Let's turn to Acts chapter 14. We'll read the last section of that chapter, starting in verse 21. After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord or entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had believed. They passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atilia. From there, they sailed to Antioch, from which they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had accomplished. When they had arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all the things that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they spent a long time with the disciples. As we get to this section in the book of Acts, it's a milestone for a couple of reasons. First, it is the halfway point in the book of Acts. There are 28 chapters. We are concluding chapter 14. We're at the halfway point. But in terms of the history of Acts, it's also a milestone because it is the end of Paul's first missionary journey. Through the book of Acts, there will be three recorded missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. The first one is very dramatic in many ways. All of them are really dramatic, but this first one now comes to an end. And as we take a look at this passage, we find that Paul and Barnabas's missionary journey comes to an end, but it ends with them actually returning to the sending church that had sent them out all the way back in the first part of chapter 13. And as we see Paul concluding his missionary journey, we're going to see that there are a number of things in Paul's missionary labors that actually serve as good lessons, good principles for us in terms of our own understanding. And in fact, I would suggest that as you study Acts, and particularly Paul's method of ministry, What you find is he did things very differently than we do things. And I want to be Pauline. I want to follow the apostolic model. And so, as we take a look at Paul's ministry tonight, we're going to notice a number of things that are going to be correctives for us in our perspectives on evangelism and discipleship. We begin, first of all, with verse 21. The text tells us after they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples. The text actually, as Luke writes it, it is a fascinating thing that he says. He uses two participles in the first part of verse 21. And evangelizing and gospel preaching and disciple making. And he uses these two participles, and he uses them in a parallel way. And so the picture is, is that they go into the city, they're preaching the gospel, and as a result of preaching the gospel, they are making disciples. Right off the bat, there is a distinction in the apostolic method and what we usually think of today as evangelism and discipleship. We usually think of those as two different enterprises. Related, but two different enterprises. Evangelism is where we make the evangelistic effort to get somebody to pray the prayer, to get them into the kingdom, and then discipleship we usually call follow-up. And so we then are committed to discipling somebody after we've evangelized them. The apostolic pattern, the New Testament pattern, does not follow that at all. Gospel preaching is disciple making. By the way, this is simply consistent with the Great Commission itself. Jesus said, go into all the nations and make disciples. He didn't say go and get people to pray a prayer, get people to sign a card, get people to raise their hand. Go and make disciples. Evangelism is disciple making. Disciple making is evangelism. And so for the apostle, discipleship was not some second step in evangelism. It was the very goal of preaching the gospel. And so Paul goes and his gospel preaching is making disciples, and of course disciples, devoted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. I would also remind us that it was in Antioch, the other Antioch, at the end of Acts chapter 11, where it says, and in Antioch, The disciples were first called Christians. Again, from the biblical perspective, there is no distinction between a Christian and a disciple, or a disciple and a Christian. And thus, there's no distinction between evangelism and discipleship or discipleship and evangelism. Gospel preaching produces disciples, devoted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Discipleship is not only not some second step after evangelism, neither is it some higher tier of the Christian life. It is the Christian life. If you're not a disciple of the Lord Jesus, you're not a Christian. If you're not a disciple of the Lord Jesus, you simply are not right with God. And so here's the question. What kind of gospel preaching actually produced disciples? The simple answer, the gospel that Jesus preached. Some people have rightly pointed out that the demands of discipleship, if anyone's willing to come after me, let him pick up his cross, deny himself and follow me. Passages like that. If anyone's not willing to hate mother, father, sister, brother, yea, even his own life is not worthy to be my disciple. Many people have called those passages the great omission. We tend to neglect those kinds of passages, but yet as Jesus came and preached the gospel, I mean, we can assume that Jesus was actually preaching the gospel, right? I mean, if anybody was preaching the gospel, it was Jesus, and as Jesus preached the gospel, what did he preach? He preached the demands of discipleship. We have to assume that as the apostle went and preached the gospel, that he was preaching the gospel that Jesus preached, and so Paul was committed to a disciple-making gospel. The second part of verse 21, is quite remarkable. After they do this, they return to Lystra, Iconium, and to Antioch. Now, I would remind us that Paul is now backtracking, and he's backtracking to places where his picture is in the post offices. Alright? He's backtracking into places where he had caused riots and had been... I