Living Waters Church | October 25, 2026
Acts 11: 19-24
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A few years ago I was asked to share at a special event, so that February my wife and I boarded a plane and flew to exotic Calgary. The event was an instillation ceremony for the new president of a missionary agency. I had never been flown anywhere before, and I’d certainly never been asked to speak at a presidential installation, whatever that was. It made me feel important. I felt less important once I learned they’d asked Rikk Watts first, but he was unavailable.
Still, I had an important assignment. Share about this new president, a friend of mine, and remind those in attendance of the importance of their mission. My mandate was to encourage and inspire.
I felt great respect for those I was asked to share with. These missionaries had given decades to their work among far flung people groups that even the remotest peoples might hear the gospel. A venue was booked, food was ordered and doners were invited. The program included speeches and prayers from several of us and given the stakes the organizing committee wanted to see my notes beforehand. After all, a moment like this didn’t come around often. They wanted the evening to motivate and galvanize at the start of a new season.
I haven’t been invited back. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t go well. They just haven’t had any new presidents to install.
Barnabas
Here in Acts 11 we read about a man named Barnabas on his way to city called Antioch on an important assignment. We are learning in Acts that though there are key players, no single individual stands above the other. There are no traditional heroes here, only a main character, the Lord Jesus, who is driving the whole story forward by the wind of his Spirit. Acts reminds us that life in the Spirit together is not about compelling personalities or brilliant tactics, but the fullness of God’s presence in and among us. Which is probably why Barnabas is of note. Barnabas is repeatedly described as a person full of the Spirit.
We first meet Barnabas way back in Acts 4. Following Jesus’ death and resurrection, like a great many others Barnabas had turned to Jesus once the Holy Spirit had been given in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. He is quickly respected and trusted within the early believing community in Jerusalem, now numbering in the thousands. Barnabas is described as a generous man, selling what he could for the good of his fellow believers in Jerusalem, though he was not a Jerusalem local. Barnabas was an Israelite, but he hailed from Cyprus, a distinctly Greek island in the Mediterranean Sea. Let’s come back to Barnabas a little later.
The Gospel Spreads
From Acts 2 to 11 gospel spreads, and the author tella us how. It spreads through persecution, some of the believers scattered beyond Jerusalem, taking the news about Jesus with them. We’re told it spreads by the preaching of folks like Peter or Philip traveling to various regions. And we’re even told, as recently as chapter ten, that the gospel spreads through God giving visions to folks no believers had contact with, like a Roman military commander named Cornelius.
One of the take aways from the first ten chapters in Acts is that Jesus’ kingdom doesn’t spread by static formula or sole personality. There are patterns, but no singular equation, model or character. When things are bad for the believers, the gospel spreads. When things are good for the believers, the gospel spreads. When there are no believers around to speak of, the gospel spreads. In Acts the believers aren’t driving the expansion, it’s the work of God himself by his Spirit, the believers along for the ride. The gospel spreads intentionally, unintentionally, through known figures like the twelve disciples, through previously unknown figures like Stephen, even through nameless people like those sharing in Antioch read of a moment ago – God works through it all.
That might give us some encouragement. Many of us are fussed about getting things right. The right career path, business model, diet, exercise program, workflow system, or university course selection. If only we could find just the right fix, just the right strategy, just the right woman or man for the job, or become just the right woman or man for the job. If only we could apply more effort, optimize our day or ourselves for more affect. If we could only get it right (whatever it might be) we’d finally be successful. This is not the case with the kingdom of God. God is not limited by the right strategy, method or personality. God’s hands are not tied by the bonds of human effort. So there’s no use obsessing over models or methods when it comes to the gospel spreading through our lives or indeed our church. There is point drooling over imaginary superhero versions of ourselves or others. There is no secret formula or exact right way in which the gospel goes and grows through us. It goes and grows uniquely in every place through every person, under God’s momentum and design, not ours. Trying to organize the movement of God’s Spirit into ridged pre-determined human designs is as hopeless as trying to contain or control the wind.
Of course this doesn’t mean we haven’t a role to play. It’s just a reminder that this is God’s new creation project first, not ours. The propulsion of the gospel’s spread is not fired by human effort or intelligence. Which carries both freedom and expectation. If it’s not down to us, what’s our role? Our role is the simply commitment of paying attention and obedience. You and I are here in this place today. What might God do in this here and now? How might we cooperate with that?
