Send Them

Send them

Theological Proposition/Focus: The local church has been tasked with the job of actively working to send people out to preach the Gospel.

Homiletical Proposition/Application: Together as a church, we should be actively looking to send people on mission to preach the Gospel.

Introduction

Setting the Stage:

We just came out of our VBS week and are heading into our Missions Trip Week. Starting on Tuesday, our church is sending six individuals to Costa Rica with the explicit purpose of preaching the Gospel and assisting churches as they seek to proclaim the Gospel. Today, I want to dive into our reasons for pursuing this path as a church. Why should a church participate in something like this?

Body

The invitation — more than fire insurance, God is offering you the opportunity to work alongside Himself (Romans 10:13-15).

Salvation is itself very simple (13).

One of the most important aspects of salvation is its universal availability and effectiveness. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. God is impartial and, whether Jew or Gentile, man or woman, slave or free, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord is saved. The message of salvation is that just as all sinned, just as all are subject to judgment, so also all are eligible for salvation.

It is worth taking a minute right here to deal with the idea of what it means to call on the name of the Lord. In Acts 3:16, Peter spoke of the significance of using the name of Jesus as a means of declaring faith in Jesus. Earlier in Romans 10, Paul explained what it means to call upon the name of the Lord. Let's read verses 9-10.

Romans 10:9-10 "If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."

Calling upon the name of the Lord is the act of declaring Jesus as Savior. Let me expand just a little more.

The act of proclaiming Jesus as Lord is an acknowledgment that Jesus is God incarnate. To believe that God raised him from the dead is a heart-level belief that Jesus died for sins (implied in the statement that he was raised from the dead) and that God accepted that payment for sin, raising Jesus as proof of that acceptance.

So what is required for salvation? Something very simple: to call on Jesus for salvation. That call is a call of complete dependence on the God of the universe for salvation. Implicit in that call is the belief that the cross was efficacious to allow salvation, which is the simple Gospel we know. Jesus died on the cross to pay for sin and rose from the dead.

Salvation is very simple! There is no formula, magical incantation, set of steps, training, or anything like that. Salvation is simple!

Despite being simple, salvation is not well understood by many (14).

In general, people don't like simple. I cannot tell you how many times someone has come into my office to ask me a life question, and my answer is very simple, to which they look at me and say, "It's that simple?" What I mean is that we want to like simple, but we are always looking for ways to make things more complicated. It seems to be a human tendency to make things more complicated.

In our basement, we have a TV and a fancy sound system, and all the wires are hidden behind the walls and so on. One day, Emily asked me, "How can I just watch TV? I mean, without all the other steps of turning on all the equipment? I just want the TV to come on and work." I looked at her and said, "Oh, that's not possible; you have to follow all these steps exactly." You can imagine she was not thrilled. It seems like a human trait to make things complicated.

I find the same thing to be true when it comes to salvation. People like to add to it and inevitably complicate it. In verse 14, Paul brings to light an important reality. Everyone can be saved, but only by believing in Jesus. How are they going to believe if they do not know the true message of the Gospel?

According to a 2023-2024 Pew Research Center study, "62%" of U.S. adults identify as Christian, and this is a decrease from previous results However, a 2021 study showed that only 24% would describe themselves as having a conversion or born-again faith . This leads me to conclude that a large number of people believe themselves to be Christian but lack a true faith in Jesus for salvation. Even though the Gospel is simple, I think it is fair to say it is widely misunderstood.

Hence, there is a desperate need for people who are willing to preach the Gospel (15).

Paul's point in verse 15 is that God, in His wisdom, has chosen to work through human heralds. Part of that work through humans includes the work of sending people. The sending of people to preach the Gospel occurs at multiple levels.

On one level, the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20 applies to everyone, so each and every one of us is sent. On the other hand, as we will see in the next passage, the church has the job of recognizing the sending work of God in some specific cases.

Regardless, what we have is the reality that God is offering the opportunity for us to participate directly in the spread of the Gospel.

MTR: Determine to preach the Gospel in your context and consider finding a new context from which to preach the Gospel.

According to the numbers, three out of four people you meet are probably not going to Heaven! We need to preach the Gospel.

The responsibility — the local church bears responsibility for commissioning and sending individuals (Acts 13:1-3).

