[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: There was a farmer that was working out in his field baling hay. And when he was doing that, one of the hay bales rolled off of the back of the machine and landed on top of him. And so that man that was the hired hand with him was pushing, trying to rock it back and forth in order to get it off of his friend. And the friend was caught underneath, couldn't say anything, couldn't move, could not even catch his breath. And so since he could not move this hay bale himself, he went and got a few buddies and they tried to help, and they still needed more people, so they went to this house nearby, and finally they had enough to push this hay bale off of this man. And so when the hay bale got off of him, he caught his breath. And the first thing he said was, thank you guys so much for helping me and getting this thing off of me. I don't know if I would have survived. And then the second thing, though is, you know, I know this was heavy on me, but all you had to do was to cut that little line and all the hay would have come undone and I would have walked away unharmed. You know, when I think about that hay bale and the weight of it, it makes me think a lot about missions. And it makes me think about the model that we have adopted here at Madison, that Antioch model. You and I have heard statements kind of like that. Hey there. That, you know, we're stronger together. And that is true. But what makes us strong is not just the fact that we're together. What makes us strong is who makes us strong. Jesus is that cord that holds us together. Cause just like that hay individually, it's not that heavy. It doesn't have that much weight, but it has to have something to keep it together. And so that's why today, as we talk about missions, this is not about us. But we also Understand that we have a very heavy, powerful message to share with the world, and it's Jesus that is the one that's binding it together. And so that was what the Antioch Church did is y'all. They were an incredibly diverse church. In fact, if you go to Acts 13, we already talked a little bit about it, and Barrett did an awesome job setting it up this morning. The church in Antioch was a really interesting place to establish one of the first churches. It would be like you went to the DMV or you walked into an elevator with, like, random people, and you're like, all right, guys, can I have your attention, please? And they're like, yeah, what's going on? All right. With this group of people, we want to start a church. Like, what? Who are you? Right? Like, that was what would have been the case here. See, what we know about Antioch is it was a very diverse, very cultural place. It was known as the Queen of the east, and here's why. Roads from the south, the north, the east, and the west, they all led there. There was people, there was Phoenicians, there was Arabs, there was Egyptians, there was Africans, there was Jews, there was Romans, all that made up this place. And on top of that, here's the religious background. It also had the nickname Abode of the Gods. And the reason why it was called Abode of the Gods is that there were several Greek statues and places of worship for, like, Zeus and Poseidon and Apollos. That's why I was telling you it's pretty incredible that this was the place that the Gospel spread. So you go back to Acts chapter 11, and what happens is Paul teams up with Barnabas and they decide to go to this place and to start a church. But what I love about this place and why I do love the fact that we've taken on this Antioch model is, I think, about even in our town, as we all know, that people are moving here at an alarming rate. People are coming here very quickly. The roads can't keep up. And that's a whole other subject, by the way. But we also can see that as an opportunity to get more people engaged and involved in the mission abroad. And here's what's neat, is that John Stott said this. He says, that church in Antioch, here's what they were doing. They were changing the world.
In fact, I think it's really neat that In Acts chapter 11, it says that the Christians were first called. The disciples were first called Christians. Where? In Antioch. Notice they didn't call themselves Christians. It says that the people in those communities were like, hey, they have been with Jesus. They have been with Christ. We're gonna give them this title. And it makes me think, like for me, and think about for us, that if people were to define you at school, if people were to define you at your job, would they say, man, that guy, that girl is definitely a Jesus follower, that they are obviously with him. And here's what's neat about them. It wasn't, yes, just the spiritual care, but what they did is the physical care. When they found out that the church in Jerusalem was suffering with a famine, they sent help. And then they used that to progress the gospel even more.
And so I wanted to highlight the church in Antioch this morning, because as we were talking with the missions committee, one of the goals that they had for us is as a church body, from all the way from our little kids all the way to the oldest of us, is to see that we all partner and we all play a role in our mission work. Because I don't know about you guys. When I was growing up, there were two Sundays and this is some self admittance that I would kind of check out. One of those is when one of the elders would get up and talk about adding shepherds to the church. And I remember even telling my dad one time, I was like, all right, I heard it's elders Sunday, so I'm just going to kind of not pay attention, you know, and do we have to go today? He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. And I remember when we had that conversation, he's like, listen, even though you don't think that has anything to do with you, buddy, it has a whole lot to do with you. And he was right. Those people are going to be your shepherds. But the other part is he said, you know, Andrew, I think you should and your sister should, even if you don't want to be in that role one day, seek the attributes that are listed there of being a shepherd. But then I think about the other day I would check out is when the missionary would get up in front of the church and talk. And I was like, well, what does this have to do with me? What I want us to see today, no matter what age, what stage of life you're in, it has a lot to do with you. And so here's how we can be involved. Number one, is to be like this church and partner. Now, when I highlighted the names here in Acts 13, that made this church, and by the way, this was their leadership. We all know Barnabas and We all know Saul, but let's think about these people. Simeon. If you look in the Latin, his name actually means dark or black. He was a guy that was from Africa. And a lot of people believe that he was the Simeon that when Jesus was carrying his cross, he walked up to Jesus and he said, hey, I got that. And he helped him carry it up the hill.
