Every Paul Needs an Antioch - Acts 11

Previously on Downton Abbey. That theme music, man, it feels like Laura Linney's about to get up here. Like, "This is another Masterpiece Classic." That was the worst Laura Linney impersonation. If she happens to listen to this sermon, she's not going to listen that sermon, I'm just going to apologize right now. Hey, my name is Tom Fitzgerald.

I'm the executive pastor here at Southeast. I have great news for you. This is the last Sunday until Aaron's back. So 30 minutes, you and I can do this. We'll get through it together. Team effort here, but we get to talk about Acts 11. Hey, before we go into that, we need to start a little bit seriously today.

One of the previous leaders of Southeast Christian Church, one of the previous lead pastors, his name was Todd Hudson, and just a couple nights ago he went home to be with the Lord. Todd had been battling cancer for a long time and thought we had it in remission and then it came back pretty aggressively.

And it was just really just a matter of days before he was home with Jesus. So we're grieving with the Hudson family and celebrating with Todd sort of all at once in this complicated fallen space. So there will be a celebration of life service for Todd. You can go to our website southeastcc.org to find some details about that, how you can join that service online, dates, the web link, et cetera.

But for now, would you all just bow heads with me as we pray for the Hudson family. Father, we lift up this precious family to you. First of all, God, thank you for the time that Todd and their family shared their life with this house. Thank you for Todd's leadership of this place. For all the giving and serving and loving that their ministry represented here.

And God, right now, we pray that you would surround Trisha and the rest of the family as they mourn this unbelievable loss. Lord I pray that you would be, right now, would you just be the Prince of Peace. Step right off the pages of the Bible and into their home and just be the Prince of Peace. Fill their home with peace and trust and hope in the middle of deep, deep grief and pain and loss.

And then God, we celebrate with Todd as well that now he's completely healed and whole in your presence. He's looking at you face to face, no veil in between the two of you. And God, we celebrate Todd's life. We mourn his death, but we do not mourn without hope because God, we look forward to a resurrection where one day we'll get to give Todd a big hug and say thank you for his time here in person.

And then go worship you face to face together with him. We love you, Lord Jesus. It's in your name we pray. Amen. All right, friends, Acts 11. You ready to rock? 11:00 service, we need some energy team. Let's go. Let's go. All right. Here's the deal, I'm often told that I need to slow down when I talk. But we have a ton of information to cover today, so you need to hurry up when you listen. All right.

Thank you for laughing. I was always a little bit worried about that. Okay. So we're in Acts 11, but we have to understand a little bit of groundwork before we can just tear into this passage of scripture. We've had this whole narrative of Acts 1 through Acts 10, where we're seeing Jesus leaving the earth, Holy Spirit descending and then the action of the Holy Spirit in and through the early church.

And Acts 11, we pick up the thread where we start to learn about a couple of really important figures. One is a city and one is a person. City is Antioch. North of Israel in Syria. Antioch is a big deal. It's this incubator for Paul's missionary journeys. In fact, he'll eventually go to Ephesus, but initially he makes Antioch home base, the big deal, big deal place.

Paul is probably the second most important figure in the history of Christianity. I know, no big deal. He wrote over half of the New Testament. You are sitting in this chair, listening to this sermon because of Paul. So kids, if your parents dragged you to church today, blame Paul, not them. And if you're happy to be in the house of the Lord today, thanks Paul.

Yeah. A couple thanks Paul's out there, all right. So we need to understand why the Jewish people ended up in Antioch to begin with and that story begins in Acts 7, which we've covered already, but we're going to do it again anyway. So this is a place, we pick up the story where Stephen, who was one of the disciples. He is standing before the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of the Jewish people.

And he's talking to them about Jesus. He's giving this whole line, this thread from the beginning, from Genesis 1, all the way through to the person of Jesus. And he says, "You killed him. What are we going to do about it?" And so here we pick up the story. "But they, the Pharisees, cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears and rush together at him. Stephen. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him."

