, we live here and we've never done those things, right? You've you've been there? But the point I'm making here is that road trips are really uh a unique opportunity for us to see uh places and see things that we've never seen, meet people we've never met. And Paul and Barnabas are on a road trip in essence, but it's a trip that has a very clear mission. In fact, Alex last week did a great job kicking off our series uh called Road Trip from the place of Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas were sent out by the church in Antioch. The place where they were first called Christians was Antioch, and this church in Antioch sends them out and says, We want you to go be missionaries, we want you to go take the gospel, the good news about Jesus, to these other places. And this is in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. And so they go out and they start telling people about Jesus. And we're gonna look at the next three uh places that they visited after they left Antioch, okay? And so um, as we're looking at these places, we're gonna try to learn from Paul and Barnabas a little bit about how they did mission. Uh, in every place they went, they contextualized their mission. So they didn't use the same cookie-cutter approach in every city they went to. And every city they went to, they experienced different responses, they experienced different cultures, and they learned how to use those to build bridges for the sake of the gospel. Okay? So if you have your Bible, I encourage you to pull it out. Uh, it's also, we we put the text on the screen. There's some Bibles underneath the seats, and uh feel free if you don't own a Bible to take one as a gift from us. We'd love for you to have that just so you have your own copy of the text. You can also pull your smartphone out, or and I'm sure you can uh you can read along with us from that as well. Acts chapter 14. Paul and Barnabas, here they are, they're on their road trip, we're along for the ride with them, observing from the text. Now, I'm gonna read this first section and then we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit about um this idea of mission. First off, uh he says this in verse 1 the same thing happened in Iconium. Uh so he just left uh Antioch. They left Antioch, and and there were some things that were going on there that were good, and there were some hard things that were going on there. But it says the same thing happened in Iconium. They had the Jewish synagogue, and they spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. Now the synagogue was their house of worship. They didn't have a temple. Uh there was only one temple. There is only one temple for the Jewish people, it's in Jerusalem. But they had a synagogue, which is a place of worship, and they would go there for their training, for their understanding of Scripture, and it was a real social hub for these cities. And it says that many Jews and Greeks believed in the gospel. They believed in the person of Jesus for salvation. But go on, verse two, it says, But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up and poisoned the minds of the Gentiles against the brothers. So they stayed there for some time and spoke boldly in reliance on the Lord, who testified to the message of his grace, by granting that signs and wonders be performed through them. But the people of the city were divided, some siding with the Jews, and some with the apostles. When an attempt was made by both the Gentiles and the Jews, with their rulers to assault and stone them, they found out about it, and they fled to the Lyconian towns called Lystra and Derby, and to the surrounding countryside, and there they kept evangelizing. Now, before we dig into this first section of the text, I want to make sure that you understand something that's so foundational and essential to our uh what it means to be a Christ follower, what it means to be a Christian, to be a believer. And that is that if you are a Christian, if you have put your trust in Jesus, you are sent. If we are a Jesus follower, if we are a believer in Christ, we are sent. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, Matthew 28, 19 and 20, Alex actually quoted this last week, is Jesus' words to the disciples shortly before he ascends to go back to heaven. And it says there, he says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. What's the first word? Go. So he tells his disciples, hey, I want you to go. Not stay, wait, hang out. Although we know in Acts he did say, make sure you wait for the Holy Spirit to do this, but he's giving them a command to go. It's not, uh, some people might say that this is um, they call this the great commission. Uh, and we know that this is not the great suggestion, right? It's a great commission. We should go, right? But he says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. Again, Jesus is saying, you need to go. You have this truth, this gospel, you know who I am, you know what I've done for you to save humanity, to reconcile people to God. Now you go and you make disciples. No, he doesn't say, notice he doesn't say go make