You see a guy like Manaen. Listen to this. It says he was a lifelong friend of Herod.
Now he's a leader in the church. Here's who that Herod was. This is the same Herod that beheaded John the Baptist.
Now he's leading the church.
The power of grace and the power of the gospel working in that area. So what happened was, is all these different people came together, and what were they doing? They were partnering.
We all can play a role in partnering in the gospel. And over the past year and a half, Lorianne and I and Cruz and I have had the opportunity with several families from Madison to go on two different mission trips. And I'll go ahead and tell you that one of the greatest highlights of that is seeing how our partnership that our shepherds and our mission committee have had the vision for, it's creating a partnership. I'll give you an example of this. So you can see on that mountain right there, that very mountain, by the way, a lot of our youth are gonna climb. They don't know it yet in a few months.
And I love things, but I don't like heights. But just smiling as you climb, you know? And so when we were walking up that, I wanted to stop. Not just to get a picture of the steepness of that area, but I want to zoom in on. I don't know if this. I always wanted to try this, see if it works. No, it doesn't. Okay, I won't do it then. I was trying to. The highlighter thing. But anyway, there's a rooftop, and on the rooftop, there is a woman there that is doing her laundry, and she's doing her dishes. And I shared this with you, but I didn't share this one part. Okay. If you remember, a few months ago, I shared with you guys that we were walking with one of the local church leaders. We were going door to door. We were saying, hey, can we pray with you? We would also love to invite you to worship tonight. And when we got up to this rooftop, this guy already had a relationship with this woman, knew her a little bit. And they started talking, and they're talking in Spanish, and the whole time, I'm like, You know, I don't know what's being said. Just doing the, you know, that kind of thing. And then he turns to me, and I don't know if y'all remember this. He turns to me and he said, andrew, she asked if you could read her some of the Word. And so I opened the Bible. And I don't know if y'all do this like I do. Sometimes I think something and then I say something different. And I thought in my head, John 10, that would be an encouragement. It talks about how Jesus is the door and then he's the shepherd. That would be encouraging to her. Out of my mouth, I said, John 4. And I turn there and I start reading, and then I just start the process. And I'm like, oh, no, this is not the one to pick. You know, she's. You know, think about the situation. She's a woman by herself on a rooftop with a thing of water. And now she's gonna think that I think she's the woman at the well, you know. So anyway, that was the situation.
And by the way, I want to highlight this because maybe you're considering an opportunity at your work, you're considering an opportunity at your school, you're considering an opportunity around the world. And I don't know about you guys, sometimes I put way too much on my shoulders that it's my perfect presentation or what I know or don't know. That's going to convince somebody.
It's insulting, by the way, and dangerous to think that we ever would be the answer to someone else's problem.
Jesus is the answer to whatever it is that people need. And so because of that, Jesus overcame my very poor decision.
And as I got done reading that scripture, she was crying and she told the missionary that was with us, hey, can you tell him I really needed to hear that. I feel a lot like that woman.
I've been looking to all these different things to try to find meaning in life. And I'll be at worship tonight. Again, that's a perfect example.
It's the power of God in that moment. So we're partnering with God. But I also want you to know this. You see the legs and the feet of that man that's standing there?
The place we were inviting her to was not even his church that he works at. He works at a church about 40 minutes down the road, yet he would show up and knock the doors of this other community and start praying with people.
Isn't that powerful to see what we could do as a church when we. Sometimes it's easy to think territorial. Let me tell you, the territory, wherever we walk, that's territory for the kingdom. And so our partnership plays a huge role in that. I love this picture. It says that this was put up in 2001. And a lot of, you know, Al Murray, who was the late husband of Ms. Pam Waller.
You've got Gus McKinney, Jack Gross, Jesse Tubbs, Keith Hester, Larry Lawson. And none of those men would like for me to call their names. But I thought it was so cool that the church that we walked into, that the Madison Church helped establish years ago, is not only just around now, it is thriving and it's the very church that our youth are going to get to go to this year.
It's awesome to think about that vision and that mentality of partnering.
A few weeks ago, Lorianne and I got back from Belgium and we had the opportunity to speak at something called CYC Europe. And you and I know about probably and Richard and Jordan organized so many great youth weekends. And there's like a buffet of choices if you want to go to a Bible camp or a ministry camp.