"They threw rocks at his head until he died. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul." Now, witnesses in 1st Century, understanding a witness was not just someone who saw something. It's a legal position. The words on the mouth of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be confirmed.

You had to have two or three witnesses in any hearing in order for something to be decided as truth or not. So these witnesses are not just watching, they're approving, they're observing, they're giving agreement to. "And they lay their coats." So a coat is a symbol as, another word would be mantle. Coat is a symbol of authority.

"They lay their authority at the feet of a young man named Saul saying, 'I am doing this under the authority of Saul.'" Saul was a bad dude, at this point. There was no salvation moment. Saul, Paul, same guy. There was no moment where Saul became Paul. He just had two different names, because he was born in a town called Tarsus. That was a Roman town, but he was a Jew. So he had a Jewish name, Hebrew name that was Shaul or Saul.

And then he had a Roman name Paul, because he had dual citizen. "So they laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul." Continuing on. "As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, 'Lord Jesus, received my spirit.' And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, 'Lord, do not hold this sin against them.' And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of his execution."

Lest there be any out doubt, we're going to say it twice. Saul is giving the thumbs up. He's giving the blessing. He's providing the legal authority for this executions, for this persecution, for this entire activity. Continuing on. It says, "And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem." You have to remember, at this point in time, Christianity didn't exist.

There was this thing called the way. And there was another sect of Judaism. There were the Pharisees. There was the Sadducees. There were the Zealots. There were the Herodians. And now there was this new sect called the way. And they followed this Rabbi Jesus, and they were doing all this weird stuff. People were getting healed. The prophetic was occurring.

The Holy Spirit was being poured out. And all of these other Jews are remembering back to their scriptures in Malachi. And all the other prophets, major and minor, and they're watching what's happening in the sect called the way. And it's this issue of like, "Why is that not happening with us? These people are messing it up." And a persecution arises against the church in Jerusalem.

Scripture says, "And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." The apostles stayed home in Jerusalem and they made this apostolic council there. I don't know, like I picture some kind of offshoot of the Lord of the Rings, where you have a bunch of people in long robes and long white beards.

But around this time these guys were like 25, so there goes that theory. Except the apostles, they stayed in Jerusalem. The rest of what would become Christianity had to flee Jerusalem because of Paul. Paul was dragging them into the streets. He was throwing them into prison. He was approving of their, or even acting in their executions. And so they had to get out. Some of them took off and they went to Judea.

Some of them went east into Assyria and some went north into Syria. And they settled, the ones who traveled north, in a town called Antioch. And I'm going to give you a brief history of Antioch because you cannot understand Paul unless you understand Antioch. But man, do we have a lot to cover. So again, listen fast. All right. Antioch.

So Antioch really wasn't much of anything in early history. Around 586, 597 BC, Babylon invades Israel. And they conquer it. That's what it sounds like to be conquered by Babylon, I guess. Sorry. Geez. And Babylon has this really interesting method for conquering a nation. When they went to war, they do what is called cultural importation and cultural exportation.

So if you look at this map, this is an exile map. This is around 586-ish BC. So you see Israel goes north and east into around Aleppo and Assyria. Aleppo is just a little bit north and west of it, is where Antioch is going to end up. So kind of keep that bookmarked in your mind. You can see the Mediterranean Sea, you kind of get the idea.

In present day Turkey, 1st Century Asia, minor. Ancient Assyria or ancient Syria. How are my Western Civ students doing right now? I know, I'm sorry. We're going to hurry. The Judahaits were exiled actually to Babylon. And then look at that yellow arrow from Babylonia into Israel and Judah. So this was the interesting practice with the Babylonians.

They would drag you out of your country and dump you into a new one and expect your identity to sort of be absorbed by this new people you're a part of. Then they would take some of their people, their gods, their government and dump them into this newly conquered land and expect that to rise up as well. So that eventually through dilution, the world would become Babylon.