converts, right? He doesn't say just make converts. He says, go make disciples. That's significant. We're going to come back to that. But he says, go make disciples of all nations, all people, all over the world. Ponte ethne, every tribe, every tongue, every language group, every skin color, every race, right? He's saying, go make disciples of all people. And he says you need to baptize them in the Trinity, and you need to teach them to obey all I've commanded you. You need to teach them to obey the gospel. All right? So this is what Jesus tells his disciples. And we can imply that if that's what he told his disciples to do when he left, that what? That's what we should be doing. We should be doing the same thing. We can take that, that's transferred to us. That we are the Christians who are on the planet today. The disciples no longer live, they're no longer around. They're in heaven with God. But we're here and we have this command to go and make disciples. The second verse that I want to show you really quickly from John chapter 20, again, Jesus with his disciples. Uh, he's just revealed himself to them in a resurrected body. They're a little freaked out, they're a little fearful, and he says, Peace to you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. Right? So he sang to his disciples, the Father sent me. Jesus had a mission. What was his mission? In the words of the in the gospels, we see it was to seek and to save that which was lost. That's what Jesus came to do. Jesus came to redeem mankind by living a sinless life, by dying on a cruel cross, and then being resurrected from the grave. He came to seek and to save the lost. And we are here today because he came to seek and to save the lost. We're here today because he came as a rescuer, on a rescue mission. And now he says, the Father has sent me, so I what? I send you. If you are a Christ follower, if you're a Christian, you're sent. Now, what we can glean from that is that this idea of senteness is what we mean when we say you're a missionary. You have a mission and you're sent on mission. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I grew up in church. I was a church brat, so uh I joke about the fact that I was hearing sermons nine months before I was born in my mom's womb. All right? That's that's kind of my life. I was around that. And when I heard the word missionary, I instantly thought of people who wear really strange clothes, they're culturally out of touch, and they come to our summer camp and they tell us about their stories about what they're doing in Tanzania and what they're doing over in other countries. That's that's what I thought a missionary was. Every time I heard the word missionary, it's like, oh, yeah, it's those strange people that come and tell summer camp what they do in those other places. But that's not what the word missionary means. That's not what it is. In fact, if you're a believer, if you're a Jesus follower, you're a missionary. You might be a bad one, but you are a missionary, okay? We all are missionaries. We all have a job to go and to take the gospel and make disciples to all of all nations. Are you with me? So I want to make sure that that's clear because as we look at Paul and Barnabas, we're learning from them how to actually live this sent life. How to live on mission, how to live as an effective missionary and not as a bad one. Alright? So that being said, um, and I realize that some of us in this room, like we've never heard that in church before. We've really kind of had this mindset of, well, we'll send some missionaries out. We support some missionaries, we give money to the church so that they send the missionaries. We are all missionaries. Can we just say that? We're all missionaries. We're there, okay? So that's why we're trying to learn how to live on this mission. So in this first section, did you notice a few things about Paul and Barnabas in Iconium? First, they go to a synagogue where people are already seeking, they're interested, they're learning about God. They're looking into the the Old Testament text in the synagogue, and clearly there were some Greeks that were there, some people who were searching as well. They're spiritually open. So, where do Paul and Barnabas start? They start with people who are spiritually open. They're looking for people who are asking questions about God, seeking God. And what do they do? They go there and they preach about Jesus. They go there and they talk about the gospel. And it says that when they start to teach about the gospel, that a number of people come to faith. That's awesome. Okay, they go there and they see a number of people get saved. They find salvation in Christ. But verse 2 tells us that the Jews who refused to believe stirred up and poisoned the minds of the Gentiles. It's a pretty strong way to say that. They poisoned the mind of the Gentiles against the brothers, Paul and Barnabas, and against the other people who were coming to faith. So they faced opposition. Now there is sometimes this myth that if I follow Jesus, my life gets easier. Right? That if I'm a Christian, then everything gets easier. More