Turning up each day and each season with a sense of expectancy and attention to what God might be up, and living as best we can in simple obedience – that’s our role. We don’t create God’s work, we join God’s work. We certainly can’t contain God’s work. The kingdom won’t file neatly into our spreadsheets or leadership strategies. It can turn up in those things, but it won’t be controlled by them. The kingdom of God, said Jesus, is like a small seed. It looks unassuming but will grow into the largest of plants. This is organic language, not easily quantifiable or measurable. Language of surprising growth.
Acts 11 & Antioch
In the case of Acts 11, we read that the seed of the gospel has spread north of Jerusalem up to what is now modern-day Syria and Turkey. Antioch is almost five hundred kilometers from Jerusalem and was very much a Greek city. Luke tells us that the gospel has gone up to Antioch too. Up to this point, the gospel had been shared predominantly with Jewish populations but had not yet shared with Greeks. As you read those few lines in Acts 11 it feels like a sort of unauthorized sharing. Not unauthorized by God, but by those back in Jerusalem. How did the gospel get all the way to Antioch? A little backstory.
Greek speaking Jews, like Barnabas, had come to Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival which we read about in Acts 2. They had turned to Jesus, and then been scattered because of the persecution we read about in Acts 8, fanning out again all over place, taking the message of Jesus with them. Some of them, apparently taking the message of Jesus north, began circulating beyond even their own Jewish tradition and were sharing with Greeks in Antioch. Antioch was a political and economic giant in the ancient world, the third largest city in the Roman Empire. We might even title this section of Acts “the gospel goes to the big city”. Luke adds “the Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord”. Reading on you get the sense that the Jerusalem church didn’t draw this up in their church planting strategy or a five-year plan. In other words, they are playing catch up with God.
Naturally, the believers in Jerusalem carry a sense of responsibility. The gospel was growing without an apostle or deacon at the helm or even nearby, spreading like a sort of life-giving contagion. The Jerusalem church leaders decide they should at least dispatch someone trusted to check things out up in Antioch. Who would be best to link up with these believers from Cyprus and Cyrene and the new believing community in Antioch? Who could speak the lingo, knew the cultural ins and outs? They landed on none other than Barnabas, himself from Cyprus. Maybe he even knew or was known to those believers from Cyprus now sharing about Jesus in Antioch. Most importantly, however, Barabas was full of the Spirit and full of encouragement. Barnabas is sent on this special assignment, to go check out what was happening on the frontiers of gospel expansion.
Only this marks a key moment in Acts where, geographically speaking, the whole narrative shifts. Could Antioch really be described as a frontier if there was no longer a technical centre? Until now, Jerusalem had acted as a kind of hub for the early believers, but the very presence of the growing group in Antioch would change that. The Jerusalem believers would have to start thinking differently if Jesus himself was the centre, and his Spirit was being poured out on all who trusted him. There was not just one centre, one place, one sacred location. That will become increasingly clear in the narrative as more Jesus communities sprang up all over the world. They continue to spring up. One has sprung up right here! In a way Antioch was the first place like this. A gentile-heavy, global city where the gospel took root among all sorts of people. Flash forwards a couple of thousand years and here we are.
This expansion, however, wasn’t haphazard. God was working through individuals to ensure things stayed on track. Barnabas and his special assignment to Antioch became crucial and of note for our author, Luke. “When he (Barnabas) arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.” Later we’ll hear how Barnabas and others stayed in Antioch to teach, and how the believing community there came to the rescue of the believing community in Jerusalem.
Staying True
But for now, let’s notice the one thing of note for the author when telling us about Barnabas’ first trip to Antioch. All we are told is that after taking stock Barnabas could verify this was indeed God’s work, and he was glad about it. We aren’t told he sets up a governance structure, or a model. We don’t know how the community gathered with all the Jewish and gentile complexities at play. Without the direct input from the Jerusalem leadership (that is, Jesus’ disciples), there must have been a great many unknowns and questions about how things would work in Antioch. We can only imagine the logistics, questions and problems which must have immediately arisen. What about Jewish food laws and the Greek cults of worship? How would Jewish and Gentile believers coexist? What about the cultural traditions, the hundreds of years of norms folks were used to? With lots of people joining, how would they organize themselves to ensure they loved one another as Jesus’ instructed and ensured the teaching stayed sound? The questions must have been endless, and no doubt they needed sorting out. The author doesn’t put focus on those questions here.