Not so with the Jews, my friend, they are a very, very, very fiercely identifying people. These are the people of Yaweh. These are the sons and the daughters of God. And no mere moving party is going to strip them of who they actually are. So what ended up happening, what the Babylonians did is they just went ahead and deposited an extremely healthy and thriving culture of Jews up in what would become Antioch.

And this and this group stays there, lives there, dwells there and does really well there all throughout Jewish history. In fact, motor on through history a little bit and here comes Alexander the Great, big conquer. He's making his way east. He conquers the Assyria, conquers the area that would become Antioch and keeps on cruising.

Now, this space would begin to become Rome, but first Alexander the Great has to kick the bucket. And so he does. Alexander dies, but he has four generals by the names of Cassander, Ptolemy, Antigonus and Seleucus. Seleucus inherits Syria, and makes the capital city Antioch. Why Antioch? His dad's name was Antiochus. His son's name was Antiochus.

And so you pick, he named it after one of them. I don't know. But this much we know, Antioch got its name from one of Seleucus's relatives. I think we have a picture of Seleucus. There he is. Look at that sharp looking guy. Have you guys ever noticed that people in Greek and Roman sculpture look unbelievably bored? Here's my theory.

Here's my theory for this. Sculptures take a long time. All right. You sit in one spot for that long without moving, eventually your face is going to look like that. Told them that's not how they did it. I know. I know. It's a dad joke. Sorry. Buckle up. There's going to be a lot. Seleucus. He makes Antioch the capital of Syria.

And Syria, this whole bit becomes part of the Roman empire. So these Jews who are thriving and doing extremely well in Antioch, they actually get Roman citizenship. Kind of like our buddy Paul Shaul. Okay. They get dual citizenship. This means they can travel freely throughout the Roman Empire. They're under the Roman law, under Roman tax, also receiving Roman benefits.

So this Jewish group is doing awesome. But they're just like, let's see, I think it's 400 miles north of Jerusalem. So I mean, a long way is by their standard, for sure. We could do it in six hours-ish, depending on who's driving. Right, honey? My wife's down there going, "Oh, oh, me." So there are many festivals in Jerusalem that had to be observed in Jerusalem.

You had to come to the temple to observe these festivals. So it would make perfect sense for Jews from Antioch to travel to Jerusalem and observe festivals. So there begins to be this Jerusalem Antioch connection. And so when there's persecution in Jerusalem, it makes perfect sense for many Jews to flee to friends, family, whatever, living in Antioch.

Remember that at this time, we're almost done with the history, I promise. And we'll get into something good, hopefully. Remember that at this time, Jews were only preaching Jesus. These messianic Jews were only preaching Jesus to you to fellow Jews. There was a racial divide. Honestly, some deep racism that was happening.

You have these ethnic Jews who are saying, "This is our faith. And these are our people. God says not to be around these people or to talk with them or to whatever with them. And the last time we did that kind of stuff and we mixed with them, we ended up being exiled to Babylon, like we saw on that map. And so we're not doing it again."

But the message and the ministry of Jesus says that the table is open. The invitation is for everyone. So there arises a great conflict. So we pick up in Acts 10. Peter is in the spirit and he sees a sheet descending from heaven and on it are unclean animals. And he hears the voice of God saying, "Arise, Peter, kill and eat." And Peter goes, "No Lord, I'll never eat anything unclean."

And God says, "Do not call unclean what I have called clean." Okay. Thank God, Peter realized quick that this wasn't about food. This is not In-N-Out versus Whataburge. This is not Burger King versus McDonald's. This is our people in or our people out. And God says in. God says, "Open the invitation to the entire world and welcome them to the foot of the cross."

And thank goodness for that. But Peter's vision didn't solve the whole problem. This racism, these issues around Jew Gentile were still very, very, very much present. And so we see in Acts 11, that there is a little bit of a hubbub happening because these people who have fled to Antioch are preaching initially to the right folks and then to the wrong ones. Let's read.