peace, more comfort, right? But if you know anything about the Bible and the stories of those who follow Jesus and those who even before Jesus comes on the scene follow God, you know that following God, following Jesus does not always equal easy. Right? I mean, in fact, I've got friends who have chosen to uproot their lives, move overseas, and do the most amazing thing to sacrificially give and go live on missions some other place to tell people who've never heard the gospel, the gospel, and their lives are hard. We've got a family we support here in this church that they moved to China. They don't know Chinese, they don't know Mandarin. They've moved over there, they're having to learn a new language, they're culturally like fish out of water. Uh they they they are learning what it looks like. It's hard. They feel isolated. Relationally, it's very difficult for them. So don't tell me that if you follow Jesus, your life gets easier or simpler. Sometimes it gets harder, but you get to see the goodness of God in ways you've never seen him before. You get to see the grace and the mercy and the power of God poured out in ways. Isn't it funny that we love the stories other people tell? But we just don't want their journey. Right? We don't want their hardship, but we love it when they say, hey, look at what God's done in my life. But behind those stories, what? It's hard stuff. But if you follow God, he may lead you into some hard stuff, but he will reveal himself in ways you've never even began to imagine. Because this Christian life is not boring. It's not boring, it's not dull, it's hard, it's difficult, but it's good. It's really, really good. It's really, really good. And so these guys, they face opposition. And I love how it says that this happens where these Jews who they they stir up this opposition, and go, what does it say? The next verse. So they stayed there for some time. Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I face opposition, I'm like, okay, great. See you later. Moving on. Right? Uh let's go find some place where it's easier. Let's go find some place where it's safer. Let's find a place where it's more comfortable. I don't think I want to deal with that opposition. Now, I want to make sure that I'm clear here because I think biblically we need to have the full counsel of scripture. Clearly, Paul and Barnabas are walking with God. And instead of running in this moment, they listen to God, and God says, stay. And I said a while ago, when you think about missionaries, sometimes you think about those people who get sent overseas, you get sent, you know, to a different place. Did you know that sometimes the most faith-filled thing you can do as a missionary is stay. Stay. Press in. Now, this looks a different lot of different ways. Sometimes it means staying put in your neighborhood. I mean, my family and I just moved. It was hard for us. We just moved out of our neighborhood a couple miles down the road to a different neighborhood. We felt called. We prayed about it. God released us from that neighborhood. But if God had said stay, we would have stayed. And sometimes you need to stay, to be present, to be there, and to be a faithful gospel witness in the places God's called us. Sometimes staying means that when you face a kind of a wall, a barrier with somebody, and they seem to be resistant to Jesus, resistant to the gospel. Sometimes that's an opportunity to press in and find out why. Sometimes that animosity, that anger, that frustration that they're venting on you because they they hear you talking about Jesus, and all they're thinking about is all the religious junk that they've dealt with, all the woundedness they've had from spiritual leaders or from other Christians. And so they can't get past that. And so in that moment, they may be spewing anger and venom or just like shut down. And what you can do is you can ask good questions and you can listen. That's what we can do. And sometimes in that opposition, we can actually press in and we can see God do something significant. So what does Paul and Barnabas do? They stay there for some time, and what? They speak boldly in reliance on the Lord who testified to the message of his grace by granting that signs and wonders be performed through them. So, as I said a while ago, if you speak the gospel, if you talk about Jesus, you will experience opposition. It's part of the deal. Because we have a real enemy, and we have a lot of people, especially in our culture, who don't want to hear the gospel, who don't want to hear that they are uh without God, they are under judgment, and that they need salvation. Or there's a lot of people who would just rather say, I want to save myself. I just want to be a good person, I want to do my thing, my way. But sometimes opposition comes from irreligious people. Sometimes opposition comes from, it says that the Greeks, there were some Greeks that were stirred up to opposition. Uh they didn't believe the message of the gospel. They believed in a lot of gods, they didn't believe that. And so therefore, uh they were unwilling to receive the good news about Jesus, right? They