They're all over the world. Well, in Europe they're not. And so one of the missionaries we support, Kais and Arena, they had this vision of trying to bring camp and the opportunity to have worship together and encourage and evangelize the youth, which was about 12 years old through college. It started four years ago with about 20.
Each year it's grown. This past year they had 102 high school through college age students. We had no more room at the inn. We had to start bringing in food from the outside because the kitchen would not even hold the food that we were trying to make. And so they want to grow the camp. There's more kids that want to be a part of this. And so they reached out to our mission committee and said, hey, we found this place. We can't afford it right now, but we're going to pay back what we start to get. And so what happened was, is our mission committee already has set up the plans for next year for them to expand this camp. And here's what's neat about it, is a lot of them were inviting their friends and one of the guys that was there with us is a guy that I shared with some of our ministry staff that I've been messaging through WhatsApp that is a Muslim and he wants to know more about Jesus. So there's been a lot of opportunities through this camp. But what I love so much about it is that we are partnering with, giving them the opportunity to partner. Even if you go to your school, whether it's a public school or a private school, you have somebody there that believes in God.
The common theme of our discussion groups was them saying, I'm the only one.
Yet they got on trains, they got on ferries, they got on boats. There was one kid that was 14 years old, hopped on two different trains, went two countries in order to be at this place. And one of the things that he said is, this week is my fuel. We get to partner with that. And so as Christians, we have to remember that we are all called to leverage our resources to help with that. But the other part of it is this is I had at times this false mentality that what happens is like, mission work or the term missionary was for, like, the hero Christians, the religious elite. That what happens is you put on Christ, you give your life to him, and then later on, once you get more mature and you understand a bunch of stuff, then you're on mission. That is nowhere in Scripture. In fact, the example that we see in the Bible is the moment that you give your life to Christ and you come out of that water, you're a saved person with the Holy Spirit, you have a message to give. And as Craig talked about this morning, that even despite the flesh is weak, we have the Spirit to help us as we carry that message out. And so there is not two separate things. In fact, I used to say, well, that's just, you know, is that like a normal Christian thing? And one person stopped me and said this, Andrew, there's no such thing as a normal Christian. And so I put this in the next slide as like, a means to humor. That wrong thought I had is what happens when normal Christians, which there is no such thing. When normal Christians understand that they have a calling, the gospel begins to spread. But I also want to encourage you because you might be at a stage thinking, I need something obvious. I need, like one of those banners. I need a voice from heaven to say, andrew, go reach this person. We don't need a voice of anything when it's already been spelled out in scripture. God already told us what we should do. There's opportunities everywhere. But here's the second thing that I love about this church in Antioch is how important praise and worship was to their outreach. I love how Craig mentioned this morning that when we share in communion, the communion we take together is supposed to generate an outward mindset, too. It's an inward reflection, but an outward mindset. Because that word proclaim he says that when you share that bread and that communion, what you're also doing, you're getting ready to proclaim that message that we are on mission for Christ. It says this, that while they were worshiping the Lord, so it was through worship that helped them understand, hey, we got something bigger. I love so much how Brandon put such detail in our worship. Have y'all noticed how the songs fit, the scriptures fit, the prayers fit? That doesn't happen by accident. But you'll also notice that within all of our worship, there's a direction that our worship is supposed to go. Today's mission. But there's always something that, yes, it has to do with glorifying God, because that's why we're here. But it's also to transform us, but also to transform the way we see others.
When we were at CYC in Belgium, one of the neatest things to see was the spontaneous, unplanned, unscheduled worship that happened all throughout the weekend.
I remember getting the itinerary, and I was like, there's nowhere on here that it says, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing. But guess what? They were, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing.
And I would remember, like, the times where, you know, you're cleaning the mess hall, sweeping and mopping, they're singing. There's kids in there that are washing dishes. They're singing. At one time, there was three different songs happening in the exact same room at night. They were gathering around the fire. Nobody told them to. They were just singing one night, singing through the night. I was like, I gotta go to bed. Like, they were still going and still singing.
And one of the things that I told the early crowd was one of the guys said, is, for me, worship is my fuel.
I want us to think about that for just a second. Is that how we see worship?
That the worship that we get to be a part of is our fuel. It's our fuel to praise God, but it's also our fuel to see other people. And I told the early crowd this too, is that in that crowd, there's people from Ghana, there's people from England, there's people from Spain, there's people from Ukraine. And by the way, it hits different when all of a sudden you're singing a song, and then you see this really tall guy from Ukraine holding his shirt as tight as he can, and he's crying while he's singing a song, and you find out that his family's in Ukraine and his dad's fighting in a war.
