By God’s grace, take the long way home
Passage: Acts 14:21-28
Big Idea: By the grace of God, go with him to make and strengthen disciples, for he has opened the door of faith to all nations.
1. The long way home: Making and strengthening disciples
2. Good to be home: Mission report of God’s grace
3. Welcome home, stranger! God opens his door of faith
Have you heard of the term, ‘going an extra mile’?
It’s a term that’s often been used in hospitality or retail industries to describe someone who did more than what was expected for a customer.
I once heard of the story about a mother who spent a few days at the Ritz-Carlton with her two young children.
When they got back, her son discovered that his toy giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing.
The mother told the son that Joshie had probably spent an extra few night at the Ritz.
That night, someone from Ritz called the mother and told her that they found Joshie.
The mother also told the staff about Joshie taking a longer ‘holiday’.
And so, a couple of days later Joshie came back in the mail, along with some photos of Joshie ‘enjoying’ himself at the Ritz!
That’s going the extra mile!
Did you know that the term ‘extra mile’ actually came from Jesus’ teaching in Matthew chapter five verse forty-one: If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two.”
In today’s passage, two of Jesus’ followers went not just one extra mile but many extra miles for the sake of other Christian disciples.
They weren’t forced to do it, but they willingly and happily walked these extra miles for them.
Why would they go the extra mile for these Christian disciples?
Why should you and I also go the extra mile for other Christian disciples?
That’s what we’ll see in today’s passage.
Please open with me to Acts chapter fourteen beginning from verse twenty-one. We’ll see three things:
1. The long way home: Making and strengthening disciples
2. Good to be home: Mission report of God’s grace
3. Welcome home, stranger! God opens his door of faith
But before we look into it, let’s pray, “Father, thank you for sending your Son our Lord Jesus Christ from your heavenly home to our home here on earth, in order to prepare the way, to be the Way, for us to come to you. By your Holy Spirit, please help us to listen and to act according to your word, for we pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.”
1. The long way home: Making and strengthening disciples
Last week, we read that Paul was stoned by the people of Lystra.
Though they thought he was dead, he got up and went back into the city.
The next day, they left for the town of Derbe, almost 100km east of Lystra.
The Bible doesn’t tell us much about what they did there, except that they preached the gospel and made many disciples! That’s a summary of what Paul and Barnabas did on their mission.
They preached the gospel and they made disciples.
The two things go together.
When we preach the gospel, we want to see people become disciples of Jesus.
We want them to follow Jesus.
They also did something quite extraordinary.
Look with me at verse 21, “After they had preached the gospel in that town and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch.”
They were at Derbe and their destination was Antioch
However, they returned to Lystra, they returned to Iconium and they returned to Antioch.
They took the very, very long way home.
Peter and I were at a conference last week and the Archbishop Kanishka came at night to be our special speaker.
He stayed and talked with us for a long time and then he had to go home. However, because it was raining, one of the main roads coming to the camp was closed.
And so, the Archbishop had to go down south to a suburb called “Waterfall” and then come back up north.
That would’ve added almost an hour to his journey.
He had no choice but to take the long way home.
Paul and Barnabas had a choice, and they still took the long way home. Why? Because they wanted to strengthen the disciples they made at each place where they’ve been making disciples.
Literally, they went back to strengthen the disciples’ souls, their innermost person. These cities weren’t friendly places for Paul and Barnabas.
Paul and Barnabas fled Iconium because they threatened to stone them there.
Paul was stoned at Lystra and probably still had the scar to prove it.
Both Paul and Barnabas were strongly opposed at Pisidian Antioch.
They didn’t have to, but they wanted to go back to these hostile towns because the new disciples in these towns needed to be strengthened.
The new disciples in these towns didn’t follow Jesus because it was the trendy thing to do.
They didn’t follow Jesus because they would be safer!
It’s the opposite!
If they were to follow Jesus, these new disciples would face strong oppostion and will probably be even persecuted.
But they followed Jesus anyway because it’s the right thing to do, it’s what God wants them to do.