mean, stop and consider Lystra. Chapter 14 and verse 9, he was stoned and they left him for dead. He's going back to Lystra. Iconium, remember what happens in Iconium? Chapter 14 and verse 5, he received death threats and was ran out of town. As it were, Antioch, chapter 13 and verse 50, after creating a great stir and a riot and a persecution that rose up against them in Antioch, they shook the dust off of their feet and departed from that city. And so, you can imagine, during their afterglow meetings, Paul and Barnabas are sitting there with the other disciples, and they've had some really good fruit, And there's been a church that's established there, and things are going well, and everybody's excited. And there's Paul, and of course, he still has bruises and scar tissue building up from being stoned and beaten and all the rest. He's burying his body, the marks of Jesus. And he says to Barnabas and the rest of the apostolic den, I've got a great idea. Let's go back to Lystra. You've got to be kidding. And then after Lystra, we'll just go right back to Iconium. And then from right there, and they must have been looking at him like, Paul, you have to be out of your mind. What absolutely incredible courage. But you know what drove him to do it? Is that there were disciples in those cities. There were disciples in those cities. And so in spite of the danger, he was going to go and minister to these people who had devoted their lives to Jesus Christ. And so for Paul, he really did live out to live as Christ and to die as gain. For Paul, there was no risk that was outside of the scope of God's sovereignty. If he went back to Lystra and if that was the last place he visited, then so be it to die as gain. but to live as Christ. And so he went and he poured his life into these disciples. It really is an incredible example to us of apostolic courage. Now notice in verse 22, as they go back to these cities, Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, there's a mission. Luke puts it like this, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, saying through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Now, here's something else that was radically different about Paul's ministry than what is typical for us today. When we think of the idea of encouragement, we usually think of messages that are designed to make people happy. And Paul says, here, I'm going to encourage you, to strengthen you. Through many tribulations, you must enter the kingdom of God. Now, the message itself was one of perseverance. And so notice what the ministry consisted of. He says, we need to get back to these cities and we need to strengthen the souls of the disciples. These are people who are fighting the fight of faith day in and day out. These are people who are counting the cost of following Christ. And you know what they need? They need to be strengthened in their souls. And again, there's a parallelism in the text. encouraging them, this is how he's going to strengthen them, by encouraging them, notice, to remain in the faith. And so for Paul, the idea was, is that when you go and minister to the disciples, when you go and you want to strengthen their souls, what do you do? You teach them about perseverance. You teach them about remaining in the faith. You teach them about what it is to endure. You teach them what it is to have a faith that endures in the midst of hostility and tribulation and persecution and all of the pressures that will come upon us. Have you ever thought that maybe, maybe one of the reasons why our churches are so anemic and maybe one of the reasons why we have so many people who who give some form of credence to the gospel message, and then within a short matter of time, they're off doing their own thing again, is because we've never actually spent much time at all saying there are certain demands to being a disciple of Jesus, and one of them is persevering in the faith. And it's the one who endures to the end that will be saved. And so this is Paul's view of strengthening the disciples, of strengthening their souls, preaching a message of perseverance. And then notice how the encouragement goes. What was the core message? Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. And so here's Paul's encouraging message to strengthen their souls. Remain in the faith, be steadfast, endure. Persevere. Why? Because it is God's design that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Now, there's two parts to that statement that are worthy of consideration. Through many tribulations. I've told you before, especially as we studied the 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, Paul uses that term tribulation repeatedly And the word is thlipsis, and it means being pressured or being pressed from both sides. And so Paul was simply being realistic with these disciples. If you are a true follower of the Lord Jesus, this world is not your home and you're going to be pressed day in and day out from the world, the flesh and the devil. And so the apostle says, listen, it is through many tribulations, through many pressures, through many tribulations that are going to squeeze us. That we must. Enter the kingdom of God. It's the second part of that that should get our attention. We must enter the kingdom of God. In other words, it is going through the tribulation, which is a necessity to entering the kingdom. And so it happens to be, and you can see this all over the place in 1 Thessalonians, it is actually God's design for His people to enter into His kingdom, not on flowery beds of ease, to use Isaac Watts' terminology, But to sail through bloody seas. Salvation is a free gift. Justification is a free gift. The forgiveness of sins is a free gift. But make no mistake about it, those who have received the forgiveness of sins and are justified freely by faith alone in Christ alone must persevere