"Now those who were scattered because of the persecution, were in Acts 11, that arose over Stephen, you remember him. Traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews." Again, we still have this problem. "But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists or Gentiles also, preaching the Lord Jesus."

"And the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the Lord." Now like any good governing body, the council in Jerusalem, they have a meeting. Right? They get everybody together. They get their coffee. They have the buffet. And they're like, "Hey, what's going on up here in Antioch? We've some people who are not supposed to be in who are now in."

So like any good governing body, they go ahead and send an ambassador and Barnabas draws the short straw. So let's keep reading. "The report of this, of these salvations among the Gentiles, came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem. And they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad. And he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord." Read that.

Remain faithful, not become, not be. "Remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the church and taught a great many people." Now, don't miss what just happened.

This is one of those deals where the lullaby effect can catch us a little bit. Why are the Jews in Antioch? Because Saul persecuted them. Who does Barnabas go and get? What on earth? What is this guy thinking? Here's my theory. I think that Barnabas goes to Antioch and here is what he finds. He finds a community of believers who have successfully navigated the dividing lines between Jew and Gentile.

There has been this massive schism that the early church could not figure it out. And then in Antioch, they managed to get it done. They just loved one another. He finds a community of believers who are proactive in their faith. Read the end of Acts 11. It says this. "Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world. This took place in the day of Claudius."

So what do they do? "The disciples determined, by every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul." Again, lullaby effect. That's a lot of words. Here's what happened. A guy stands up, Agabus. And he prophesied that there's going to be a famine.

And so this church takes up a collection for a famine that doesn't exist yet because they believe the word of God as it comes through his prophets. So they take up a collection and they send this food off to the people who are eventually going to need it. Could you imagine being on the receding end of that? "Hey, here's a basket of bread. You're going to need it." Like,"Oh, what do you know that I don't know?" Right.

Well, buckle up. So a group of people who are proactive in their faith. What else did Barnabas find in Antioch? He found a community of believers who were true to the Lord with all their hearts. They reflected the image of Christ through love, truth, grace and unity. These are a group of people who are looking just like Jesus.

Barnabas found a community of people who knew that their enemy was the devil. And the battleground that this war that we fight is the formation of Christ in them. Is Christ being imaged, Christ awakening, Jesus beginning to consume them more and more and more until they look just like their savior. Barnabas looks at this community and he sees a place where he can bring an enemy of the faith.

This murderer. This persecutor. Scriptures would call Saul a terrorist. That he terrorized the early church. Barnabas knew that Saul needed Antioch and that Antioch needed Saul. And so Barnabas goes to Tarsus and he gets the enemy. You got to know, imagine what it would be like to be an Antioch. And here comes Saul. This is the guy who threw your mom and dad in jail.

This is the guy, it's his fault that you had to flee north from your home in Jerusalem to begin with. This is the guy who approved, while other people threw rocks at your friend's head until they died. It was on this guy's face that the smug smile sat while your family was destroyed. And now you're supposed to live with him? Mm-mm (negative).

But Barnabas saw in Antioch, a community who could love Paul so perfectly that it would heal him into the greatest evangelist, the greatest missionary to ever live. Barnabas knew Saul needed Antioch. He needed to come and heal. He needed to come and get well. He needed to come and be healthy.

And then he could be launched and change the rest of the world, right? Half of the New Testament. But first he had to incubate. He had to spend a year in Antioch. And here's the amazing thing, this church in Antioch sat under his teaching and learned from him. Imagine the humility. Imagine the humility. This is the guy, your family's in jail because of him. But man, what he's saying is true.

What does that teach you about leadership? Man, maybe this forgiveness stuff, maybe it's something that I actually have to live out in my life. Barnabas found in Antioch, a place where deeply broken people could come and find healing. Southeast Christian Church, can we be Antioch? Can we be a place where deeply broken people come and are transformed into world changing disciples?

