Acts 11:19-12:24 - Joys and Struggles
Sermon by Pastor Brent Kompelien
June 16, 2024
INTRO
Happy Father’s Day! It is so important that we esteem what it means to be a godly man who honors Christ in word and deed. We have so many in this church who are fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, and father-figures. You have great influence and can lead others to know and love Jesus Christ.
Here’s my admonition on this Father’s Day: Take your faith seriously, be a man of prayer, step up and model self-giving love and leadership, and let others see what strength and gentleness look like, what godly courage and godly meekness look like, and how you can be a servant-leader in your home and at work and in our community.
This is not the easy path, but it is the better path. There will be joys and struggles, but men listen to me: Your perseverance in walking with Jesus day-by-day will inspire others to follow your example.
And since it is Father’s Day and since we’ve been studying the book of Acts, let me inspire you a story about a man of God who is arguably the most influential global missionary of all time: Hudson Taylor. (SLIDE 2)
Taylor was born on May 21, 1832, in Yorkshire, England. He was the son of a pharmacist and Methodist lay minister, and yet he found that he was languishing as a teenager, not really taking his faith seriously nor knowing what to do with his life.
Then in 1849, at the age of 17, a missionary to Baghdad named Edward Cronin was visiting Yorkshire, and as he shared stories about his missions work, Hudson became enthralled with global missions.
Cronin gave him a book called China: Its State and Prospects. Hudson devoured this book and the Lord put a burden on his heart: He would commit his life to be a missionary to China.
He began studying Mandarin. He went to medical school. He took an internship at a hospital in a poor neighborhood nearby his hometown in Yorkshire. He experimented with open-air preaching and handed out gospel tracts. In every way, he dedicated his life to preparing to be a missionary.
In 1853, at the age of 21, Taylor made his first mission trip to China. The journey by sailing ship from Liverpool took over 5 months!
He didn’t know it, but as soon as he landed, Taylor found himself thrown into a brutal civil war. Even in the face of violence and unrest, he made 18 preaching tours around Shanghai and provided medical care to hundreds of people. But he found that people didn’t want to listen to him because he looked and sounded so different. So Taylor did something no other missionary was doing at the time: He adopted the local Chinese clothing and shaved his head and grew a cue (a long ponytail). (SLIDE 3) His willingness to immerse himself in the local culture and customs won him an audience with the people and opened the door for them to hear the gospel.
In 1858 he married Maria Jane Dyer, the orphaned daughter of a missionary family in Malaysia. After serving together for two more years, Hudson and Maria headed back to England for respite.
While back in England, Taylor laid the groundwork for a new missionary society that he called China Inland Mission. (SLIDE 4) In 1865 he founded this new endeavor.
The original mission statement of China Inland Mission: (SLIDE 5) “The China Inland Mission was formed under a deep sense of China's pressing need, and with an earnest desire, constrained by the love of CHRIST and the hope of His coming, to obey His command to preach the Gospel to every creature. Its aim is, with the help of GOD, to bring the Chinese to a saving knowledge of the love of GOD in CHRIST, using itinerant and localized work throughout the whole of the interior of China.”
Taylor went on to serve for more than 50 years in China (SLIDE 6), traveling to China 11 times by boat, 5 months each way! His dedication and self-giving love for the people of China made an exponential impact.
Here are some numbers to help you understand the incredible fruitfulness of CIM:
Just during Taylor’s lifetime in the late 1800s, CIM was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to China who established 300 mission stations in all 18 provinces and started 125 schools to serve thousands of Chinese children and share the gospel with them, resulting in over 20,000 Chinese coming at faith in Christ.
Today CIM is now called “Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF)” and they have been sending missionaries for over 150 years. They now have 1,400 missionaries from over 40 nations serving around the world.
(SLIDE 7, title) Yet, Taylor’s work in China came with incredible difficulties:
He and Maria lost multiple children in infancy due to illness and malnutrition.
In 1868 their mission house was attacked, looted, and burned to the ground during the Yangzhou Riot.
Maria contracted Cholera and died in 1870, leaving Hudson deeply depressed and shaken.
After re-marrying, Hudson and his wife Jane gave birth to still-born twins in 1873.
The next year Hudson was almost paralyzed after he fell from a riverboat in China.
He endured the loss of one of his adult children, the only surviving child of his first wife Maria.
And in 1900 the Boxer Rebellion in China resulted in 79 China Inland Mission workers and their children being tragically killed and having their homes and property burned to the ground.
