From Closed Doors To Open Hearts: How God Blesses A Church On Mission

If you were in the state of Mississippi today, chances are you might see a billboard with Scripture on it. Chances are you might see a billboard along a major highway with this written in large print: "Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these. Mark 12:31."

"Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these. Mark 12:31."

Now, if you were to see that sign in the state of Mississippi, you might think that it’s a charity organization now asking for donations. It’s not. It’s an advertisement for the state of California as a sanctuary state for abortion.

Now listen, church: Our Savior has given us a message of good news! Anyone can be freed from guilt and shame, have their sins forgiven, and be given a brand new start, and spend eternity in heaven, if they will only turn from trying to be good enough for God and instead trust in Christ for salvation.

That’s a better message, right? A message of life in the midst of a culture increasingly bowing to the altar of death? Do we believe in that message? If we do, then why is it so hard for our church and many other churches to look outside our walls and take the gospel to the lost people in our community?

The title of the sermon today is From Closed Doors To Open Hearts: How God Blesses A Church On Mission. May God bless the preaching of His word.

Are we ready? Let’s go. Here’s today’s takeaway.

[SLIDE: TAKEAWAY]

Today’s takeaway:

If we will open our hearts toward the lost in our community who are different from us, God will bless our church with the kind of growth that we need.

Notice with me, first, the church resistant. The church resistant — resistant to missions.

#1: The Church Resistant

Where do we see the church resistant? Well, we open up in Jerusalem. Cornelius and his family have been saved, born again. It was the first Gentile conversion - the first time that someone outside the circle of Jewish Christians had turned to the Lord. It was incredible. And most importantly, it’s what Jesus promised would happen and it’s what Jesus commanded us to do: Remember this? Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.””

But you and I both know that when something good happens, when God seems to be working powerfully, someone is going to step up and become an obstacle. And that’s what we see in verses 1-2 of chapters 11. “Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party — you remember them, these are the Jewish Christians who are not happy with Gentiles being saved — “the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them” (Acts 11:1-3 ESV).

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because Gentiles were seen as unclean. Eating with them was saying, “I accept you as you are.” They’re saying, “Look, you can’t accept Gentiles as they are. Gentiles can become Christians and that’s great, but they still need to be circumcised and all of that jazz, and they are not acceptable until they do that.” In other words, they believed that a non-Jew could become a Christian only if they became Jewish first.

How is it possible that these guys are reacting like this? People are coming to faith in Christ by the hundreds and thousands. It’s the dawn of the new covenant. Old barriers to fellowship with God and each other are being broken down just like the Berlin Wall. The Jews have been the geographic people of God, but now all nations are being invited to come into relationship with God.

And this is not a fluke. It wasn’t unexpected. God said all along this would happen. It was always part of his plan, even going back to the beginning. When God called Abraham, do you remember what he said? He promised Abraham, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…in you all the families of the earth” — not just the Israelites — “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This is the blessing. Gentiles are coming to faith. This is what was always foretold and anticipated, and now it’s the men of faith, the religious leaders, church leaders in Jerusalem are standing in the way. Sadly, this is often the case.

[SLIDE: WILLIAM CAREY IMAGE]

When the great era of international missions began around 1800, they began with a young Baptist preacher in England named William Carey.

Carey studied the Bible and became convinced that missions is not just optional for the church, it’s not just one option among many ministries that a church could be involved in; Carey came to believe it was the primary responsibility of the church to engage in missions. He got this from the words of Jesus, what we have called the Great Commission: “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” (Matt. 28:18-19 ESV).

But not everyone was convinced. One night at a Baptist association meeting Carey stood up and made this case for missions being the primary job of the church. And what did he receive from his fellow? Encouragement? Inspiration? Promises of support? No. He was rebuked. “Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.” Carey eventually went to India and began the missions movement. But he did it in spite of those men, not because of them. [Tucker, From Jerusalem To Iryan Jaya, p123]

Maybe it would be helpful at this point to put the focus on us rather than on them. Why do we resist missions involvement?

[SLIDE: 5 REASONS WE RESIST]

5 reasons we resist missions:

Unresolved negative feelings about the lost

Fear of how we will have to change personally

Fear that we will be used and spent

Fear that we will give “hand-outs”

We don’t know how to do it

Did Jesus have anything to say about self-preservation? He did. “If anyone would come after me,” Jesus warned, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The Christian life is a life of self-denial, self-forgetfulness — not self-preservation. What is the end goal of self-preservation? “For whoever would save his life will lose it,” Jesus promised., “but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25 ESV).