That's the church I want to be a part of. Yeah. So Barnabas goes to Tarsus and gets Paul, that Paul. They sit and learn from for a year. And the world is completely changed. And we mentioned this in the bullet points about the community of Antioch. And these are the two things that I really want to hone in on for us as a church.

Antioch did a couple things incredibly well. First and foremost, they knew exactly who their enemy was. Second, they knew that their job was to express the image of Jesus Christ. See, Paul didn't need a generically Christian culture. He needed explicitly Christlike disciples. Paul didn't need a culture that was generically Christian.

He needed a people who were Christlike. Not a WWJD bracelet, but living and breathing what Jesus would do. Not a T-shirt. A life. That's what Paul needed. And there are people in this room, a family, that's what they need. There are people watching online, that's what they need. A bracelet's not going to save them.

A bracelet's not going to transform them, but your life lived out as a disciple of Jesus will. Will you? Will you? Will you? I'll keep going in my notes here. So Paul, he writes the second half of, or writes over half of our New Testament. And many of the words that we hear Paul and read Paul write, as you look at this community of Antioch, begin to make incredible sense.

Look at Ephesians 6. And remember, we said that the community of Antioch knew their enemy was. Ephesians 6 starting in verse 12, says, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places." See, Paul was a guy who knew what it was like to be an enemy.

He knew what it was like to be fought with as an enemy. And then he goes to Antioch and he knew what it was like to feel internally like an enemy, but be treated like a beloved friend by a people who knew who the real enemy was. Family, don't mistake, your enemy is not the person sitting next to you here at church. Your enemy is not a government. Your enemy is not a system.

Your enemy is not a political leader. Your enemy is the devil. And the more you get confused about who the enemy is, the happier the real enemy becomes. Do not wrestle against flesh and blood. It's easy to read the scripture like it's a suggestion. I encourage you to read it like a command. Do not wrestle against flesh and blood. The entire chapter of Ephesians 6 is this treatise on loving and submitting to one another.

We hear Paul say, "Children obey your parents." And we can hear people say, "But my dad's a jerk. He's never here. When he is here, he's maybe here physically, but he's just watching sports on TV. He doesn't want any of my time." We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. The enemy's not your dad. The enemy's not your mom. The enemy's the devil.

We hear Paul say, "Parents do not provoke your children." I'm preaching to myself now. Not in this specific example, but man, tell you what, having kids is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. They're amazing. And I love them with all my heart, but it's a lot of work being a mom and a dad. "Parents do not provoke your children."

Yeah. But my daughter's dating some punk and her entire identity has just seemed to be absorbed by this dude. My daughter's heart has been stolen by some piece of garbage who doesn't even know really how precious and amazing she is. He's just trying to have a girlfriend and she's losing her entire personality. I want to get after her.

I want to say, "Hey, this isn't the guy for you." And yeah, there are ways to do that. And yeah, you should. But we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. The enemy's not your daughter. The enemy's not her punk boyfriend, the enemy is the devil. He goes on to say, "Slaves, obey your masters." Oh-oh, slaves obey your masters. Yeah. But my boss sucks.

And everybody who works for me went, "Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes, Lord, he's preaching now." But my boss is the worst. This person doesn't even follow the Lord. They have their ethics and their values are just completely out of whack. And they make these leadership decisions that just make no sense. And sometimes I just, honestly, I just want to duct tape their mouth shut and go on with my day.

We do not wrestle with flesh and blood. The enemy's not your boss. The enemy is the devil. Masters, treat your servants, oh-oh. "Masters, treat your service servants with goodwill as doing service to the Lord." Yeah. About this employee, I'm telling you like, I don't even know if they're worth the paper their paycheck's printed on. They show up to work, but that's about it. They fill a chair.

And man, honestly, they're not buying into who we are as a company. They're not producing. I feel like all I ever do is manage this one person who's this constant problem. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. The enemy is not your employee. The enemy is-

The devil.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). The enemy is not politics. The enemy is not family. Oh, but man, we're coming up on Easter. And you know what Easter means? Easter means we all have to get together and pretend we love each other because it's Jesus' holiday. And like the real one, not like Christmas. This one's serious. We really have to actually try to pretend to love one another. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.