To live a Christian life is to live a hard life, and so Paul and Barnabas went back through these towns to strengthen them.
They encouraged these new disciples to continue in their faith.
That’s such an important thing for these new disciples to hear!
For a Christian going through the troubles and the difficulties of life, it can feel like they are living the Christian life by their own strength.
However, the Christian life is and always will be by faith.
It’s by faith, by their trust in Jesus, that they became followers of Jesus.
It’s also by their faith in Jesus that they continue their walk with Jesus.
They must trust Jesus to help them live the kind of life he told them to live.
Paul and Barnabas also reminded them that it’s necessary to go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.
The path that God has prepared for Jesus’ followers is full of troubles.
No one is exempt, for even Jesus’ own path to the cross is full of hardship and troubles.
The path to the kingdom of God is hard because the world, the devil and our own flesh, our own sinful hearts, oppose God and will do everything they can to stop us from entering God’s kingdom.
Now that doesn’t mean that our entry into the Kingdom of God is the result of our hard work.
Paul and Barnabas has preached and taught that it’s by trusting in Jesus that we’re saved.
We’re saved because of what God has done for us in Jesus.
It’s all God’s work and not ours.
That’s the Good News.
And so, since God has called us and saved us in Jesus, we’re to stay with Jesus.
We’re not to leave Jesus when hardships come.
Instead, we run to Jesus.
We don’t trust in our own strength, our cleverness or even our resilience to take us through hardships.
We trust in Jesus to take us through our hardships.
We continue in faith in Jesus, we keep trusting him – that’s how we go through the hardships that comes with entering God’s kingdom.
We need to remain true to the faith.
And to help them continue in their faith, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in the churches.
Look with me at verse 23, ‘When they had appointed eldersa for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.’
Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for each church that they’ve preached in.
The elders are there to strengthen the believers in each city.
They’re there to help the believers stay focused on Jesus.
When hardships come, and they will, these elders will remind the church to turn to Jesus and to keep trusting in him.
And so, Paul and Barnabas remind these new Christians that being a Christian will mean going through hardships.
And throughout these hardships, they’re to keep trusting in Jesus.
When we come together as the Church, we want to go out and make as many disciples as possible.
We also want to be physically present at church, to strengthen fellow disciples as much as we can.
We come together to remind each other that we must continue in our faith and we must keep trusting in Jesus together.
This cycle (KOG Cycle) is what I’ve been using to show our leaders where we fit in our Church.
As a Church, we go out to make disciples by sharing the Gospel in schools, through the Mobile Community pantry, the Easy English classes, on the streets, and through missions.
We want people to see and hear the Gospel.
That’s the right side of the cycle.
Once people come in, we want to strengthen them.
That’s why we have Meet the Ministers, Growth groups, KOGYouth, KOGKids, one-to-one discipleship, and the School of Christian Living.
We know that living the Christian life is hard, and we want to help each other focus on the Lord Jesus.
As we’re strengthened and grow in our faith in the Lord Jesus, we want to keep strengthening one another.
And so, we feed back into the cycle, making disciples and strengthening them.
And over time, we want to go out and start new cycles and make and strengthen even more disciples.
Jesus’ church has been in the business of making and strengthening disciples since the very beginning.
If we belong to God, then we’re part of God’s family and making and strengthening disciples is the family business.
The apostles Paul and Barnabas literally went the extra mile to not only make disciples but to also strengthen disciples.
What’s your role in God’s family business?
Are you making disciples or are you strengthening disciples? How are you going the extra mile for the sake of other Christians?
2. Good to be home: Mission report of God’s grace
After passing through Pisidia and Pamphylia, Perga and Attalia, they finally sailed back home to Antioch.
Now, just to be clear, there are two towns called Antioch mentioned in this passage.
One is Pisidian Antioch, the Antioch in the land of Pisidia, and the other is Syrian Antioch, the city where Paul and Barnabas had begun their missionary journey.
The Church at Syrian Antioch was where they were commended to the grace of God as the Church sent Paul and Barnabas on their journey.
