Sermon Tone Analysis

A sharp disagreement arose...

A sharp disagreement arose…

, “And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.”

Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.

But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.

Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.”

“And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.”

Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.

But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.

Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.”

, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.

And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh.

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

“Behaving only in a human way…” is here meant as those who are living under their own will and not within the will of God.

They serve the ‘world’ and not God.

When we witness strife and divisions within the body of Christ, the church, we are witnessing some of the worst of behaviors.

Any action taken by a true believer and disciple of Jesus that does not fall under the will of God is wrong.

Period.

Strife, disagreements and contentions leading to divisions within the body of Christ are unacceptable on many levels.

Now we may disagree with each other.

That is almost surely going to happen.

There is nothing wrong with the act of disagreeing.

Sometimes, disagreement, when handled in a spiritually mature way, can be very beneficial.

But when disagreement is acted on by the immature, contentions and divisions are very likely to be the result.

If the divisions in the body of Christ only affected us as individuals, there would not be much of a problem.

The thing that makes divisions so terrible in the body of Christ is that it makes God look bad to a world that already has a hard time believing in Him and most disagreements are about pride.

, “By insolence comes nothing but strife, but with those who take advice is wisdom.”

You will find, in your journey through the word of God that pride is something that God absolutely despises.

Yes, God hates pride; pride that is immature.

The pride that sets people against each other; the false pride that makes one man feels that they are better and above another.

People who are full of this kind of pride will rarely accept wise council from anyone.

To be well advised means that you are open to, and accept, advice.

You may or may not follow the advice.

But your self- pride will not get in the way of listening to advice from others.

It is a foolish man that does not consider the advice of other believers.

God may have set this person in your path.

Men full of false self- pride love to give advice, not receive it.

Some scholars would describe this as the beginning of Paul’s second missionary journey.

More precisely, however, it forms the first part of a bridge (15:36–16:5) between events following the Jerusalem Council (15:30–35) and Paul’s entrance into fresh territories (16:6ff.).

At this stage, he simply revisits churches planted on the first journey, to strengthen them by delivering ‘the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey’ (16:4–5).

Luke also has another purpose for this bridge passage.

He shows how Paul and Barnabas were agreed on the strategy to revisit and strengthen the churches, but divided in their attitude about potential colleague.

This incident is not a incident concerning misguided pride but one that speaks about adhering to one’s principles.

Let us pray…

A sharp disagreement arose… but it was not about visiting the churches.

Luke does not hide the sharp disagreement here or the sadness of Paul’s and Barnabas parting company.

At the same time, however, he shows that good actually came out of this situation, with two mission teams being formed and one team being commended to the grace of God.

In other words, although Paul took the harder line, he did not lose the support of the church in Antioch.

a, “And after some days… this is a reference to time and this term is regularly used in that second half of the book of Acts to begin a new section or passage.

Luke uses it here as the beginning of a bridge passage which leads into the account of Paul’s second missionary campaign.

The possibility of moving into fresh territory is not raised at this point, ‘although the rest of the story suggests that the idea was probably present right from the beginning’.

Went we look at 15:36b, we see Paul saying to Barnabas “… Let us return and visit the brothers …” Barnabas appears to have agreed with Paul’s proposal to go back and visit all the towns where they had preached the gospel and , gives us a further insight into the reason for the return when it says, “… in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.”

They were both passionate men, driven by a desire to preach the gospel.

Driven by a desire passion and driven by a love for God and commitment to obedience.

It leads Paul to write, “ I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” ().

No one who lacks that concern for lost souls will ever be effective in evangelism.

That lack of internal motivation is something no amount of training or mastery of techniques can overcome.

Although Paul was the greatest human evangelist in the world, his goal was to visit the brothers once again and to check on their growth.

What motivated Paul, apart from this desire for their maturity in Christ to revisit the brothers.

First, he loved them as his spiritual children.

He expressed that love to the Philippians when he wrote,

, “For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

In 1 Thess, he said,

“But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us.

For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming?

Is it not you?

For you are our glory and joy” ().

You see my brothers and sisters what is often missing from modern-day evangelism is the love for the people.

This leads too often a failure to show enough love to those led to Christ.

As a result, the evangelist does not accept responsibility for them.

Paul’s evangelism suffered from no such lack of love, however.

To the Corinthians he wrote,

“I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.

For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

I urge you, then, be imitators of me” ().

The second motive for Paul in revisiting these converts was Paul’s commitment to the most effective evangelistic strategy of all, building mature believers and not spiritual infants, who are capable of reproducing.

Paul wanted them to become fathers in the faith, because fathers reproduce!

His commitment to maturing believers mirrored that of our Lord Jesus Christ who spent most of His time with only twelve men.

Paul knew that, as an apostle, he was given as a gift to the church.

, “To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

In the long run, the work of a well-taught, mature, spiritually strong local congregation has a far greater impact than massive evangelistic crusades.

, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am 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.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

A sharp disagreement arose… but it was about taking John Mark to the churches.

God uses the right people, the people of His choosing, for the task He plans for them.

To that end God can and does use even the most negative circumstances to produce the most positive results.

All things work together for good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.

Here in this passage we have such a case.

, “But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with then to the work.”

So without a doubt the two agreed on the very purpose of the trip, to check on those, which they proclaimed the gospel to, but a problem arose when that discussed whom they would partner with on this journey.

Barnabas, wanted to take with them John, also called Mark, with them, then a serious division emerged.