The enemy is not your family. The enemy is not politics. The enemy is not the person on the other side of your computer screen. Not on the other side of your tweet or your Facebook post or your snap or your whatever. The enemy is the devil. Do you know who your enemy is or are you confused and think that it's a person or a system? When you are thinking about our government, do you respond like this, oh Jesus, we are in desperate need.

Our government is in desperate need of a move of God. Lord, we have leaders in place who don't know you. They're passing policy that completely dehumanizes a person before they ever even get a chance to enter into the world. Lord, we have a leader who's in desperate need of wisdom. And so God, in the name of Jesus, I proclaim that darkness will have no stronghold in the White House.

That darkness and the work of the enemy and Satan will have no stronghold in Colorado's houses of public policy. I proclaim in the name of Jesus, that those places will be filled with Bible believing, Jesus loving men and women of God full of grace and truth and wisdom to advise those in leadership, to lead us in a way that honors and glorifies you as our King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Is that your response to the government? Or do you slap a Let's Go Brandon bumper sticker on your car and call it a day? Some of you aren't laughing. Some of you aren't laughing because your politics have more of your heart than your savior does and the devil loves it. Enough. Enough. Your enemy is not a system. Your enemy is the devil. His greatest trick is teaching us that he doesn't exist.

The people at Antioch had crystal clarity about out who their enemy was and it wasn't Paul. As much as they wanted it to be him, it wasn't Paul. And that kind of love changed history. That kind of love changed history. We can hardly even be around people who annoy us, let alone, love our enemies so transformationally well that it changes history.

I'm worried, with all the love in my heart, that our curated lives are killing our opportunities to change the world. We push out what we don't want. We bring in only what we do. Anything that brings friction into our life, we call a problem and we get rid of it. What if the friction in your life is the place where God is calling you to invest and change the world?

If we're going to be a community that incubates world changing disciples, we must learn to see our end enemies as treasures. The people who bring friction in our lives as great gifts, who return us to the reality that God is not the sum of our preferences. He is the King of Kings, he is the Lord of Lords and the maker of people to be loved, not problems to be solved.

Can we Southeast family love so transformationally that this becomes a launching pad for world changers? That they look back at their time at Southeast and they say, "Man, those people knew how to image Jesus Christ. And they knew who their enemy was. They were praying people and they fought well. They fought correctly. Not with each other, not with culture. They did battle in the heavenly places. They did battle in the spirit where the work really gets done."

You can almost understand why Paul writes these words and Colossians. And Colossians 1 it says this, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake." Again, this is Paul writing. And remember his time, this year he spent in this transforming community of Antioch. "And in my flesh I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church."

"Of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." This is what I'm talking about by the image of Christ increasing in us.

Is the image of Jesus ever, ever increasing? Is the cry and the mission of your life, "Christ, increase in me. Jesus, make me look more like you. Jesus, just let me be skin over your heart. Lord, just show me how to love like you do. Show me how to live like you do. Christ, be formed in me." Is that the mission and the cry of your heart? Because Christ in you is the hope glory.

And now I'm going to get dangerous, but we're going to do it. Christ in government is not the hope of glory. Christ in the workplace, not the hope of glory. Christ in schools is not the hope of glory. Christ in you is the hope of glory. Get Christ in you, and then go to the government. Get Christ in you, and then go to work. Get Christ in you, and then go to school.

And then all of a sudden Christ is everywhere you are. We are to the image bears who love transformationally. If Christ has first invaded you, can carry him anywhere you want. And it doesn't matter what anybody says. Any circumstance you find yourself in, legislation can't do that. Mandates can't do that. Protests can't do that. This sermon can't do that. You can. You can be incubators for world changers.

