Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

What attracts most of your attention in the world today?

What news headlines are you most likely to click?

How closely are you watching the latest fed decision or stock market data?

How much do you really know about what’s happening in Russia or Ukraine?

Has the rising cost of everything put you in a financial pinch?

Are you most concerned about healthcare, social and cultural decline, the price of gas, or the next political election?

Or maybe your interests often help you escape reality.

How much time did you spend last week watching mindless TV or movies?

How much do you know about the recent celebrity courtroom drama, centered on Johnny Depp and Amber Heard?

How much time have you devoted to the latest Twitter controversy or to simply scrolling through Facebook or Instagram?

How many hours did you waste in the last several days on some game you played on your phone or your Xbox or your PlayStation?

Don’t lie, these devices keep records, you know!

If you’re like me, then you might be easily distracted by the urgent, by the inconvenient, and by the useless-but-interesting.

We aren’t all attracted by the same distractions and we don’t all have the same interests, but we are all sinners… prone to be consumed by those things that keep our attention focused on this world and on selfish interests.

Our passage today will, Lord willing, challenge us to set our minds on something that may seem far less interesting at first than any of the topics I’ve mentioned.

But, after an honest assessment and a little basic introspection, I pray that our passage today will beckon us to give ourselves more to the sorts of interests and activities which the worldly people around us reject as unimportant and out of step with modern culture.

Our passage picks up in the middle of a story already in motion.

If you were here when we studied through the last chapter and a half of Acts, you might recall that Paul and Barnabas had been sent on a missionary journey from a church in Antioch of Syria (Acts 13:1-3).

After preaching the gospel, they’d been kicked out of a different Antioch (in Pisidia) by the leaders of that town, they’d barely escaped a murderous plot in Iconium, and then Paul was finally stoned to death in Lystra (or at least the mob thought they’d killed him).

And after all of this, Paul and Barnabas had simply carried on with their missionary task of preaching the gospel – they just went on to the next town, to Derbe.

That’s a quick summary of Acts 13:1 to 14:20, and that leads us into our passage today, which recounts the final stage of Paul’s first missionary journey and his return home.

Let’s stand together as I read from Acts 14:21-28.

Scripture Reading

Acts 14:21–28 (ESV)

21 When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia.

25 And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, 26 and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.

27 And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.

28 And they remained no little time with the disciples.

Main Idea:

The mission of the local church is bigger than any one church, it often seems slow and mundane, and Christians should expect to persevere in it through much hardship.

Sermon

1. Strengthening Disciples (v21-22)

Verse 21 says that Paul and Barnabas “preached the gospel” in Derbe, and they “made many disciples” there.

This was the same thing they’d been doing in the other towns they’d visited, but Luke doesn’t tell us hardly anything about what happened in Derbe.

Instead, Luke turns our attention to a couple of important details about the conclusion of the missionary task and the journey back home… After they’d “preached the gospel” in Derbe and “made many disciples,” they “returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch” (v21).

Now, I wish we had time this morning to consider together the discussion that Paul and Barnabas (and any other traveling companions) must have had about such a travel plan.

“So, let me get this straight… You want to go back through the towns where the people live who just formed a mob and thought they’d murdered you?” Just imagine that conversation!

But, Luke doesn’t tell us anything about that, and we have a lot to cover, so we’re going to have to just press on.

In v22, Luke does tell us what Paul and Barnabas did in each one of those towns as they traveled back home.

They “strengthen[ed] the souls of the disciples, encouraging [or “exhorting” (KJV)] them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations [or “persecutions” (NET) or “hardships” (NIV)] we must enter the kingdom of God” (v22).

I want to note here two important points.

One, “strengthening… the disciples” as an essential feature of the Great Commission.

And two, the interplay between “tribulation” and “encouragement… to continue” as a basic expectation for Christian living.

First, the essential activity of “strengthening… the disciples” in the overarching task of participating in the Great Commission.

The book of Acts is essentially the story of how the first disciples of Jesus Christ understood and obeyed the Great Commission.

We’ve already noted the similarities between Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8… In both places, Jesus commissioned His disciples to bear witness to the gospel, calling sinners to repentance and faith.

But, in Matthew 28, we read the expanded version of the commission, which includes “baptizing” new converts into fellowship with the existing disciples and also “teaching” all followers of Jesus how to live in obedience to Him (Matt.

28:19-20).

Up to this point in the book of Acts, the gospel had been proclaimed in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and now Paul and Barnabas were taking it to the ends of the earth (exactly as Jesus had commissioned His disciples to do; see Acts 1:8).

Believers had been “baptized” and “added” to local churches (Acts 2:41, 47; 11:21-24), the number of “disciples” had “multiplied” (Acts 6:7, 9:31), and the church in Antioch had enough resource (including both teachers/leaders and finances) to “send off” Paul and Barnabas (two of their best teachers/leaders) as Christian missionaries to the Gentile world beyond Antioch (Acts 13:1-3).

But is evangelism and conversion… increasing the number of baptisms and church members… Is that the end or ambition of missionary work?

In other words, is the Great Commission only or even primarily about counting heads?

Some of you already know that the Evangelical movement in America over the last 150 years or so has seemingly become far more interested in numbers and far less interested in churches and souls.

The Southern Baptist Convention is a perfect example of such an emphasis, and each year that I’ve attended the annual meeting of the SBC I’ve heard missionary and church evangelism reports that sound just like a corporate marketing department rattling off the stats from the last fiscal year.