The book of Acts is a wonderful text describing the first 30 or so years of the church. We see the church begin its work in Jerusalem and the spread of that work outward to the very heart of the Roman Empire. By the time we get to Acts 13, we are in an interesting position.

Before Acts 13, the church of Antioch had become a vital center for the growing Christian movement and a key location in the life of the Apostle Paul. Following the persecution that arose after Stephen's martyrdom, believers scattered and preached the Gospel beyond Jerusalem, with some reaching Antioch, where "a great number believed and turned to the Lord" (Acts 11:21). The Jerusalem church sent Barnabas to encourage the new believers, and he, recognizing the work of God, sought out Saul (Paul) in Tarsus and brought him to Antioch (Acts 11:25-26). For a full year, Paul and Barnabas taught the church there, and it was in Antioch that "the disciples were first called Christians" (Acts 11:26). This church also demonstrated maturity and generosity by sending relief to Judea during a famine, with Paul and Barnabas delivering the gift (Acts 11:27-30).

Acts 12 represents an interruption in the narrative about Paul and Barnabas, but Acts 12:25 brings the focus back to Antioch with the return of both Paul and Barnabas to Antioch.

The local church sends its own (1).

In verse 2, we see the Holy Spirit sending Paul and Barnabas for a special mission, but before we get to verse 2, we need to notice something important in verse 1. The church of Antioch sent its own out as missionaries.

There are lots of ways to measure church health, and sending people out is not the only measure of health, but I want to emphasize something here: churches should send people out. Scholars estimate that Acts 13 takes place sometime around AD 47, probably about 14 years after the crucifixion. Therefore, we have a situation where, early in the church's life, the church is sending people out, sending its own out!

I want us as a church to grow a vision for sending people out. This may be short-term mission trips, or it may be full-time missionaries, but I want us to be the church in Antioch where we, in the midst of our daily life as a church, are responsive to the leading of the Holy Spirit and send people out on mission.

The Holy Spirit is responsible for calling individuals to ministry (2).

I say that I want us as a church to do it, but it is really important that we start by remembering that it is not us but rather the Holy Spirit. We merely recognize the calling that the Holy Spirit is placing on people in our midst.

Verse 2 here in Acts 13 tells us that the Holy Spirit led the church to set Paul and Barnabas apart for the work he had appointed. History will go on to tell us much about this work, but for now, I want us to just see that the Holy Spirit appoints people to serve, and the church recognizes that. It is interesting that the text tells us nothing about how the Holy Spirit communicated this to the church.

I think that today this can happen in a variety of ways, from the incredible experience of someone receiving a very specific call to the not as flashy but equally incredible case of the Holy Spirit working out all the details. I will tell you that when we first set out to form our missions trip team, I was not sure who exactly would go; there were a lot of people expressing interest, but slowly, and as I look back, intentionally, the Holy Spirit formed the team we have.

No matter how it happened, the reality is that it happened. The Holy Spirit called Paul and Barnabas to a specific ministry task.

The local church recognizes and commissions (3).

The response of the local church here is very important. The church acted together as a church. The text tells us they fasted (this tells us we don't know how long they took to confirm the call), prayed, and when it was clear, they placed hands on them and sent them off.

What I want you to realize right here is what the church did not do. The church did not call the disciples in Jerusalem and ask them to come and do the commissioning. The church did not press pause and say, "Surely God wants someone else, not our leaders Paul and Barnabas; we need to hold onto them."

We need to recognize that the local church has autonomy and even responsibility.

Image: Commissioning here in a bit

Here in just a bit, we are going to do a commissioning for our missions team. This is not an ordination, but it is also not a trivial matter. We are going to be recognizing that God is sending six individuals on a very specific mission to reach the lost. This is not a lifetime commission but a short commission for a specific purpose. Nevertheless, this is a commission, and I am convinced it is a stepping stone to bigger commissions that we will eventually do as a church. So today, we start small, but that does not mean we don't have a responsibility.

The work — in preaching the Gospel, you never know exactly what will happen, but God does (Acts 13:4-13).

The first missionary journey was underway. I like to consider myself to be an adventurous person, but the adventures of Paul are nothing short of extraordinary.

The proper response to the call from God is to preach the Gospel (4-5).