By the end of Acts chapter 14, Paul and Barnabas were back where they had begun, and they were about to report to the Church all that had happened.
There’s a lovely reminder here that the missionary trip wasn’t the brainchild of Barnabas and Paul.
They didn’t come up with the idea of being missionaries; it was God’s idea.
It was here at Antioch that Paul and Barnabas were commended to the grace of God and were entrusted to go on this journey according to the grace of God.
I still remember when I was very young and came to Australia to visit for the first time.
We went to Taronga Zoo, and my cousins and I were in strollers.
Yes, I was too big to be in a stroller at that age, but that’s not the point of the story.
It was the end of the day, and all the adults decided to have some fun with the kids.
So, they started to race each other by pushing their stroller, with the kid still in it.
I still remember telling my uncle, “Faster, Uncle, faster!”
Yes, my other cousins may be only two or three years old, and they were my uncle’s daughters, but hey, I was a competitive kid.
Even if I had won, I couldn’t take any credit.
It was my uncle was the one who did all the running, not me.
Similarly, when Paul and Barnabas completed their mission, they couldn’t take any credit.
It was all God’s grace and work.
Yes, the mission trip was hard, tiring, and dangerous, but ultimately God himself gave them everything they needed to complete it.
The whole Church gathered together to hear their report.
They had all prayed and sent them out, and they wanted to know what had happened.
What did they report?
Look with me at the first part of verse 27, “After they arrived and gathered the church together, they reported everything God had done with them”
They reported on what God had done with them.
It was a beautiful way to report on a mission or any ministry, really.
It was all about what God had done.
You can imagine Barnabas telling the Church how the people of Iconium had plans to mistreat them and they had to flee the place.
And for show and tell, Paul might show the Church the bruises he still has from the time when the people of Lystra stoned him.
And they’ll both tell the church that it’s all God’s work.
It’s God who has rescued them through all the hard times; it’s God who’s rescued them from the Jews and the Gentiles.
It’s what God has done!
That’s how they glorified God!
To glorify God means we want to make God look good! And God looked awesome when Paul and Barnabas told the Church
And more than that, this awesome God is the very One who went on the missionary trip with Paul and Barnabas.
Paul and Barnabas reported on what God had done with them.
Isn’t it amazing to work with God, by the grace of God, telling the good news of God as given through the Son of God?
Over the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of leading a group of potential and even practising Growth Group leaders in the School of Christian Living ministry. It’s been a joy to see them work through these topics, wrestle with God’s word, and apply it in Bible talks or lessons.
It was great to see Rudy presented on Christian service, while En Bo discussed filial piety (that is, looking what the Bible says honouring our parents).
Today, Zoe, Jenny, and Rupert will present on subjects they’ve chosen.
I can’t wait to hear their presentations!
It’s a wonderful thing to see that they’ve finally completed their training!
It’s all God’s grace.
While they’ve completed their training, the real challenge begins.
They are to continue to seek God’s will, to do God’s will, and to teach and command others to do God’s will.
And they will do this, remembering that it’s all God’s grace.
I thank God for everyone who serves at Church.
Wouldn’t it be great when we stop and review our ministries, that we can declare with joy what God’s done with us and among us?
We thank God that he’s given us the grace to do these ministries, not by ourselves but with God himself by our side.
3. Welcome home, stranger! God opens his door of faith
What has God done with Paul and Barnabas?
A lot, but the focus of their report was this: God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
Barnabas and Paul preached the good news of Jesus to both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jewish people).
What’s been amazing is that God has opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. It looked like many, many Gentiles had come to know the Lord Jesus as a result of their mission. Many Gentiles had come through God’s door of faith.
Up until this point, it was the Jews who were the chosen people of God.
The Gentiles, including most if not all of us here, seemed like outsiders, strangers, to God’s blessings. But now, Gentile strangers are welcomed into the home of God because God had opened his door of faith to people like us.
When I was still a Bible College student, we would often go to places that are far from home and so we would stay in somebody else’s home.
I thank God that even though I’ve never met these people before, they opened their homes to us and welcomed us into their homes for a week while we were on mission.