In the earliest days of the Southern Baptist Convention this was not so, but it didn’t take long before the national convention of cooperating Baptist churches became a massive numbers report.

At the second national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, which met in Charleston, SC, during the last weekend of May of 1849 (almost exactly 173 years ago), a few missionaries offered a report on their efforts among the people near Monrovia (the capital city of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa).

They wrote,

“The church here… is moving onward, and is in a peaceable state at present, but like others she has had wars without and fightings within.

Her present number is 44, besides two candidates for baptism.

They have not as yet any permanent house for worship… The male members are 21 in number, including the old and decrepit ones; [and they] have made an effort to build, but I fear they will not be able to complete it for sometime.

Brother Day has authorized me to pay towards it $100, but I wish the amount could be a little increased, so that I might have the house built speedily, as our present one is too small and incommodious…”[1]

Just 26 years later, at the annual meeting in 1875, the “Missionary Labor For The Year” was recorded,

“During the year, 51 Missionary Agents, have been under appointment… the result of whose labors is as follows: Weeks of labor performed, 1,810; Sermons and addresses made, 4,682; Religious visits to families, 5,679; Prayer and other Meetings attended, 2,363; Miles traveled in performance of labor, 78,170… Total Baptisms, 1,045… Pages of religious tracts distributed, 25,755… Number of Churches and Stations supplied by the Missionaries, 204.”[2]

As the years passed, the Southern Baptist Convention has only become more of a statistics-reporting and numbers-centered cooperative.

In the SBC report from 1900, the annual meeting included percentages (a 25% increase here and a 50% increase there).

In the report from 1926, a new local Baptist association in Mexico was said to have employed a professional Evangelist, who had testified to 67 professions of faith in just the month of December.

In 1950, the Home Mission Board reported that the SBC missionary efforts had resulted in 1 million baptisms since its beginning, in 1845.

And (25 years later), in 1975, the Home Mission Board celebrated another “fruitful year in evangelism.”

They reported, “For the fourth straight year the total number of baptisms exceeded 400,000.”[3]

Brothers and sisters, I believe this sort of numbers-focused success measurement is like a virus that destroys ordinary evangelism, church planting, and discipleship.

Statistics-based measurements on the back end provoke commercial and pragmatic methods on the front end.

This has taught generations of Evangelicals to think of evangelism as a program, of discipleship as separate from conversion, of missionaries and pastors as professional Christians, and of the ordinary means of grace as too slow and outdated.

Many of us can attest to counting lots of heads over the years (i.e., baptisms, church members, decisions for Jesus), but now some of us wonder, “Where in the world are the souls of those heads we once counted?”

Paul and Barnabas weren’t interested in merely counting heads.

They returned to the towns where they’d been at work, and they “strengthen[ed] the souls of the disciples” (v22).

And this same sort of “strengthening” or “establishing” or “firming up” of “disciples” and “churches” is a constant refrain in the book of Acts.

After the Jerusalem council (which we will study next Sunday, Lord willing), two messengers carried an important letter back to Antioch, and when they delivered it, they “encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words” (Acts 15:30-32).

On Paul’s second missionary journey, he made a point to “return and visit the brothers in every city where [he had] proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are” (Acts 15:36).

And, Luke says that when Paul went through those cities, he “strengthen[ed] the churches” (Acts 15:41, 16:5).

And on Paul’s third missionary journey, he did exactly the same, going “from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples” (Acts 18:23).

Brothers and sisters, the missionary task (our task, as modern-day participants in the Great Commission) is not to simply track conversion statistics or church membership numbers or baptisms.

We are to make great efforts to call sinners to repentance and faith, we are to celebrate the conversion of sinners and baptize new converts into our fellowship (or rejoice that they’ve joined another good church), and we are also to take great care in “strengthening” or “establishing” or “firming up” those sinners who have become fellow disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Minter house, we don’t simply count to make sure that we have 4 or more people at the dinner table.

We look around to see if Micah and Malachi are there.

So should it be among the church.

We aren’t after a numerical increase so much as we are aiming to see sinners converted and to edify our brothers and sisters in Christ.

That’s why we have a slow and invasive membership process… That’s why we urge church members to have more meaningful relationships with one another… That’s why we have been minimizing our church schedule and teaching every church member to embrace a more natural and everyday practice of evangelism.

These and many more practices are motivated by a love for fellow disciples and by a desire to see disciples strengthened… not merely counted on the annual church profile.

Second (my 2nd subpoint under the first main point), there is an apparent interplay between “tribulation” and “encouragement… to continue” throughout the New Testament, and I believe we should expect both in our everyday Christian living.

In v22, Luke says that Paul and Barnabas “encourage[ed] them [i.e., the disciples] to continue in the faith,” and they said that it is “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Remember that these Christians were living in towns that had just exercised overt hostility against Paul and Barnabas.

Christianity had no political protections, and there is no reason to think that Christians didn’t endure all kinds of religious, social, and economic affliction.

And what was the apostolic word of encouragement? “Tribulation is to be expected, but you hang in there… continue trusting and following Christ.”

This sort of talk is common throughout the New Testament.

Paul says in Romans 12, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation [or “affliction” or “distress”], be constant in prayer… Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Rom.

12:12, 14).

Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation.

But take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn.

16:33).

And when the Apostle John began his prophetic letter to “the seven churches… in Asia,” he introduced himself as “your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus” (Rev.

1:4, 9).

Notice also in those verses I’ve just cited the connection between tribulation or affliction or distress and the call to endure.