The Leadership leading to it’s acceptance.

Acts 11:
Jesus said, Acts 1:8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
The plan of the evangelization of man began at Jerusalem and then it just spread. The last great link in that spread of evangelism was taking the gospel to pagans, Gentiles. As we come to Chapter 11, the gospel has already been taken to Jews in Jerusalem and outside Jerusalem. It has been taken to Samaritans, and in Chapter 10 it was taken to the first group of Gentiles in the house of Cornelius and Peter was the messenger

Peter the Positioned Leader

Now it is time for Peter to go back to Jerusalem in chapter 11, and he must report to the Jews in Jerusalem, his brothers in Christ, what has happened. And he realizes that it’s not going to be easy for them to handle.
He found it difficult to allow Gentiles into the church and God had to give him a special vision to prepare his heart. To his knowledge they have had no such vision. They are still locked into the typical prejudice to the nationalistic spirit, to a separatist view and they have not had the benefit of what he has seen.

Peter does a recap of what happened with Cornelius.

The apostles and brethren that were in Judea, heard about this. Apparently word flew from Caesarea back to Jerusalem of what had happened and before Peter could ever get there to defend himself they had already formed their preconceived notions.
It’s amazing how people will do that. Before you get a chance to defend your case they’ll already have summed it up. And so in this case they had already decided what had gone on and the word got back to them before Peter got there.
Ac 11:2 And when Peter had come up to Jerusalem, those who were of the Circumcision contended with him,
He had to deal with a group of Jews who believed the only way to become a Christian was to become a Jew first. They contended with him. The word contended means to have a dispute including doubts. They didn’t believe this in the first place so they argued. The legalists hassled him continually. They were outraged.
But Peter reviewed the matter from the beginning and expounded it in order unto them saying, he just recites the facts. “I was in the city of Joppa praying and in a trance I saw a vision
But all that had gone on in the house of Cornelius was designed to shatter prejudice.
Keep in mind that as Peter comes back to report the word has already beaten him there and so they’ve already made up their preconceived ideas.
So when he came back they started a big argument. They really hassled him badly and they hassled him repeatedly. Orthodoxy can get really mad.

Peter shows the Spirit of a Good Leader

Now what’s his spirit going to be?
He’s got all kinds of options. He can pull rank. He can say, “Hey you guys, cut it out. Don’t you know who I am? Peter’s the name. I was given the keys to the kingdom. What I open nobody shuts.”
No, he just recited the facts. Verse 4: “Peter reviewed the matter from the beginning expounded it in order unto them saying. Today many people don’t want the facts.
Because the issue explained itself.
Peter knew it was a spiritual issue but he tested it two ways. This is very important. Here’s a principle that we need to see and apply.
Number one, He didn’t act alone. He took six people with him. Why? Because he didn’t want to be mistaken in what was going on. He wanted the testimony of six others to confirm his own. The Jews knew well Egyptian law and Egyptian law said that where there are seven witnesses the case is closed.
Roman law said that on any will or any testament there had to be seven seals, so seven became a kind of a number of sealing the authoritativeness of something.
Number two, it squares with revelation. We must never evaluate our experience on our experience alone. Make sure it stands the test of Scripture.
The Word of the Lord had said, John indeed baptized with water but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Peter said, “You know why I know this testimony is true?
Peter said, seven of us were there, and saw it, but more than that I remembered that Jesus said this is how it is.
Verse 17, Peter says, “For as much then as God gave them the same gift as He did unto us,”
The Holy Spirit is a gift, it’s the same gift, not any different. Everybody gets the same Holy Spirit the same way. Who gets the Holy Spirit? Who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. What do you have to do to receive the Holy Spirit? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what it says. Nothing else.
Number three, He comes to those who believe. And so Peter says, “There I was guys, what could I do?” Don’t blame me, guys. If you don’t like this, call up heaven. I didn’t do anything.
Acts 11:18, “Now when they heard these things they held their peace and glorified God saying, ‘Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.’ ”

This is probably the most shocking statement any Jew had made up to this point in history.

That God granted Gentiles repentance unto life. Because until the Jews who were Christians made that statement they could never begin the work of evangelizing the Gentiles, they had to come to that.
From our standpoint we can’t see how very easily Christianity could have become another sect of Judaism. Just a little segment of Judaism because the Jews were locked in on the fact that that’s what it was. And this whole concept of getting it out to the world, getting it out to the Gentiles was a monumental crisis in the life of the church and in the plan of God. The whole group of first Christians were Jews and they tended to grind kind of inwardly
God knows we have a terrible problem with prejudice or He wouldn’t make such an issue out of it. Usually our life patterns are determined in a great deal by our prejudice. Prejudice controls and dominates the lives of many people.

The Apostles Were Important

Apostolic authority had to be established. Now when God spoke to the early church through whom did He speak? The apostles.

So when the early church came together what was their standard?