and they will face tribulations. And it is through those tribulations that they must enter the kingdom of God. That's the gospel. That's the gospel. So what we do is we talk about the first part, the freeness, the forgiveness. We never get around to the, quote, fine print of the gospel. And then what happens when people run into tribulations, pressures and everything else? They say, hey, I didn't sign up for this. I'm out of here. Paul would have said, what do you mean you didn't sign up for this? I told you right up front, it wasn't small print. It was big print. It was on the front page. It was bold. So the second thing we see here is the part and parcel of Paul's message. It was designed to strengthen faith and encourage perseverance and to prepare the disciples for tribulation. We don't do anybody, any Christian, any favors when we tell them that the only thing that they have to look forward to is escaping tribulation. We strengthen their souls when we prepare them for tribulations. Then verse 23. When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed." Now, notice in verse 23 that a plurality of elders were appointed in every church. You can actually see it in the text, plain enough, when they had appointed elders for them in every church. Elders, plural, in each church. And that's the way the text reads. And so as Paul and Barnabas and the missionary band make their way back through, here you have these fellowships, these groups of disciples that were gathering together, being united in Jesus Christ, and as Paul and Barnabas go back through, what they start doing is they start appointing a plurality of elders in each church. So what that means is that for some period of time, these churches were without eldership or leadership, but Paul, knowing the importance of biblical leadership, on his way back through, appoints these leaders. Now, there's a few interesting things to note about this pattern that we see. First of all, there's a selection process. From the text, it does seem to indicate that Paul and Barnabas were the ones that were appointing the elders. That seems to me to be plain. Later, once the apostles are off the scene, there can be no more direct apostolic appointees to the office of elder. But the churches will choose the elders. But the word that's used here is to select or elect an elder. And that's the idea, that Paul and Barnabas went back, and you can't help but to get the feel that the apostle, he was the quintessential people person. Read the end of the book of Romans. When Paul wrote Romans, Paul had never even been to Rome yet. And yet, how many people does he actually identify by name in that 16th chapter indicating interpersonal relationships with these people that he had never even been to Rome? Paul was a people person. So you could imagine that as he goes back to these cities and you have these disciples, and no doubt the disciples had increased from the time they were gone, disciples making other disciples, that Paul knew the core group that was there. Paul had a good feel for these people. And as he went back to these cities, he and Barnabas made a selection process whereby they appointed elders. Now, at this point in church history, it's impossible to tell the constituency of each church. But what I have to assume is that the standards that Paul lays down in 1 Timothy 3, in Titus chapter 1, were the pattern that was used for him selecting who would serve as an elder. But there's something else about the particular situation that is interesting, and that is Unless you had a transplant disciple that had moved to Lystra or Iconium or Antioch, most of those disciples would have been fairly new disciples. And so you could imagine the church relying upon Paul and Barnabas's discernment and insight into appointing for the men that they thought would do the job with biblical integrity. Notice also that the church fasts and prays. The process of fasting and praying, absolutely critical for the establishment of church leadership. And so here's Paul, Barnabas, and a plurality of elders in each church, absolutely critical for the stability of the church and for discipleship. Paul and Barnabas had obviously, in their ministry to these churches, instilled in these churches the importance of leadership, the importance of praying, the importance of fasting, the importance of entrusting their leaders to the Lord and following their leadership. And again, what we see is another Pauline priority about discipleship, and that is the centrality of the local church under biblical leadership. In other words, what we see in verse 23 is, we could call it, church-based discipleship. Paul didn't raise up a bunch of parachurch organizations. He established leadership in the church that would be the context for discipleship. Alright? Okay, after that, verse 24, They passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atilia." Now, at this point, Luke has not joined the journey. We know that Luke hasn't joined the journey because when Luke does join the journey, you know what word he always uses? We. He always uses the first person plural when he is in the journey. This is Paul and Barnabas and the apostolic band, and he is tracing with great detail their itinerary. And notice every chance they get, they're preaching the word. They're preaching the word. And so the apostles saw every time that they stopped for the night, every time that they stopped at an inn, every time they did anything, where they traveled to a new town, this was an opportunity for Paul to preach the word. If Paul would have lived in the days of airplanes, I have no doubt that he would have looked at every airplane trip as an opportunity to evangelize, not just the person sitting next to him, but everybody on the plane. All right. He was just an opportunist looking for a place to slip in the word, to preach it wherever