Yet through all of this tragedy and suffering, Hudson Taylor never turned away from the call to reach the people of China. In part because of his leadership and the great sacrifices of the missionaries of China Inland Mission, there are now more than 44 million Chinese Christians today (that’s just the official count by the Chinese government! There are likely millions more!).
At the age of 73, Taylor made his last 5 month voyage across the oceans to China. He died shortly after while serving the Chinese people and he was buried by CIM missionaries who wrote this on his tombstone: “A Man In Christ”.
PROP — I need you to hear this today: The work of the Kingdom of God comes with joys and struggles. It is not the easy path, but it is the path that glorifies God and points others to the salvation that only comes through Jesus Christ.
Open with me to Acts 11:19-12:24. We are going to read a passage that describes the joys and struggles of the early church as the gospel begins to spread “to the ends of the earth” in fulfillment of Acts 1:8.
ORG SENT — We are going to see two parts to this passage: First, we will learn about the positive example of the church in Antioch (11:19-30). Second, we will see growing persecution of the church and the miraculous deliverance of Peter from prison (12:1-24). Let’s read our passage. READ Acts 11:19-12:24.
MAIN 1 — Church in Antioch (11:19-30). (SLIDE 8)
This opening section shows the first example of a Gentile mission and the establishment of a Gentile church. Remember last week, we talked about how Peter had “unlocked” the inclusion of all peoples and nations into the family of God by obeying the Lord’s command to go to Cornelius’ house to share the gospel with this Gentile Roman soldier.
Here Luke tells us about some missionaries who went to Antioch to tell the goods news about Jesus the Messiah to the Greeks.
Where is Antioch? (SLIDE 9) This map shows the location of Antioch, which was approximately 300 miles north of Jerusalem. Underlined you’ll see the places where the missionaries came from in verse 20 of our text, Cyprus and Cyrene.
As you look at this, I want you get a sense of the criss-crossing of missionaries and mission locations that is already happening at the very start of the church in the 1st century.
Our text tells us that there were believers from Jerusalem fanning out around the region reaching the Jewish people. Now there are Hellenistic Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene going to other locations around the Roman world like Antioch.
APPLY: The same has been happening for 2000 years. We sometimes think about missions as “the West to the rest” or we think that America is the only place sending missionaries. This isn’t true. There are actually missionaries being sent from Africa to serve in overseas missions HERE in the United States. Other Christians around the world are starting to see pockets of America as unreached peoples!
Let me tell you a little more about Antioch. (SLIDE 10) This was the 3rd largest city in the Roman Empire in the 1st century with over 600,000 residents (SLIDE 11). It was a strategic location for Christian missionaries because of it was (SLIDE 12) highly influential throughout the region.
It is a HUGE deal for the gospel to take root in Antioch. Just listen again to the amazing things that happened there:
Verse 21 — “The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.”
Verses 23-24 — “When [Barnabas] arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts…and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.”
Verse 26 — “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.”
Luke gives the honor to the believers in Antioch of being the first ones to be called “Christians.” (SLIDE 13) This is a Greek city! These are Gentiles and peoples in a global city from all kinds of nationalities and backgrounds, and they are the first ones to take the name of the Jewish Messiah! This is monumental!
And they model how a healthy church responds to practical needs (SLIDE 14). Just look again at verses 27-30. There was going to be a famine in the Roman world, and so the text says this in verses 29-30: READ vv. 29-30.
These new believers in Antioch did everything they could to help people 300 miles away that they didn’t even know! I don’t know about you, but this puts joy in my heart.
It reminds me of the same self-giving love and care that we saw exemplified in Hudson Taylor’s life. But this kind of joy-filled spread of the gospel doesn’t come without it challenges.
MAIN 2 — Persecution and Deliverance (12:1-24). (SLIDE 15)
As we now see an example of increasing persecution, I want you to remember who is the main character of the book of Acts: God! Even through hardship and suffering, this story shows that he in in complete control.
Here’s how this story unfolds:
We are introduced to a new character: Herod. (SLIDE 16) This is Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great. He had consolidated control of the region around Jerusalem and was now like a dictator over the people of Judea.
This is likely around the year 42 or 43, about 10 years after Jesus’ ascension. The Christian movement was spreading, and Herod felt that his control over the region was threatened. So he began to seek out the leaders of this movement.
The text says that he executed James (SLIDE 17), the brother of John, one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus and a key leader in the Jerusalem church. You can imagine how this would have rattled the early believers.
And then he finds Peter, the leaders of the Apostles, and arrests him (SLIDE 18). What happens next is an incredible account of God’s miraculous protection and deliverance.
