38 Acts 11:19-24 Measuring Spiritual Success Columbus Baptist Church's Podcast

Title: Measuring Spiritual Success

Text: Acts 11:19-24

FCF: We often struggle in our responsibilities to make disciples because we place too much or wrong responsibilities on ourselves.

Prop: Because God’s sovereignty and human responsibility work in perfect concert in evangelism and discipleship, we must go and make disciples of all nations.



Scripture Intro:

[Slide 1] Turn in your bible to Acts chapter 11. In a moment we will read from the scriptures beginning in verse 19 from the Legacy Standard Bible. You can follow along in the pew bible on page 1244 or in whatever version you prefer.



After officially concluding the episode of Corenlius, a God-Fearer now received into the body of Christ, Luke now continues his record of the unified and triumphant church. The Gospel continues to spread far and wide, geographically and culturally. And today we will see another first for the gospel.



Up to this point, we have only seen people come to the Messiah of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth, with a previous affiliation or familiarity with the faith of the Jews. Even Cornelius, a God-Fearer, maintained a level of intimacy with the practice of the Jewish faith.



But what about outright pagans? What about those who worship false deities? Is God able to save them directly through Christ? Would they even be able to believe on the Jewish Messiah while not being connected to Judaism at all? This question and its answer will change the trajectory of the book of Acts and the ministry of the church… forever.



Please stand with me to give honor to and to focus on the reading of the Word of God.



Prayer for Illumination:

Father, make your Word a swift Word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip and conversation; that, as the rain returns not empty, so neither may your Word, but accomplish that for which it was given. I ask this in Jesus name… Amen.



Transition:

[Slide 2] Every morning my girls go out and do chores. They feed chickens and ducks and cats. But before they go out they always consult our temperature gage to determine if they need to bundle up or not. Imagine if they go to read the gage and it says 30 degrees. So predictably they go out in their winter gear. Only to find out that the temperature is actually 30 degrees Celsius. Just in case you don’t know that 9/5 of the Celsius temperature plus 32 is the Fahrenheit, let me just tell you that 30 degrees is 86 degrees Fahrenheit. See what can happen when we start using the wrong tool to measure things? In the church we know that we are to go and make disciples. We know that. We know that God has given us certain responsibilities for His Kingdom on earth. But if we are measuring our success by Celsius when we should be measuring by Fahrenheit… we are bound to be disappointed or overwhelmed. What is our scale to measure whether we are successful or not? Let’s see if the text today can answer this for us.



I.) God’s sovereignty and human responsibly work in concert together in evangelism, so we must go and make disciples of all nations. (19-21)

a. [Slide 3] 19 – So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone.

i. The emphatic particle here that is translated “...