You can image Christ and love enemies in a way that changes the course of history. The question is, will you? Will you? It's in you to do. The question is, will you? The church at Antioch did, and it changed the world beginning with one man named Paul. They welcomed him, forgave him, loved him and learned from him. Can we do the same? There's a piece of verse 26 at the end that I've been intentionally leaving out.

Paul spends a year with this church in Antioch, the man who dragged their mothers and fathers into prison, the man who oversaw the execution of their brothers and sisters and friends was welcomed into their community as a beloved member and teacher. And because Barnabas saw in them the potential for this to happen and because they lived and loved the way that they did, verse 26 ends this way.

"And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians." The word Christian means little Christ. It means Christlike. Yeah, that kind of feels right. Doesn't it? When you think about the way this church in Antioch loved their enemy, it would make sense that in that place, this term that we know and love and call ourselves was first used. Question is this, you know where I'm going already, is what made statement true then still true of us now?

Are we a transformationally loving community? Or can we barely stand to be around the people who annoy us? Do we invite the people who bring friction into our lives in order to honor them and love them and transform them? Or do we push them away because it's uncomfortable? Do we invite Jesus to mess with our lives and our hearts so that we're continually conformed into the image of Christ?

Or do we say, "Leave me alone? This is enough. Generically Christian is fine. I don't want explicitly Christlike." You can do that. You can stage generically Christian. You're just never going to change the world. I want to change the world. I want Southeast Christian Church to change the world. I want us to make disciples that make the world like nothing ever seen before.

That bring the glory of God and the kingdom of God and the love of God crashing into hearts and families and cities and governments and sports stadiums and all that kind of stuff. But it starts with you and you and you, loving your enemies and embracing the image of Christ in your life. Lots of implications today, the first one is this. The enemy of our faith is not a system. It's not a person. It is the devil.

Never be confused about that. Never be confused about that. As soon as you take the eye off the ball, the enemy begins to win. Pray in the right direction, fight in the right direction. It's not on Facebook. It's not in the comment section. It's on your knees. Implication number two. The cry of our heart and the mission of our life must be Christ, be formed in me. When others look at us, they need to see Jesus.

That's where transformation comes from. You are the image of Christ to the world. What a privilege? What a privilege? Third implication. When we love extravagantly, we look just like Jesus. When we love so well, the people stop seeing us and start seeing Christ. The people change the name that they give us, because we're so Christlike that that's just what they call us. Oh, those are those like Christers.

Those are those Jesusy people, to borrow over from Aaron. Are we Jesusy enough that everybody notices? Or just enough so we don't have to, like I don't know, get weird about it? Implication number four. Every Paul needs an Antioch. Southeast Christian Church, there is a Paul sitting in this room today. Can this place be Antioch? Can we be a launching pad that sees some of the greatest moves of God come out of transformational love and passionate image bearing?

Could we see the next Apostle Paul sitting in this room? We will never know unless we learn to love our enemies well and to image Christ. So with those ideas in mind, let's move to communion. We have this opportunity at all. We have the capacity to love our enemies well because Christ loved us first. Anyone who's been forgiven much forgives much. Anyone who has been loved much loves much in return.

And so we take this communion every week and we take it together as a family. And if you call yourself a Jesus follower, you are welcome to take communion with us, but we want you to hold onto this to the end so we each can take it together in one heart and one mind. Before you take the body and the blood, would you take a moment and call to mind that one person. Yup. That one. The one that's driving you crazy.

The one that brings the friction in your life. And would you invite God to reshape their image in your mind, into the blessing that they actually are rather than the burden that they might feel like. Go ahead and pray. (Silence) On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it. And he said, "This is my body which is broken for you. As often as you come together, do this in remembrance of me."

Let's eat. And the same way after the supper, he took the cup. And he said, "This is my blood of the covenant shed for you. As often as you get together, do this in remembrance of me." Let's drink together. Jesus, we thank you for the call to costly love. And we asked that you would find us worthy and with our hands lifted high saying, yes.