were in opposition to Paul and Barnabas. But also notice that some of the opposition comes from religious people. And sometimes religious people are in opposition to the gospel because they would rather have a works-based system. They would rather have a system that's based on what we can do instead of what Christ has done. Uh, in fact, I've seen this happen. There are some church leaders in our world today. They would rather have people follow them than follow Jesus. And so when you start preaching Jesus, they actually rise up against that and they're like, be quiet. Hush. These people are following me. You might think that that's not true. I'll tell you right now, we've been in places like in Mexico, in the Yucatan, and there are church leaders that when we go down there to share the gospel message, they don't want us there. Because they would rather have their own version of Christian faith and have people following them. And so sometimes religious people can be can be the opposition that you face, but sometimes it's irreligious people. Regardless, God will can lead us and will lead us to rely on Him so that we can become resilient in the face of opposition. You see, reliance on God will lead to resilience in our in our sharing of the gospel. I know that for some of you in here, you've been a Christian in a long time, and you have tried to share the gospel with some family members. You've tried to tell people in your family about Jesus. And they've shut you down, they've shut you out, they've closed that door. And my encouragement to you is do not stop praying. Do not stop looking for opportunities to love them, to serve them, to speak truth to them. Do not stop. Be resilient. Rely on the Lord. That's how you rely on him as you seek him in prayer and you say, God, would you change their hearts? Uh some of you guys know this, but my I've shared maybe before my mom, her father was not a believer. And she prayed for almost 30 years for his salvation. Almost 30 years, he prayed. And we as kids, we would join her in that prayer. And after it was like right around 28, 29 years, he came to faith in Christ. And I can tell you right now, it was an awesome day. It was an awesome day when we found out that after 28, 29 years of praying, he finally crossed the line of faith. That was resilient. That just praying, seeking God, relying on God. But notice that Paul and Barnabas in this story, they speak boldly in reliance on the Lord, who testified the message. God shows up. When we are reliant on the Lord, we get supernatural help. When we rely on God, we rely on his goodness, we rely on his power, we get to see God show up, like I said a while ago, in ways that we may never see him. So notice what happens at that point that uh these guys who've rise who've risen up against them, they basically say we're gonna stone you. So Paul and Barnabas, then they do leave. And they go where? They go to uh Lystra. It's the next town that we're gonna look at. So if you have your Bibles, go back and read the next section. It says this in Lystra, a man without strength in his feet, lame from birth, who had never walked, sat and heard Paul speaking. After observing him closely and seeing that he had faith to be healed, Paul said in a loud voice, Stand upright on your feet. And he jumped up and he started to walk around. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in Lyconian language, The gods have come down to us in the form of men. And they started to call Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the main speaker. Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at just outside the town, brought oxen and garlands to the gates. He with the crowds intended to offer sacrifice. The apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their robes when they heard this, and they rushed into the crowd, shouting, Men, why are you doing these things? We are men also, with the same nature as you, and we are proclaiming the good news to you that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to go their own way, although he did not leave himself without a witness, since he did what is good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and satisfying your hearts with food and happiness. What is he saying there? He's saying that God's goodness as seen through through nature and creation is declaring that he is God and He's good. That's why Romans 1 would say the same thing, that people are without excuse because they can see what's going on in nature. God provides. Even though they said these things, they barely stop the crowds from sacrificing to them. I'm going to stop there. What we see in Paul and Barnabas in Lystra is we see bold humility. Can you imagine? Paul's there, he's preaching, he sees this guy who's lame, and this guy has not been able to walk since birth. And Paul just says, brother, stand up and walk. And the guy stands up and walks. Anybody ever had that happen to you? No? You know, it's amazing to me how when you are walking with God and you are following God, I'm not saying that if you uh I'm not saying that if you have really good quiet times in the morning