What should Barnabas do? Where should he start? All Luke tells us, at least at first, is that Barnabas “encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts”. For Barnabas simple devotion to Jesus was paramount. Eugene Peterson wrote, “Our work is not to make a religious establishment succeed but to nurture the gospel of Jesus Christ into maturity. Holiness cannot be imposed; it must grow from the inside.”[i]
In a moment such as this, what does the author want us to hear by recording this pivotal moment for later readers? Luke tells us that Barnabas encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. In other words, Jesus had brought them together and Jesus would keep them together. There were a thousand things which could divide and distract, but only one element of crucial note – staying true to the Lord.
The one thing we need know about Barnabas’ first special assignment was that he encouraged fidelity to Jesus. And that may have been significant for Luke, the very author of Acts, because our best guess is that Luke himself was a resident of Antioch. Luke himself became a believer when the gospel spread to Antioch. I wonder what the words, “stay true to the Lord with all your heart” meant to Luke personally?
Hand Holding
The funny thing about belonging to a church which is meant to belong to Jesus is how quickly and easily we give ourselves away to other things. We can so easily become unfaithful, giving our hearts away to a thousand little problems, opportunities, frustrations and differences. Maybe more than ever, we are prone to inattention and distraction. The headlines, the scare tactics, the new technological bells and whistles. We are enticed by obviously unholy things. We get distracted by seemingly good things. We wander off. Maybe not literally (though sometimes literally), but we wander spiritually. We give other things authority, take our marching orders from our appetites and egos or ideas. And sometimes we mean well. What makes something an idol is not first it’s goodness or badness, but it’s placement in our hearts.
More badness than goodness is not our problem. Idolatry is our problem. What we love, what we worship, what we serve. Or in different language, what takes up our attention and focus, giving direction to our actions.
Following Jesus can be hard, but it’s not complex. There are a lot of things we could do while following Jesus; a lot of things we assume might even help us or help others follow Jesus. But there is really only one thing we must do: remain. Remain with the Lord. A translation maybe a little closer to the original language reads, “with purpose of heart, remain with the Lord.” Remain with the Lord. Just stay. Just stick with Jesus. Stay longer with Jesus. You are going to be tempted to wander off, but just stay with the Lord.
The word Luke uses here in Acts 11 to “remain with the Lord” is the same root word Jesus uses in John’s gospel the night before his death he tells his disciples, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” (John 15:4) John gets, I think, even closer to the truth of our relation to God through Jesus. It is not only that we remain with Jesus. We are to live in, to stay in him.
But in Acts 11 this root word for remain is slightly different. Barnabas tells the first believers in Antioch to “continue in” or “stay longer in” the Lord. It’s an intensification of remaining or abiding. Keep remaining. Stay longer. With all your hearts, keep staying with the Lord.”
A couple of weeks ago we took our young children to the Cranberry Festival here in Fort Langley. The streets were filled with thousands of people, dozens of market stalls and endless distractions and enticements which could take our kids’ attention. In short, it was a day when they could easily wander off. Our sole instruction to them before stepping out the door was simple, however: keep hold of mummy or daddy’s hand. Stay close. Don’t wander off. Things could go poorly if we don’t stick together. Anything is possible if you stick with us.
Following Jesus can be hard, but it’s not complex. There are a lot of things we could do when following Jesus. But there is only one thing we must absolutely do. Sink our hearts into Jesus. Stay long with Jesus. There is no life apart from him. No unity apart from him. No goodness apart from him. Do not get distracted or enticed by false gods. If you do anything, says Barnabas, stay long with Jesus. That is the most special assignment for every believer.
That is our special assignment this week. Hold his hand. Stay longer with Jesus. Do not fret about the weeks following, stay longer with him now. There is no other task. Nothing greater. Stay long. Hold tightly.
[i] Peterson, Eugene, Under the Unpredictable Plant, p.133