With their commission behind them, our team sets out. The first destination was a seaport 16 miles from the city of Antioch; from there, they found a ship and set out for Cyprus. Cyprus was the homeland of Barnabas and would have provided an important first place to begin their work, as there would have been some familiarity.

In Cyprus, the team began their work in the largest city on the eastern half of the island, Salamis. We learn that there was not one but rather more than one synagogue in the city, telling us there must have been a sizable Jewish population. So, Paul and Barnabas began by preaching the Gospel.

I want you to recognize a couple of things. First, Paul and Barnabas are strategic; they started in familiar territory with familiar people. Second, Paul and Barnabas were quick. The text does not tell us that they spent a lot of time getting things ready. No, it seems that with a strategy in place, they set out to simply do the work of preaching the Gospel.

The individual who is called to preach the Gospel must be strategic, but strategy can never get in the way of the Gospel itself. After COVID hit, one of us—I won’t say who—posted a sign on the conference room door at the University that read, "Wow, those meetings really could have been just an email." We had some good laughs, but there is something to it. We can sometimes get so lost in strategy that we forget the mission: preach the Gospel.

The one who preaches the Gospel will face opposition (6-11).

But even as you go forward, remember you have not been promised it will be easy. In fact, Jesus stated in John 15:20, "Remember what I told you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also." That is, there will be opposition in ministry.

While traveling through the island of Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas arrived in Paphos, where they encountered Bar-Jesus, a Jewish false prophet and sorcerer who worked with the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus. Curious about the Gospel, Sergius Paulus invited Barnabas and Saul to speak to him. However, Elymas (another name for Bar-Jesus) opposed them and tried to prevent the proconsul from believing. In response, Saul (also called Paul), filled with the Holy Spirit, rebuked Elymas sharply, calling him a deceiver and enemy of righteousness. Paul then declared that God's hand was against Elymas and pronounced temporary blindness on him as judgment.

The missionary journey had only just begun, and already opposition had arisen. If you are going to go on mission, you need to be ready for the reality that you may face opposition!

But the Word of God does not return void (13, Isaiah 55:11).

The ending of the story is wonderful; opposition occurred, but the result of opposition was belief! In Isaiah 55:11, God declares the power of His Word: "So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Upon seeing the miracle, interest blossoms and becomes faith.

Image: It seems that historically, opposition, in fact, brings great growth.

Opposition to Christianity in the Roman Empire, rather than extinguishing the movement, often served to strengthen and spread it. Early Christians faced persecution from both Jewish authorities and Roman officials who saw the new faith as a threat to religious tradition and civic order. Yet, this very resistance often drew attention to the courage, moral integrity, and community life of Christians. As Tertullian famously wrote, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." The willingness of believers to suffer and even die for their faith caused many observers to question what could inspire such devotion—leading some to explore and ultimately embrace the Christian message.

The resilience of Christians under pressure, combined with their acts of charity, inclusion, and unwavering hope in the face of suffering, gave the movement a credibility that no imperial decree could suppress. Ironically, it was often in times of greatest resistance that the church grew the most.

A powerful and well-documented example comes from the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity in Carthage around AD 203 during the reign of Septimius Severus. Their story is preserved in the text known as The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, one of the earliest and most vivid Christian martyrdom accounts.

The story:

Perpetua was a young Roman noblewoman and new Christian, and Felicity was her enslaved companion. Both were catechumens (new believers preparing for baptism) when they were arrested for their faith. Despite intense pressure from her pagan father to renounce Christianity for the sake of her child, Perpetua remained firm. While in prison, they were baptized and strengthened one another in faith.

They were eventually sentenced to death in the arena—the circus—where wild beasts and gladiators would kill them as public spectacle. Before their execution, Perpetua reportedly had visions of heaven and of spiritual victory. On the day of their death, the women showed remarkable peace and courage, encouraging one another even as they faced wild animals and the sword. Their public testimony—especially Perpetua's calm dignity and unwavering faith—deeply impacted the crowd.

Result:

While no single individual's conversion is named in the sources, the fact this story has been preserved shows ua that that their martyrdom became widely known and circulated among Christians and even non-Christians. These martyrdom accounts functioned as evangelistic literature, and in the case of Perpetua and Felicity, the courage of young women facing brutal execution made a profound impression on Roman society, challenging stereotypes about Christians and women .