How did Peter address this resistance to missions at the Jerusalem church? He simply recounted what God had done. He told of how Cornelius — a Gentile -- and everyone present trusted in Christ and received forgiveness of sins.

This was his reasoning: “If then God had given the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17 ESV). The men could not argue with the logic, so it says they fell silent. And the glorified God. They worshiped God, gave praise to God: “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18 ESV).

And so the process begins: closed hearts opening; hardened hearts softening.

[TODAY’S TAKEAWAY]

Today’s takeaway:

If we will open our hearts toward the lost in our community who are different from us, God will bless our church with the kind of growth that we need.

That’s the church resistant. Notice with me the process: from closed doors to open hearts.

#2: The Church Resistant: From Closed Doors To Open Hearts

The church in Jerusalem shows us a church resistant to missions but maybe on its way toward embracing missions. But the church at Antioch shows us a church with open hearts toward the Gentiles.

Where do we see that? Look with me at verse 19: “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.” Salvation was for the Jews. Jesus was the Savior of the Jews. This made sense.

But others understood that Jesus had come not just for the Jews but for Gentiles too. And so in verse 20 we read: “But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also” — those are non-Jews, people who spoke Greek — and what is their message? A message of salvation for good people? A message of salvation by good works? No, they were “preaching the Lord Jesus” — preaching that Jesus of Nazareth lived a sinless life and then died in our place and now has risen and is reigning with God from heaven and who will come again to judge the living and the dead but for now everyone who will look to Him for salvation will find forgiveness of sins and eternal life. They’re preaching this message to the Greeks.

And the Greeks, these non-Jews, are responding massively. Look at verse 21: “And the hand of the Lord” — the hand of the Lord represents His power, His might, and here I love this because here God is pictured as bringing all of His power to bear in softening the hearts of men and women and giving them faith and repentance. It means God is mighty to save! Say Amen if you believe God is mighty to save!

“And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21 ESV).

This is a big deal. This is exactly what Jesus had both commanded them to do and promised them they would do. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8 ESV).

When I first started seminary, I applied for a job at UPS in Raleigh. I soon discovered how UPS does business. I was surprised to find out at the training that most package drivers deliver, on average, 400 packages every day. One driver, 400 packages, every day.

How do they do that? Micromanaging. The company literally scripts every move the drivers make. When they stop out of their truck to make a delivery, it’s right foot first. They carry packages under their left arm, not the right. They want their delivery guys to walk at a pace of three feet per second. They want them to hold their keys with teeth up, keys hung around the third finger.

Every driver is timed on each of these aspects of his movement — and as you might expect, every driver is evaluated on all of these aspects of it. If you’re too slow, you’ll get a visit from a clipboard-holding supervisor asking you how they can help you improve yourself.

UPS has done this with the help of about 3,000 industrial engineers who have come up with this super fast and efficient plan for how to get the most out of their drivers for every second of every minute of every hour of the day. [Larson, p303]

[SLIDE: LEGALISM KILLS MISSIONS]

LEGALISM KILLS MISSIONS!

It works for UPS. Problem is, a lot of Christians try to live the Christian life like the UPS package driver and Jesus becomes the guy with the clipboard — who likes you and really wants this to work out for you, but he’s just not sure if you’re cut out for it and he may fire you at any minute. In the workplace it causes employees to become discouraged. For churches, seeing God this way makes us afraid try new things for fear of failure. And we already have enough fear of failure when it comes to missions and evangelism. Legalism kills missions. Keep that in mind.

When the church at Jerusalem hears about what’s going on in Antioch with the Greeks getting saved, they dispatch this guy named Barnabas. So Barnabas goes to Antioch and what does he find? Verses 22-23: “The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.” And here’s what I want you to see: “When he came and saw” — what does it say? — “the grace of God, he was glad.”

Now, how in the world do you see the grace of God? People are coming from backgrounds of sin and idolatry and they’re turning to Jesus and they’re finding acceptance and love and forgiveness, and they’re being changed — that is the saving grace of God made visible.

This is in keeping with Barnabas’ nature. Do you know what Barnabas’ name means? It means “son of encouragement.” Barnabas was a man who was gifted at encouraging people. And surprise, surprise - that’s what he’s doing here. Verse 23: “When he saw the grace of God, he was glad” — encouragers are some of the happiest, most joyful people in the church — “he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.”