he could. And I will tell you that that convicts me to no end. Because when I get on an airplane, I want the whole road myself. OK. And then God put somebody next to me and then they inevitably say, so what do you do? I think, OK, here we go. But for Paul, there was no reservation. He was just preaching every place that he went. And Luke tracks that for us. And then verse 26 tells us that they sailed to Antioch from which they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed. And so, all of a sudden, we find out that they now return to their sending church. Now, remember this church in Antioch. There's two Antiochs. There's the Antioch that we saw in chapter 11, and then there's the Antioch in chapter 13. The church in Antioch that we're talking about, that is first recorded in Acts 13, is the first Gentile church. It is the first church that is comprised predominantly of Gentile believers, and it is also the church which was the first missionary powerhouse church. In a real sense, the missionary movement that began in the first century, in the apostolic era, received its greatest impetus not from the church in Jerusalem, But from the church in Antioch, you remember how God had to had to make the missionaries move in Jerusalem, right? Persecution. They weren't overly eager to kind of get out and go to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. And so God had to create persecution in Jerusalem to move those disciples out. In Antioch, they were fasting and praying. And in the midst of that, in wanting to reach others with the gospel, the Spirit of God came and said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul. It was a missionary powerhouse church. It was a sending church. And now, What we see is that once this missionary journey was completed, Paul and Barnabas say it's very natural for us now to go to the very people, the very church that sent us and tell them what happened. And notice this. It says that that last line in verse 26. The work that they had accomplished. We don't actually have any details up front, but this little line at the end does seem to indicate that as they sent out Paul and Barnabas, that there was a starting point and a completion point. And they had accomplished the work which had been given to them to do. And so they come back. In all likelihood, this first missionary journey, working the chronology backwards in Acts, this first journey probably took approximately one year. And after one year, they come back. Now, Paul's a little more bruised and battered and scarred and a little more worse for the wear, but as they come back, they give their missionary Verse 27, it says they assembled the church and reported what God did. They had a missionary conference. The missionaries were back, and they were going to be giving their report, and so the whole church assembled. And remember, by this time, the church at Antioch is a big church. It's a large church. It's a healthy church. It's a thriving church. And what is the missionary report? They focused on what God had done through them. And so the mission, and everybody understood this, the mission was the work of God. It was the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit. Barnabas and Paul were simply the human instruments. And what do they do? They report all the things that God had done. Isn't it wonderful? There's going to be a day, maybe in May, Lord willing, where we're going to have Anna, and she's going to share with us what God had done for those five months. John's going to go to Burma, and he's going to come back, and you know what we're going to want him to do? We're going to want to hear what God had done through him. That is very, very natural, and as a church, I will tell you, we need to be more engaged in listening to what God is doing throughout the world. We really do. We need to know what God is doing in other places and who best to hear it from than people who have actually been there. One of the highlights of the pastors conference in New Jersey last October was listening to Andy Hamilton and his mission in China. You talk about a hair raising ministry. They run an orphanage. He and his wife, he and his wife with a small handful of helpers, run an orphanage of 500 orphans. They have a friend who works in the police department who calls them every time the police are coming to try to catch them with illegal literature. And all of the kids know what to do. You hide the Bibles in the washing machines and behind the refrigerators. and listening to him talk about the training of pastors in China so that those pastors go out and train. China is so huge that you have to think in terms of concentric circles and having pastors go out and train other pastors so that within a five-year period, hopefully 100,000 pastors will have received further training in order to minister the Word of God. And actually listening to somebody who is doing the work And it is very great listening to a guy from Louisiana speak Chinese. It is the most fascinating thing to me linguistically. But to listen to somebody that's there, that's doing it. And so here's the church at Antioch. They're excited about their faith. They're disciples of the Lord Jesus. And what do they want to hear above everything else? Tell us of the mighty deeds of God, what God did in Antioch, what God did in Lystra, what God did in Iconium, what God did in Derby. We want to hear about all of it. Paul, how'd you get that scar? Paul, how'd you break your arm? Paul, how'd you... Paul, tell us about it. And so they get there and they tell him what God had done. It was a God-centered missionary report because all biblical missions is ultimately God-centered. It's God at work. Notice how they express this. They began to report all things that God had done with them. And that he had opened a door of faith. To the Gentiles. Paul and Barnabas