You start to see the meaning and the power of where their worship is coming from. But I don't want that to be a secondary thing for us. It's the same thing here that our worship is supposed to be to God, but it's also to be personal, but also to reflect outward. And we have an opportunity in that. And that worship can become a seed that grows into that gospel message as we begin to bring it to the rest of the world. But notice what the text goes on to say.
It says, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, well, let's set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them. Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
We highlighted a few months ago when we did the spiritual disciplines class on fasting and prayer, the role that fasting and prayer have played all throughout scripture. We remember a time when Esther and Daniel had big time decisions. They prayed and they fasted. But even think about Jesus. The one who understood all things was the Father in an earthly form came down. Yet he chose before he began his mission and his ministry to what? To fast and to pray.
And I know we know more about prayer and it's something that we as a church have been highlighting. And I love what our church is doing tonight with our group prayer prayers.
But the other part of the fasting, really, I think it oftentimes gets misrepresented or misunderstood. Fasting at its core is just this dependence upon God in order to bring focus. That's all it is.
It's not depriving yourself because then that becomes self righteousness. What fasting is, is I'm going to. Instead of watching tv, instead of getting on my phone, or instead of eating this sweet that I eat or coffee I drink impulsively at 7, 10, 2 and 4, I'm gonna replace that with prayer and focus towards God. We see this as a pillar and here's why.
You see fasting and prayer always connected with missions. And the reason is missional people do not and cannot just run with their own ideas.
I don't know if you guys are like me. What gets me in trouble a lot in my life is I have a plan and I just do it. But I didn't do what Nehemiah did, where you spend time in prayer before you go share it.
They seek God, independent prayer and very focused fasting. And so how can we do this? Well, speaking of that one, what we're encouraging all of our people to do this coming Thursday is to partner together in a full day of prayer and fasting.
And I love what Jimmy mentioned at the early service this morning. He said in his prayer, God, I even want our kids to be mission minded people.
And so the plan is if you do have kids or if you don't, however you try to do this, we want the whole family to be involved, to spend a day in prayer for our mission work. We're going to send out a list of all of our missionaries and we want you to pick something if you want to. Maybe it's like me, I get on social media too much. And so what you'll do instead of getting on social media, you'll then spend that time in prayer for those people. The moment you're tempted to do that, to drink that coffee, you'll spend that time in prayer for our mission work. And so we want to encourage our whole church family to do this together. And so you're gonna be getting a list of all of our different mission works. You can pick how you wanna do it or whatever you wanna do that's between you and God. But the second thing is this was mentioned a to give that even when our kids give, part of the goal of that is to teach them even at a young age to understand they're part of something bigger. I love when that one kid gave his. You heard in the bucket like a boom that what he threw in there was his favorite Matchbox car. That was one of my favorite things that he decided to pick and to give a part of himself to something bigger. But the other thing is to encourage, you know, every other week, even this today, we have a local campus ministry that we're supporting and we appreciate Dalton and all he's doing. He's going to do a presentation this morning, if you hadn't gotten to hear it before. But he does a great job and is doing a great work. So go to those. But the other thing that we're doing, you noticed in the foyer that we have a table and a photo booth and there's these things called Polaroids. So I was explaining them to my kids and they were like, that is the, Is that new? I'm like, oh man. Like, this is the one thing that I have that my kids think is cool. But we're gonna take your picture and you're gonna write a note. And we've already designated several missionaries that we know that really need our encouragement, that they have a very difficult uphill climb, that we're gonna send them those pictures and those notes with a message about how the Madison family is praying for them.
You know, as we think about the invitation this morning, maybe for some of us, what it is is that we realize, you know, I have to be more missional minded, that I don't myself just want to be a spiritual consumer. I don't want my kids just to be spiritual consumers, yes, to consume some, but to be also a spiritual contributor, to think outside of myself. So maybe you're here this morning and you want to think outside of yourself more.
And so I encourage you to come forward. You can ask for prayers here because maybe it's the fact that you got someone at work, you have someone in your community, you're about to go share the gospel with somebody and share that you need prayers for that. We would love to pray for you maybe this morning. You don't want to walk in front of a lot of people. That's okay. Every single Sunday, at all the exits, we have our shepherds that are standing around those doors wanting to welcome you, to pray with you, and to pray for you about whatever it is that you need boldness in.
As we wrap up this morning in Acts 4, you might remember when Peter and John were told, stop talking about Jesus.
And do you remember what they did next?
They got together with all the Christians and what did they do?
They worshiped.
And what was so neat is right after their worship, you know what they asked for?
Boldness.
Where did boldness get them in the first place?
It got them in prison.
They're asking for the very thing that got them in prison. What was the catalyst of that? Their relationship with God.
So I want us to think about that as we leave this place this morning. Let our worship, let our songs, let our praise proclaim the message of Jesus Christ. So if you have a need this morning, we can pray for you, encourage you in any way come forward while we stand and sing.