that you can walk around to your workplace and heal people. Okay, I'm not saying that. But I'm saying when you walk with God, you have great boldness in what God can do. You have great confidence in what God can do. And Paul here, he literally sees this man and he says, buddy, get up and walk, and the guy does it. Healings did not stop with Jesus. Paul he gets to heal this man, and this guy stands up and he starts to walk. And I love where it even in verse 10 it says, Paul says this in a loud voice. Paul is bold. He is bold, bold. Bold to share the gospel and to call out to this guy and to say, You are healed. Now, in our lives, the question is, is are we bold? One of the things is if we're learning this from Paul and them, are we bold? Are we bold to believe that God can do miracles? Are we bold to believe that God can change the hardest of hearts? The greatest miracle is salvation. Not just walking, but salvation. That's the greatest miracle. Are we bold to believe that God can do that? Are we bold enough and confident in God enough to believe that God can change the worst circumstances, the hardest circumstances, the most difficult person that God can change them? Had some friends, I told you, that have been on mission, different missionaries, different places, and they were in Afghanistan as missionaries for a while. Hard, hard place. Can you imagine? It got to the point where literally they had to have a detail, military detail, take them everywhere they went. The Americans' leadership there would not let them just go out in public because they were afraid they're going to get killed. And so they would follow them around, they would kind of help escort them around. But they were determined to share the gospel. Where does that kind of tenacity and boldness come from? It comes from a confidence in God through personally spending time with Him, the Spirit of God in them, saying, You are, I am with you, and wherever you go, I will be with you, I am for you, and you can go with my power and my strength, you can go with my courage. Now, what's interesting when you look at the book of Acts is that these apostles, these guys who at first were like very fearful, because we know that when Jesus was crucified, what did they do? They all ran away. They were hiding, they were scared out of their minds, they went and ran and hid. Those are the same guys that are now like standing in the streets preaching through the book of Acts, and regardless of whether they're going to get stoned, thrown in prison, all those things. But you know what they keep praying for? Boldness. If you notice in the text throughout the book of Acts, if you've ever read the book of Acts, that says they prayed for boldness. If they prayed for boldness, I can guarantee you Nick Shock needs to pray for boldness. Bold to be so that I will be bold when I go to that coffee shop and I'm engaging with people there, and God prompts me and says, You need to ask this guy what he believes about me. And I'm like, God, I'm I'm scared. I don't want to offend the guy. I don't want this guy to be like, you know, like think I'm weird. I mean, I know I am, but I don't want to think I'm weird. Listen, I need boldness, and boldness comes through the Spirit of God. Paul has boldness in this situation. And then not only that, but once this guy's healed, they want to turn him into what? They want to make him out to be gods. They want to sacrifice to them. And so they say Paul is Hermes, and they say that Barnabas is Zeus, and they and this even the priest comes out. But notice what they do. They said in verse 15, Men, why are you doing these things? We are men also, with the same nature as you, and we are proclaiming the good news to you. What am I saying? And we see even in that Paul and Barnabas's humility. Like they could have just played that up. They could have just let it happen, right? They could have been like Star Wars when the when the Ewoks make them into these little gods and start worshiping him, right? But instead, I was just for to kind of make sure you guys are awake. Um, but instead, they say, we're not gods, we're just people. Guys, I hope you know this, but as a pastor in this room, this is probably pretty obvious, but I'm just a human being. And I need Jesus like you need Jesus. And I need salvation like you need salvation. I need God to rescue my heart every day like you need God to rescue your heart every day. And you know what? One of the greatest ways we can impact others who don't know Christ is to be humble. We acknowledge with our the people that we deal with that are unbelievers that we interact with on a daily basis, we acknowledge that we are broken and that we need Christ to rescue us just like they do. We're not better than them. And I love just that that Paul and Barnabas, again, they could have totally played this up, but they didn't. They said, we are just men like you. They literally ripped their clothing. Now, just for the sake of time, we're gonna move on here, but at the end of this, I've got to read this to you because it's pretty humorous. Even though it probably wasn't humorous for Paul and Barnabas. Verse 19, it says this. Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium. And when they had won over the crowds and stoned Paul, they dragged him out of the city, thinking he was dead. We're not talking about they threw some pebbles at him. Okay, they threw like some massive stones. The goal was to kill the guy. So they dragged him out of the city after they stoned him, thinking he was dead. Now notice the next phrase. After the disciples surrounded him, he got up and went into the next town. I love this stuff. I mean, seriously, like the disciples surround him, he gets up and he goes to the next town. Like, hey, that was good. Thanks for stoning me, guys. Let's move on. I mean, literally, we don't get a lot of detail here, but it's pretty humorous. God was with Paul. God was with him. Listen, the gospel mission is unstoppable. God will accomplish his work with our lives. We don't have to fear death. God will let us know when it's time to go be with him. Paul's stoned for crying out loud, should have been dead, and he's not. He gets up and he just goes on to the next town to keep preaching Jesus. And we know he had a lot more ministry after this. By the way, he was shipwrecked later on. He was beaten 39 lashes multiple times. I mean, this guy went through a lot of stuff. God will decide when our days on this earth are done. So we don't have to be afraid. Boldness. Boldness. Boldness comes from being with God, being confident in who he is. Humility comes with being God, being with God and knowing who he is. When we see God rightly and we see ourselves honestly, we will be both bold and confident and we will be humble at the same time. Because we know who our God is and we know who we are in light of who God is. Third place he goes. This one's fast. You ready? Here's what it says about Derby. Well, first, the last half of that verse. The next day he left with Barnabas for Derby. After they had evangelized that town and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra. That's all we get. What do they do? They went there and they evangelized and they made many disciples. Now earlier I said this, whenever Jesus gave his command, he said, go and make disciples. And so that's exactly what Paul Barnabas do. They go there, they share the gospel, and they make disciples. We don't have near enough time to unpack fully what it means to disciple people, but what we know for sure is if you're going to disciple people, you have to tell them the gospel, teach them the gospel, and you got to help them live it out. That's what it means to follow Jesus at a very foundational level. You've got to know the gospel, that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, and then live that out. That we live out our lives every day, knowing that our worth, our identity, our value, our salvation does not come from any other source except for the person of Jesus. I don't get it from being a good husband. I don't get it from being a good dad. I don't get it from being a hard worker. I don't get it from going to church. I get it from Jesus Christ. That's where my identity, my value, my salvation lie is in Jesus, the person and work of Jesus. That changes everything in my life when I believe that, right? When I believe that that's who God is. And so it says that Paul and Barnabas, they go there, they evangelize, meaning they proclaim the gospel, and they make many disciples. And they return to Lystra. And by the way, what's interesting is they go back to Lystra where he just got stoned. I don't anybody else want to go back there after they stone you and take you outside the city? I don't think that would be me. But it says that they went back there, they went to Iconium, and they went to Antioch. And what do they do there? They strengthen the believers, they strengthen the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and telling them it is necessary to pass through many troubles on our way into the kingdom of God. There's your reminder again that if you follow Jesus, it might get harder. In fact, it probably will be get harder. And Paul's encouraging them with that. And it says this in verse 23 when they had appointed elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Now I just want to really quickly hit this, but I want you to know that the church, God's redeemed and sent people, just like Barnabas and Paul, our focus should be on making disciples. That's what we should be focused on. That's what Point Community Church should be focused on today and every day. And this is not just for the pastors or the elders to do the discipling. This is for everyone to participate in the discipling. It means that we should all be sharing the gospel. It means we should all be teaching others how to follow Jesus and obey the gospel. It means that we should all be joining the work and going out into our workplaces and living out the gospel. And when disciples are made, new churches are established. I don't know if you're new to church planting or that even that phrase church planting, if you stick around here at point for a while, you'll hear us talk about church planting. I want you