[SLIDE: WHAT IS ENCOURAGEMENT?]

What is biblical encouragement?

It is continuous (“he was encouraging them”)

It is specific (“to remain faithful”)

It is biblical (“to the Lord”)

Oh, to be a man like Barnabas. I want to be that kind of man, that kind of pastor. We need more men who are encouragers like Barnabas. Men, why are we so hesitant to give encouragement to people? Think about that this week.

How does God use encouragement in the church to grow His people? We’ll look at that in a minute. For now, look back with me to verse 17. There’s one phrase there I want you to notice. “If then God gave the same gift” — that’s the Holy Spirit, poured out on the Gentiles as a response to their faith — “If then God gave the same gift to them” — that is, the the non-Jews at Antioch — and now notice this — “If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I” — here it is — “who was I to stand in God’s way?”

[SLIDE: ACTS 11:17]

Acts 11:17 ISV

Now if God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, who was I to try to stop God?”

I like how one translation puts this. This is from the ISV, the International Standard Version. “Now if God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, who was I to try to stop God?”

[SLIDE: STANDING IN GOD’S WAY]

Standing in God’s way? (Ac 11:17)

To resist missions is to say that we are wiser than God

To resist missions is to say that we have a better plan for the church than God

To resist missions is to resist God

To resist missions is to “stand in God’s way”

That’s a serious thing, isn’t it? To try to stop God? To stand in his way? To hinder His purposes? Have you ever considered that when we are resistant to the mission God has given us to reach our community for Him, we are standing between God and lost human beings?

Let’s be an encouraging church. Let’s a be a church on mission. Let’s shun closed doors in favor of open hearts.

[SLIDE: TODAY’S TAKEAWAY]

Today’s takeaway:

If we will open our hearts toward the lost in our community who are different from us, God will bless our church with the kind of growth that we need.

Look with me, lastly, how God blesses a church on mission.

#3: The Church On Mission: Joy, Encouragement, Growth, Legacy

If we will open our hearts toward the lost in our community who are different from us, God will bless our church with the kind of growth that we need.

What kind of growth does God give?

[SLIDE: GOD GIVES JOY]

Result #1: God gives joy

“When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.”

Acts 11:23

And the joy that God gave to Barnabas overflowed into the church. Are we a joyful church? I think we are. I think most of us genuinely enjoy being here. Many of us, I think, see Sunday morning as the high point of the week. That’s good. May God give us more joy. The world around us desperately needs us to be joyful; they need us to be a non-anxious presence in the midst of an increasingly unstable world.

[SLIDE: GOD GIVES ENCOURAGEMENT]

Result #2: God gives encouragement

“When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.”

Acts 11:23

A church that doesn’t encourage will become a legalistic church. A church that doesn’t encourage thinks this way: “You don’t get praise for doing your job.” Or they think like this: “You don’t want to tell that person she’s doing well or growing because then she might get complacent, it might go to her head.”

Sure, all of those things may happen. But you know what might also happen? Those you encourage might finally be able to break out of a performance mentality. Why? Because to encourage someone is to show them grace, to be a channel of grace from the God of grace to the person who needs it.

[SLIDE: GOD GIVES GROWTH]

Result #3: God gives growth

“And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.”

“A great many people were added to the Lord.”

Acts 11:21,25

We have this thing in churches where if there’s a lot of people and the numbers are growing, God must be in it. A crowd is not necessarily a good thing. If you don’t believe this, all you have to do is spend about 30 seconds watching part of a Joel Osteen sermon. How many people come to hear him there at Lakewood Church? Thousands upon thousands. Then we think the opposite is true too; if the crowds are diminishing and people are leaving, God must have turned his back on the ministry. That’s not biblical.

Numbers alone do not justify or validate any Christian gathering. In America, and in the West, Europe, Christianity is declining. In the majority world, like South America and Africa and Asia, Christianity is exploding. Crowds are everywhere. But you know what else is everywhere? The prosperity gospel.

Those movements of God in the majority world are high on numbers and short on depth; they’re a mile wide and inch deep, as the saying goes. It’s wonderful what God is doing there. But God cares just as much about their discipleship as He does about their conversion. Movements of God must be carefully shepherded and stewarded with correct, biblical doctrine, if we want people to not only become Christians but persevere as Christians. True growth, the kind of growth you want, NT church growth, the kind of growth God desires to give us — it is spiritual growth first, then numerical.