I want to simply point out one critical feature of this story that is repeated twice and tells us about one of the most important tasks of every church. Right when things look most grim, when we aren’t sure if Peter is going to be executed, when it seems like evil is going to win, we see this: READ v. 5.
They prayed (SLIDE 19). Prayer is lifeline. Prayer is imperative. Prayer is the central task of the church. And we see over and over in the Scriptures that desperate times drive the people of God to prayer.
ILLUST — Many of you know I’m headed to do an immersive study tour of the Reformation in Geneva next week. I was invited to go with a group of 10 other pastors from the Twin Cities and each of us were assigned a study topic to present during the trip. My topic is prayer.
I’ve been preparing for this by reading some prayers of John Calvin and studying what he wrote about prayer. Calvin says that there are at least three reasons why we must pray: (SLIDE 20)
That we may learn to seek, love, and serve God.
That we can be honest about our needs and pour out our hearts before him.
That we would remember our dependence on God.
This is what the early church in Jerusalem did. They were driven to prayer because they were desperate, and in this they learned to tune their hearts to God’s heart. They were reminded that God is in control. They poured out their hearts to him.
We’ve seen over and over in the book of Acts that God is in control, and that his purposes always prevail, and that you can’t stop the advance of the gospel. And Calvin says that if we believe in God’s goodness and his sovereignty, yet we don’t pray, that would be like being told of a treasure and leaving it buried in the ground.
What we see in this story is an example of faithful prayer in the midst of dire circumstances. And God does his work in his way, showing that no one, not even Herod, can stand in the way of the spread of the gospel. (SLIDE 21, blank)
Result: Peter is delivered from prison. My favorite part of the story is verse 7. READ v. 7.
If you know Peter, he is a little dense sometimes. He’s a bit brash and sometimes a little unaware. The text says that he obeyed the angel, but he thought he was having a vision. Only when he sees the gates opening miraculously and then he smells the fresh air of the open street does he realize that this is real!
And he goes to the house where the believers are gathered together. And what do you think they are doing? Praying! They were holding an all-night prayer vigil!
When Peter knocks on the door, I just love what happens next. A servant girl named Rhoda says, “Who is it?” And when Peter replied and she heard his voice, she was so excited that she ran off to tell the others, but she forgot to open the door to let him in!
So Peter kept on knocking, and they finally let him in and embraced him! He told them the whole story.
In the backdrop of this whole account is a battle between the people of God who are advancing the gospel, and those who want to stand in their way like Herod Agrippa. This is not the first time, nor is the last time we will see this struggle unfold.
You see, it is very purposeful that this text ends with the downfall of Herod. The last paragraph describes how Herod’s pride resulted in his death. He was praised by the people of Tyre and Sidon as a god, and he took this opportunity to glorify himself. And he was struck dead on the spot.
But in the backdrop of this is the account of James’ death, as he is executed by Herod because he stood firm in his belief that there is no other God but the Living God manifest in the person of Jesus Christ.
APPLY — You see, one of the common things we see in Acts, and we saw in the story of Hudson Taylor, is that following Jesus is a life-long battle that includes both joy and struggle.
Friends, I’m convinced that we often don’t have a very good theology of suffering. We want all the good times, we want to be comfortable, we feel like we are entitled to the easy life! But the Scriptures portray a very different picture of what it means to be faithful to Jesus Christ.
Here’s what I need you to know:
The same battle that is going on in this passage is going on today. Following Jesus may involve hardships, it may mean that Satan comes after you to try to discourage you or destroy your life, it may mean that you aren’t popular with your friends, or that you lose out on business opportunities because of your Christian values.
But the same faithfulness we see in this passage in the Christians in Antioch and in Jerusalem stones through in the church today:
In the face of difficulty, we can sacrifice and serve one another like the church in Antioch that provided food for people 300 miles away they had never met.
In the face of violence or persecution, we can remain steadfast like James, even to the point of death, because we have an eternal hope in the new heavens and new earth.
In the face of desperate circumstances, we can grow in prayerful dependence on God, crying out to him daily for the things that weigh heavy on our hearts, even if we aren’t sure what to say or how to pray.
KEY: In each of these ways and more, we know God will be faithful. He will provide. He will protect us. He will hear our cries and listen to our prayers. He loves us and will never leave us nor forsake us.
Be encouraged friends! No matter what you’re facing today, or what lies ahead tomorrow, you can walk by faith and trust in God’s goodness and loving care. Like Hudson Taylor, may we reach the end of the race and have others say: Here was “A Woman In Christ” or “A Man In Christ”.