to know that we believe firmly that if we are focused on making disciples, that new churches will be planted. New churches will be established because that's just a byproduct. When you make disciples, you get churches. Now, here's the deal. When you plant churches or start churches, you don't always get disciples. Culturally speaking, you might know this to be true. Some people start churches and all they do is just take members from other churches to their church. And then they just like have a new gathering, a new expression of the church. And that's fine and all. But here's the deal: the goal of the church should not be just to swap members, to transfer people around. The goal should be to help people who don't know Jesus come to know Jesus. That's why we plant churches, to make new disciples. And at Point Community Church, we're very involved in church planting. We're going to continue to be involved in church planting. And our hope and our prayer is that God would maybe even raise some of you up to actually go out with our church plants one day. Now, some of you just got a lump in your throat and not in your stomach, right? But to go out and help us establish new churches, but to do that for the sake of making disciples. Because that's the ultimate mission, is to make disciples. Help people follow Jesus, to know him and to follow him. Because when disciples are made, churches are established. And when churches are established, more disciples are made. So maybe you're thinking to yourself this morning, I came to church, I needed some encouragement. Feel a little bit overwhelmed by this. Yes, so what? This is great and all. We're on this road trip with Paul. Yes, so what? Maybe that's where you are. Let me just give you a couple of practical applications. First off, if you are a believer, if you're a follower of Jesus, and I don't know who in this room is and isn't, I've got ideas, but I don't know. I don't know where your heart is. I don't know how many of you have actually put your trust in God, in Christ for your salvation. But if you are a believer, if you're a follower of Jesus, you're called to participate. You're invited to participate. You are sent, like we said on the front end. Christianity is not a spectator sport, right? It's not something where you come sit in the stand and say, Man, let's let a few people do all the mission. Let's let them do all the work. That's not the way it works. We're all called and invited to participate in the mission. In fact, think about it. You guys are in places that I can't be. I've said this before. As a pastor, uh, there are limitations sometimes, or there's barriers sometimes that you don't have. Like we just moved into our new neighborhood, and uh we haven't talked to all of our neighbors yet, but one of the questions I know will come up is they'll say, Well, what do you do? And the moment I say, Well, I'm a pastor of a church, it's like, mew. And I see kind of like this, right? Like yesterday, my neighbor next door, he's outside and he's got a beer in his hand, and I walk up and he's like, Okay. You guys probably don't have to deal with that. I do. Because they assume that just because I'm a pastor, I'm anti-beer, right? Now, there's all these stereotypes and stipulation. What I'm saying to you is that you have an opportunity to impact people in the workplaces, in the neighborhoods, in the environments that you're in every day. And I believe that the church is not just the church when we're gathered, but the church when we're scattered. When we're scattered in everyday life into those places, God's put you in natural situations to rub shoulders with and interact with people who don't believe the gospel. And my prayer is that God would raise up a community of people who are at point that are unafraid, unashamed, that are bold and humble, who would share the gospel message, who would be looking for, daily, looking for opportunities to point people to Christ. Through our actions, yes, but through our words too, because the gospel is a message that has to be proclaimed. It has to be. Romans says it this way, how can they believe in a message, a gospel they have not heard? I'm not just talking about seen, but heard. That's where the that's where the anxiety kind of rises up within us sometimes, right? That means I have to actually tell somebody to believe something. Well, listen, here's the deal. We don't save people. So it's not on our shoulders, it's on God's. But we do get to proclaim the good news. We get to proclaim the message, and we trust God with the results of that. So we don't participate in this mission to earn our salvation. We participate because we have salvation. We don't participate in this mission so that God will give us more salvation. We have that. We have everything we need in Christ. Now we get to participate because we have experienced life in Christ. At point, our hope is to collectively make disciples together. And one of the practical ways you can do that, obviously, is getting involved on a ministry team. Being involved and invested with discipling children, discipling others who come. Maybe some of