They would often say this line, “Make yourself a home”.
I thank God for these amazing hosts but the most amazing Host of course, is God himself.
God had opened the door of his home, that is heaven, to people like us and he invites us in.
He wants us to be in His Home.
However, the door of heaven is a door of faith.
We must trust in God and all that he’s done for us in the Lord Jesus, in order to go through.
There’s no other door to heaven.
You can’t buy yourself to heaven, you can’t work your way to heaven, you can’t even try your best to get to heaven because your best won’t cut it.
You have to trust in Jesus, you have to go through the door of faith, in order to enter God’s home.
To trust him is not merely knowing in your head that what God’s said is true.
To trust him means to depend on him and his word, especially when life is hard, when the world, when your family, when your workplace hate you because you’re a Christian.
The door to heaven is a door of faith, and the gospel of Jesus is the key.
There’s only one door to heaven, with only one key to open the door.
God’s opened this up to all nations when he opened the door of faith to them.
He offers people from everywhere to come in, as the put their trust in our Lord Jesus.
Our Church, St Paul’s Anglican Kogarah, is part of the Sydney Anglican Diocese. There are many people of many backgrounds in our diocese.
While we thoroughly believe that the door of faith has been opened to people of all cultures and all nations, we still fall woefully short on reaching the different groups of people in this city.
And so, later this month, the Archbishop has invited every Anglican in the diocese to the One for All Conference.
It’s a conference to help us think about how we can reach the different cultures together.
I’ll be one of the seminar leaders and I’ve had a good chat with my co-leader just last week.
My prayer is that it will be the beginning of a new wave of outreach to the people of our city of Sydney.
For us here in Kogarah, we hope to do our part as we keep on strengthening our Chinese speaking brothers and sisters as we continue to build on the parallel service in the Hall and as those of us who speak English continue to strengthen other brothers and sisters in this congregation.
It will be hard work, but by God’s grace, we want to invite as many people as we can to come to the Kingdom of God through the door of faith.
And so, why should you go the extra mile for a Christian disciple?
Because that’s what the grace of God leads us to do.
And God doesn’t just lead us; God goes with us, so that we have the strength to go the extra mile to make disciples and strengthen disciples.
And so, by the grace of God, go with him to make and strengthen disciples, for he has opened the door of faith to all nations.
In 1786, Richard Johnson was working as an assistant minister in London.
He liked it there.
During that year, the British Government had decided to establish a colony in NSW.
In time, Richard Johnson’s name was suggested as the chaplain to the colony.
And so, Johnson came to Australia with the first fleet in 1787.
However, Johnson soon realized that he needed extra help.
And so, Samuel Marsden was appointed as a second chaplain in 1793 and sailed to NSW later that year.
In his pocket, he carried a letter from John Newton (the man who wrote Amazing Grace) to Richard Johnson.
In the letter were these words,
‘You are sent to lay the foundation upon which others will build; and it will be more clearly seen by posterity than at present that the Lord directed you by His counsel, and upheld you by His arm of power.
This is a greater honour than if you had been made a Bishop, or Archbishop, or Cardinal or Pope.’
God had opened the door of faith to the people of Australia through the work of Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden.
They were ordinary people who were commended to the grace of God to do the work of God, which they did by proclaiming the good news of the Son of God.
Where is God leading you by his grace today?
Here are three questions to help us think about how God’s been leading us by his grace:
1. Who are you making into a disciple?
2. Who do you strengthen to be a disciple?
3. God opened his door of faith to all nations. How are we ushering the nations in?
By the grace of God, go with him to make and strengthen disciples, for he has opened the door of faith to all nations.
Let’s pray, “Father, we thank you that it’s by your grace that we can come and believe in the Lord Jesus. Father, please keep us in your grace. When hard times come, strengthen us so that we will enter your Kingdom by faith. Thank you that you have not left us alone, but by your Holy Spirit, you’re always with us. Give us the strength to go the extra mile to make and strengthen more disciples, so that you will be glorified, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.”