[SLIDE: GOD GIVES LEGACY]

Result #4: God gives a legacy

“And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”

Acts 11:26b

Luke tells us that Barnabas is so excited about what’s going on at Antioch that he wants to bring Paul to help shepherd that movement.

Never underestimate, church — never underestimate the power of a good, Christ-centered, Bible teaching ministry in the local church. It’s no coincidence that Barnabas and Paul were together with the church in Antioch for a year, teaching many people, verse 26 says. It’s no coincidence that the very next thing we read in verse 26 is that it was here, at Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians.

They didn’t call themselves Christians. That was a name given to them by others. I really found this interesting this week, maybe you will too. What is the primary name we use to identify ourselves with as disciples of Jesus today? Christians.

But that name was not a name that the early Christians would ever have chosen for themselves. It was given to them. Why? Because In the name Christian, of course, is the word Christ. Christ is a word that basically means Messiah. Christians would never have called themselves Christians then because it would have been basically been for us to call ourselves little Messiahs. Christians worship the Savior; we’ve never wanted to be called saviors.

So who called the early disciples Christians? Probably Gentiles. And it probably wasn’t a positive nickname, either. But isn’t that just like God? To take a name given to His people by Gentiles and redeem it and use it down through the centuries? That’s a legacy.

Church family, there are a number of things that church growth experts say we can do to double our membership in six months. I don’t buy that really, because any explosive growth often tends to not last. People leave just as soon and quickly as they came.

Do you want to know what is the best way to grow a church? The best we we can grow our church and have a legacy here in Shelby is for us to continue becoming a church where people’s lives are changed because they have met Jesus here, and to become known for being a place where people’s lives are changed. When that happens, people just come and come; it’s a cycle — the more people come, they are changed, they invite their friends who come and they’re changed, and the cycle repeats itself. That is the best way to grow a church.

Having a legacy for being that kind of church is how we are going to grow. And we do it as we open our hearts to the lost in our community.

But it wasn’t just the nickname that Christians were given

Antioch was an important Roman city, second in size only to Rome and Alexandria at 500,000. It was multi-cultural, home to Greeks, Romans, Semitics, Arabs and Persians. It was hedonistic. Like many cities today, it was a place where people went to satisfy their craving for pleasure and fun.

And yet, it was at Antioch that the believers were first given the name that will forever identify us with Jesus Christ. Antioch would later become a strong center of Christian worship, scholarship, and activity — “the mother-church of gentile Christianity”. No city is a lost cause!

Today’s takeaway:

If we will open our hearts toward the lost in our community who are different from us, God will bless our church with the kind of growth that we need.

Conclusion and call for response

In 1912, when the Titanic sank, there were so many tragic things about that event.

Perhaps the most scandalous of all of this is the fact that the people in the lifeboats refused to go back and help the people swimming in the water. They feared that the people would overwhelm the boats and no one would survive. They may have a point. Still, here’s the fact: the people in the lifeboats chose self-preservation over the attempt at saving the lives of people drowning in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Self-preservation didn’t only have the lifeboats in its grip; it has a lot of churches in its grip. People are drowning in their sin, unable or unwilling to save themselves, not even knowing that they’re drowning. We’re called to go to them. We shouldn’t expect them to come to us. They’re lost. Why would lost people want to come to church? They’re lost and drowning,. and we don’t go to them because of our fear of how things will change here if they come. You see the parallel? Self-preservation. [Evans]

Here’s another way to think about it:

We talk about the reunion we’ll have in heaven with our loved ones. But what about those people we’ve led to the Lord and who are there because we were obedient?

Here’s one more way.

How many of you remember the left behind series? Left Behind - Jesus has come and raptured his church. Some are left behind and it’s too late.

What if it turns out that it’s possible for us to be left behind in a different way? God is on the move; He is breaking down barriers and walls, softening hearts, giving repentance and eternal life to everyone who will call upon Him. That’s what He is up to in the world.

He wants us to go with Him. He’s given us His word, His Spirit, His people. What a tragedy it would be for us to get left behind as He marches on? He is not dependent on us. He is mighty to save. And He will have a people for himself from every tribe, nation, language, and tongue - with or without us. And if we keep our hearts closed, a time may come when the Lord may close our doors. Let’s be a church with open hearts rather than closed doors, and may God make our work effective for the saving of many in our city and community.

Related Media

Related Sermons