are reporting on the mission activity. You know what they do, this is the way they summarize it, God opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. In other words, as they report God's mighty deeds, they take the initiative in the work and place it squarely where it belongs, and that is with God and His own sovereign grace. It was God who opened the door to the Gentiles. It wasn't my great preaching. It wasn't Barnabas's charming personality. It was the sovereign grace of God that burst wide open the door of faith to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles came pouring in, and no doubt that church absolutely rejoiced in listening to that report. Verse 28, they spent a long time with the disciples. Literally, they remained with the disciples for a sufficient amount of time. After spending a year knowing Paul's physical persecutions, They spent a period of time being rejuvenated with the saints. They spent a time having their batteries recharged, as it were, in the church in Antioch. And don't you know, you remember back to the early part of chapter 13, that church in Antioch was a strong, thriving church. There were a lot of gifts in that church. There was a lot of grace in that church. And the people were knit together. There was a solidarity in that body. And so Paul and Barnabas go back. Most Acts scholars think that they probably spent another year in Antioch, no doubt being rejuvenated and also ministering in the church there in Antioch. And so the journey itself took about a year. The stay in Antioch was probably about a year. And by the way, it is during this time, during the first missionary journey, that year period, and that year in Antioch, where you have the background to the book of Galatians. And it is probably during Paul's year furlough in Antioch where he confronts Peter and Peter's hypocrisy that's recorded for us in Galatians chapter 2. So, as we look at this great little passage, there are a few principles. We'll just reiterate them. Quickly, first of all, Paul preached a full gospel. That is, a disciple-making gospel with all of the benefits and all of the demands of following Christ. For these disciples, for these apostles, for these missionaries, there was no distinction between believers and disciples, evangelism and discipleship, or the gospel and the higher life. They went about preaching the gospel, making disciples, That was their mission. Would to God that we would recover that mission. Would to God that we would be serious about seeing people being committed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. The second thing is that the disciples were taught to expect persecution and tribulation and that real discipleship persevered It was the perseverance of the saints that formed the encouraging soul strengthening message to the disciples. And so the apostle knew what it was to use the promises and to use the threats. He knew what it was to prepare them for times of tribulation and persecution. And I would remind us that that kind of preparation means that at times you get under the skin. At times when you're preparing people for tribulation, when you are preparing them to persevere, there are times where our soft sides need to be exposed. And Paul was a master at it, and he prepared these people to endure and to face tribulation. The third thing we see is that all discipleship is local church discipleship. It was the local church under The leadership of duly appointed elders in that was the context where discipleship took place. And then finally, and this is the most exciting, missions is churches planting churches, preaching the gospel and making disciples. That's what missions really is ultimately all about. There are many, many different avenues. that missionaries can use to make inroads, but ultimately the goal of missions is to have churches, planting churches, preaching the gospel, and making disciples. And when that's happening, the Great Commission is being fulfilled. It's my prayer that as we enter into 2007, that we would be more sensitive as a church body to what it means to be a mission-minded, global oriented church. There is a whole world all around us which God is very interested in and very active in. And we need to make sure that we are being sensitive to what God is doing, not just here. As important as what he's doing here is, we need to understand that he's doing things all over the world and we want to be a part of that. Won't it be a great day on that last day? to see some Sudanese mother come up and thank the saints at Grace Community Church for sending Anna Strachan to the Sudan because it was through Anna that they heard the gospel. Wouldn't it be great on the last day to actually have some poor Burmese come to us and say, thank you for sending Pastor John The lecturers were great. They equipped us to go out and to plant churches. And look at these, the fruit for which Christ died that came about through the planting of those churches. We need to live in view of what God is doing, not just here, but throughout the world. And so may God make us a missionary minded, globally aware church body. that is seeking to make Christ known. Let's pray. Father, we pray tonight that You would use the book of Acts to stir us in our love for world missions. And that You would expand our hearts for Your glory among the nations. And Father, we pray you would raise up from this body a hundred Anastracans. And that we would be privileged to send out men and women far and wide with the good news of Jesus Christ in their hearts. But Father, we also pray that that same zeal would manifest itself in the way that we relate to our neighbors Father, many of them just as lost as people in the interior of Africa. Father, give us the zeal to take the light of the Gospel not only to faraway places, but to places right next door. In Jesus' name, Amen.