The Holy Spirit Sends Out
Sermon on Acts 13.1-12
Title: The Holy Spirit Sends Out
Theme: The Holy Spirit sends his people out for winning over others to Christ’s Kingdom.
Goal: to motivate Christians that the Holy Spirit sends us out for winning over other’s to Christ’s Kingdom
Need: Often Christians avoid being sent out because life is too busy already.
Outline
1. Introduction
a. The Holy Spirit Sends Believers to minister to the world.
b. The Church recognizes and releases those called by the Holy Spirit
c. The Holy Spirit works his power through those who are sent.
2. Conclusion
Sermon in Oral Style
The doctor at a hospital-health spa and his business minded brother accidentally changed mornings forever. They were making some dough for the special diet they promoted. No Meat, Alcohol, caffeine. But while they baked some of the grain, they were called away and it was all stale. Having not much money they put it through the regular rollers that they used, and found out that it just crushed the grain into flakes. They toasted these flakes. Liking the taste, they experimented by putting them in milk. In 1894 breakfast was accidently changed by brothers with the last name Kellogg. Accidentally, they created what would become corn flakes cereal. They changed breakfast forever with the invention of cold cereal.
Well, it had to start somewhere. Everything does.
The huge growth of believers in Jesus Christ had to start somewhere. Last week, Pentecost, we celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit. We saw how the Holy Spirit recreated the community of God`s people. Their learning, loving, and worshipping deepened. Spiritually, they thrived in the community together.
We know at that first Pentecost the number of believers swelled by over 3000 people. But these were mostly Jewish people from all over who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. These believers brought the message of Pentecost back with them to their home areas. But the influence of Jesus Christ in peoples lives only went as far as these Jewish people and the people they came in contact with.
If God limited the spread of the holy Spirit community to that, we couldn`t have a relationship with Christ, the Gentiles that most of us are.
Everything has to start somewhere. In the book of Acts and in the history of the Christians church, this is a huge first. Believers going to the Gentiles.
The Holy Spirit sends out.
We hear it loud and clear in verse 4. What’s it say. 4The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus.” Sent by who? The Holy Spirit.
The renewed community of faith has changed. Now the Holy Spirit selects some people, called to special tasks. The one mentioned in our passage, the Holy Spirit sends believers to the non Jewish world. The Holy Spirit led the new believers to faithfulness in their learning, loving and worship. Now he makes this new community into a community sent out into the world.
This world wide church of Jesus Christ had to expand from somewhere. The Holy Spirit sends his people out into the hostile world to teach people a new way of life through Christ.
Paul and Barnabas are the first two sent by the Holy Spirit on a mission trip of this magnitude. Mentioning missions and leaving for other places to share the truth has either caused your eyes to glaze over… “oh boy, another guilt trip about telling people about Jesus.”
Or, you get fired up. Maybe you think of a time when you went on a mission trip and one time. In our congregation many are connected with mission work that has happening in the Dominican Republic. Others of us have gone other places. The Holy Spirit still lays opportunities for missions before Christians and motivates them to tell people how to be right with God through Jesus Christ.
From our church, here the Holy Spirit has influenced the lives of people in places around the world. Christians don’t just send money and support ministry. The Holy Spirit sends us to be the ministry in the world that hasn’t accepted Christ.
What caught me by surprise in the passage is what is mentioned just before the Holy Spirit sends Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t do his work with out using the church as well. 1In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
The Sending Spirit, the Holy Spirit works with the church to spread love of Christ.
The church in Antioch has people gifted as prophets and teachers. It mentions Barnabas and Saul. But also these other gifted people. Simeon called Niger. Most scholars believe this Simeon is actually a Black man, an African Jew that was converted to Christianity. The name Niger means Black. Its possible that this Simeon was around Jerusalem during the time that Christ was crucified. Do you remember the name of the person who carried the cross of Christ? Simon of Cyrene. Simeon and Simon are the same name and the reference to another person to Cyrene makes you wonder if these are more than a coincidence. We can’t know for sure. I am not convinced that it is, but it isn’t completely out of the question.
The other interesting person of this group of gifted people is Manaen who grew up with Herod the tetrarch. He might have been a childhood friend of the most powerful Roman official in Jerusalem at the time.
With these people in the church, the Holy Spirit speaks to the entire church. The Holy Spirit speaks to the whole church while they are seeking direction from God.
What’s most striking about this to me is how important the community of faith is. Paul and Barnabas aren’t out in the middle of the woods communing with God on their own when the Holy Spirit gives them a special inspiration. It’s in the holy spirit filled community that the spirit talks. Its a vision together of that tells them who to send.
On top of that, this renewed Holy Spirit community isn’t just sitting around hoping that God gives them some passion for a direction in their lives. The whole community of people. The whole church fasts and prays. By fasting, they are emptying themselves physically of food and spiritually of preconceived notions. In their emptiness, they call for God to fill them up. They cry out that the Holy Spirit inspires their church to do exactly what God wants them to do.
Doesn’t this speak volumes about the notion some of us go with from time to time. The notion that God is happy as long as we love Jesus and that’s good enough? Doesn’t that perspective of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and morph the allpowerful loving God into an item? They become an on the list of things to do before we die. “Accept Jesus, believe in God. I did that a couple years ago. Took care of that before heading to the grocery store a couple years ago. I should be all set for heaven now.”
The Holy Spirit talks to believers who are fervently seeking to usher God’s kingdom into this world. Church is the place where we encourage each other to wait and listen for God’s will. Then to work in mind and spirit with each other to make God’s kingdom move in this world. The Holy Spirit wants us to want each other, so that together we can help others want more of the Holy Spirit.
Notice who sends in verse 3. What does it say? They. The church. The word for sending here is a little different, but it tells us that the church releases those they know the Holy Spirit has called. The Holy Spirit inspires the church to release and bless, and the Holy Spirit sends them out.
We read verses 4-12 to leave us with the inspiration of what happens when the People of the church seek God’s will. When they send out and when they allow those who are called to minister to minister in the wya they are called to. And it shows us what happens when those people are filled up with the Holy Spirit when they Go.
This first part of a life of mission work for Paul, who used to be called Saul and never is called Saul again after this passage here. This first mission of Paul see success. He brings others to be inspired to faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.
They arrive in a place that has a Jewish false prophet name Bar-Jesus or son of Salvation. This false prophet is an advisor and teacher to the main leader of the day on Cyprus. So Paul rebukes this false prophet. He says, you aren’t the son of salvation. You are the son of the devil. He commands bar-Jesus’ eyes to be blind for a time.
And through this sign of power, the leader of Cyprus is convinced that Paul and Barnabas’ teaching of Scripture is the truth. He is convinced that Jesus died on the cross. He is convinced and becomes a believer.
By the faithfulness of the church seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance and obeying the Holy Spirit’s calling. Because the Holy Spirit sent Paul and Barnabas and they followed. Because Paul and Barnabas worked through the power of the Holy Spirit, the work of Bar-Jesus met its end, and salvation reached another person.
Is that the Holy Spirit we have? With fellow believers, even outside of this building are you praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Are you feeling it when the Holy Spirit calls you into some capacity of ministry in the church or in the world? Will you allow the Holy Spirit to send you were you ought to go?
Let’s be this sort of Holy Spirit people. AMEN