us as a husband or wife, we need to work at discipling our spouse, maybe discipling our kids. It doesn't mean that you have to be that you're like more valuable than them to disciple them. It means you're being intentional about helping them grow in the grace of God. And you you can do that in all different types of ways by pointing them to the person of Jesus and trusting him more, following him more faithfully, seeing him rightly so that we can respond appropriately to who he is. Some of you need to start discipling friends, discipling co-workers, discipling friendly uh uh family. Listen, God invites us to participate. But here's what I also know to be true. Some of you are not believers in Jesus, some of you are not followers of Jesus. And I want to do exactly what Paul did and Barnabas did when they went to these different communities. I want to make sure that you have a clear understanding of the gospel. My hope is to make certain that you don't walk out of this room unclear about what the gospel is. You see, at a very baseline level, the Bible is one big picture story that shows us this: that God creates everything perfectly. He gives one rule, that man rejects that rule, rebels against God, and sins. And in that moment, the world broke, and the perfection that was there was no longer there, and God had to punish sin. He couldn't ignore it, right? He steps in, he curses the world, and everything in the world is now broken. It's messed up. And that's why we see suffering, that's why we see shootings like we see, and the violence and the things that have gone on this week, those are all indicators of a messed up world, a broken world. But here's the beautiful thing: God didn't leave the mess and walk away. He stepped into the mess. Jesus came out of heaven from his throne into the mess, and he loved and he redeemed by what? By dying on a cross for our sin, purchasing for himself a people who would receive this gift called salvation by faith, right? To believe we can't earn our way to God, we can't fix this problem, we can't break through this issue that's there now, but by faith, we can put our trust in Jesus and we can have salvation. Not by works, not by going to church, not by sharing the gospel, not by giving money to God, not by helping the poor, not by doing anything that this that's a works based, but by putting our trust in Jesus and what he did on the cross for our sin, we can have eternal life. That's what the scripture teaches us. In fact, Romans says it this way everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you've never called on the name of the Lord, if you've never put your trust in Jesus, you're not saved. But you can be saved today, is what the scripture would say. And so my encouragement to you is that you would know that Jesus Christ and his sacrifice is enough to save you. That you would know the gospel and you would experience the gift that it is that you can't earn. Scripture says we deserve death, but God has given us life. So as we think about Paul and these three places, Paul and Barnabas, we think about Paul having resilience in the face of it because he knew God was in control. He knew God was in charge, he was listening to God, he had boldness and humility. And he also did the work that he was supposed to. He focused on making disciples, which ultimately meant that there were many churches established and more people got to know Jesus. And we're here today because of the work that went on by those early guys. Let's pray and thank God for that. Father, thank you so much for the people in this room. Uh I know that there are believers in this room who it's time. It's time for them to start investing uh in your work, being involved. Uh, God, for some, it might be as simple as uh just coming and talking to one of the church leaders here and saying, How can I serve? God, for some, it might be that you've been prompting them for a while to do something, to serve uh in the community, to serve in the world. Maybe, maybe, just maybe, there's somebody sitting in this room who might feel called to literally move to a new location to be on mission there. I don't know. But to whatever degree, we know that what you've asked us to do is to obey, to follow you, to go, to go into all the world and make disciples. And so I pray, God, that you would just help every person in this room find, if they're a believer, to find their role in this story, to find the place where they can invest in the lives of others, where they can serve like you came to serve, Jesus. Uh, I pray also for those who might be in this room who have yet to receive the gift of salvation. I pray that today they might receive by faith. I pray that they would know that you love them. And that because you loved us, you came to us in the form of a human being, Jesus. You came, you humbled yourself, and you died on a cross, you paid the price, the penalty for our sin. Thank you, Jesus, for that. And I pray that you would help those in this room who've never again received that gift of salvation, forgiveness, restoration, that they would receive it by faith today. Praise in your name. Amen.