How did they know whether this is right, and this is wrong? How did they know how to do this, how to do that, what are God’s standards, what are these things unless they had to listen to the apostles through whom God spoke. And so there needed to be time for the apostles to lay down a solid doctrinal base.
Now a Christian can get saved and run around now and share Christ and he can run into problems and he can go back to the Word and say let me find that, there’s an answer here. But the guy in those days who ran out and ran into a problem was stuck. There was no New Testament, so they had to be a foundation planted and rooted firmly. A strong doctrinal basis and the apostles were the key.
The framework of doctrine was based as a foundation.
There is nothing worse than sending out an unprepared person to do a job.

The Church Moves Out

V18 “Now they who were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, traveled as far as Phoenicia, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the Word to none but unto the Jews only.
19 it says, “They had been scattered in the persecution of Stephen, which means they got scattered and then the Cornelius incident happened while they were scattered, which means they hadn’t heard of it. They very likely had no idea of what had happened to Cornelius so they had no precedent for Gentile evangelism. They were still hung in on Jews. They were still locked into Jewish evangelism. And they’d go into towns and they’d find the Greek speaking Jews, the displaced Jews, the Hellenist Jews, and they would share Christ with them and they would start a little group of believers.
Some of them didn’t go west they just kept going north. If you keep going north on the coast you come to Antioch. Antioch became the capital of Syria and Antioch was then a strategic place and some folks came there. Notice, that they were preaching to Jews only.
Why? Because they still believe that salvation was for the Jews and they were still hung up on a nationalistic view of salvation. They had not heard yet what had happened to Peter and the Gentiles.

Evangelism Changes Direction, Toward the Gentiles

Acts 11:20 And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke unto the Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus.
We should praise God for free spirits for anti-establishment adventurous types, Holy Spirit motivated, who kind of bust out of the ruts.
Some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene and that alone was important because they were Jewish, but they had a Gentile orientation, which made them a little more ready to reach a Gentile. Well when they come to Antioch, they spoke under the Greeks preaching the Lord Jesus. They actually preached to the pagans. They were set out in the scattering. They obviously have the gifts of preaching and they preached and people got saved. And they did it in a city called Antioch.
Antioch was a very interesting city, 15 miles or so from the mouth of the Euphrates River, founded in about 300 B.C., made a free city under the Roman government in 64 A. D. it has its own self-government. It became the capital of the Province of Syria. It became very famous, grew like crazy. It was the third largest city in the world. First was Rome, then was Alexandria, then was Antioch, had 600,000 people at least. it was basically known as an evil city.
Verse 21, notice they didn’t preach Christ, which means Messiah. That wouldn’t relate to Gentiles so they preached the Lord Jesus.

Growth and the Jerusalem Church

verse 22. “The tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church, which was in Jerusalem.” more Gentiles getting saved in Antioch.
Praise God, they had a good response. They sent forth a good man, Barnabas that he should go as far as Antioch, and check things out.
Matching the right person to the right job. That is a headache that never ends in any kind of ministry.
Number one, he had the spiritual qualifications, somebody who wasn’t structured in with the walls of Judaism, the right spiritual attitudes: love.
He was a righteous man, full of the Holy Spirit. He was led of God and of faith he believed God.
Full of faith.
full of the Holy Spirit.
Do you know where he was from?
Cyprus. Do you know where the guys who founded the church in Antioch were from? Cyprus. “What’s so important about that?” The important thing about that is he is not an intruder. He’s one of them.
Barnabas knew these guys. He wouldn’t be an intruder stepping in on their territory, taking over their work. He’d be one of them. So he had the qualifications. He was the man. God wants right men for right missions.
V23 “He was glad and he exhorted them.”
You’ve got a handful of new Christians, What do you do with them? He exhorted them to cling to the Lord. There’s only one way you can hold tightly to Christ and that’s cling to the Word.

Saul is Back in the Picture

Verse 26: “And when he had found him,” isn’t it amazing that he went himself to do the job? “Finally he brought him to Antioch.” Paul and Barnabas
It came to pass for a whole year they assembled themselves together with the church, and had a lot of soup suppers, and had several contests, and lots of musical extravaganzas.
Is that what it says? No, it says some of them got together for one year and together they did what? Taught! You want to know what the church is for? It’s for teaching.
Teach, at every level, in every way, through every avenue, teach the Word of God.
The apostles said in Acts 6, “We will give ourselves continually to the ministry of the Word and prayer.” Teaching, for one year they just taught and the fruit of their teaching, beloved fruit.
Now in the meantime years had passed. They kicked Saul out of Jerusalem quite a while ago because he was stirring up more trouble than they could handle. They sent him back home to Tarsus in Cilicia. During that time he had really been working for the Lord and he was not easy to find.
Acts 13:1 “There was in the church at Antioch certain prophets and teachers.” You know what they did? They made teachers: Barnabas and Simeon called Niger, Lucius, Manaen, and so forth. They taught men who became teachers of other men.
Well the end of verse 26, “And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. They had never been called Christians before.
So the church grew. Growth, first groundwork, then genesis, then growth. Then, generosity. You know the church not only needed to be sound in doctrine, but they needed to have love.

Thank God that he loved all of us, Jews and Gentiles, and provide a way for all of us, if we believe and commit our lives to him, to be part of His Church. And day His church will be with Him in heaven.