Rise Up Men

All right, let's look in our Bibles to Acts again. We haven't been there for probably a month now. It's been a while, and for those of you who are visiting, we tried to go through the Bible book by book, different books, and we have been working through the book of Acts for probably a year, year and a half, and trying to preach the Word and give the emphasis that the Lord gives, and that's, I think, an important thing.

The Lord says certain things a hundred times, two hundred times, because he wants us to say it a hundred times or two hundred times, and some things he only mentions once or twice because he doesn't want us to make that our emphasis, and oftentimes people make gnats, camels, and camels and gnats, Jesus said, and so to avoid that, we try to preach the Word. So I'm going to look here at Acts. We're in Acts chapter 13, and I'm going to read down through the first five verses.

I want to preach to the men. I know there's many of them that are not here today, and that's the Lord's will, but I want to try to exhort the men and the young men about the need for church life and men to rise up. What's that song say? Rise up, O men of God, be done with lesser things, and that is kind of the cry here of, it seems, the Scriptures.

So let's start here in Acts 13, starting in verse number one. I'll read down through verse number five. Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas and Simeon, that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manam, which had been brought up with Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul.

That's five men there. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work, whereinto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost departed unto Seleucia, and from thence they sailed to Cyprus. And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they had also John to their minister. That's John Mark.

We'll talk about him here in a little bit. Let's pray, and then we'll look into these verses. Heavenly Father, we again acknowledge you, Lord, and so grateful this morning for the ability to come to the word of God.

If we didn't have the word of God, where would we turn? Where would we turn for truth? And in all the confusion in the world, and the lies, and the deceptions, Lord, we're thankful that we can come here, and we can see and understand the truth. Thank you for this word here, and the word of God. And Lord, we do ask your favor and blessing upon the time now as we gather together.

May the Spirit of God walk amongst us, Lord, and give us vision, open our eyes, and allow us to see greater purpose and meaning for our lives. So, Lord bless us now. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, as I've been gone for a couple of weeks, and thinking about jumping back in, I know maybe some of your minds are not back in the book of Acts, but I want to spend some time just reiterating one of the things that I see is emphasized in this book as I go through it. One of the blessings about preaching the Bible is the Lord opens up a lot of things as you go through it slowly and in order, but one of the things that has been at the central part, and I've shared it some as we've gone through the book of Acts, is how this whole book is a co-laboring with the Lord.

And you think about the early church, and all the men that are functioning, the sisters that are functioning, but actually this book is a very good testimony of the idea of co-laboring. Paul said we are co-laborers together with him, and you see this so clearly in the book of Acts. You know, I think of Jesus when he asked his disciples there, he said, pray for laborers.

I think what he's asking there is this, I'm going to be laboring. I need someone to come alongside. I need a co-laborer.

And so the idea of praying for laborers, you think of this passage that the Lord said, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. A yoke is something that you're in a work with someone else, and the Lord is not in the work in a sense by himself. He wants to be yoked with us.

Take my yoke upon you, and let's get in the work together. And so as you go through the book of Acts, what you see is the Lord working and we working alongside him, God's children and the Lord. And so when you read the book of Acts, you see all the things that God's children are doing, Peter and James and John and the rest of the apostles, but God is right along with them.

And as you go through this, you see him working. So you see them in the upper room, and I'll give you a number of examples of this. And yes, we got Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost, great sermon, Peter, but the Lord is working with him, and the Lord is giving them the gift of tongues, and he's blessing them and confirming what's happening here.

You go another chapter or two, and Peter and John are heading into the temple, and God blesses them with a healing of a lame man. And so, yeah, Peter's there, and James is there, or Peter and John are there, but the Lord is working. The Spirit of God is co-laboring with the early church, and we've seen now twice already that they're doing their labor and getting thrown in jail.

Peter's in jail, and an angel comes. God is sending the angel. God is in the work too.

He is enabling them, setting them free from the prison. And then just the last chapter in chapter 12, we saw the same thing again, an angel helping. And so, you see this over and over in the Bible, man and the Lord, God's people and the Lord.

And so, the people of God in Acts 4 are needing boldness to preach. They're being threatened. God's right in there with them, co-laboring.

Here you go, I got some boldness for you. And that boldness comes upon them and gives them the grace and strength to do the will of God. The leading of the man Philip, Philip to the eunuch.

How is Philip going to find the eunuch? Well, God helps him. They're working together. How did Peter find Cornelius? God helped them with visions and directed them together.

And so, as you go through this book, you see man working, but you see God working right beside them, and they are co-laboring together in this great work. And at the end of one of my favorite verses for this is at the end of chapter 16 in the book of Mark, after Jesus gives them the great commission to go into all the world, talks about the signs that will follow. But the last two verses say this, so then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God.

And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them. And I like that, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

And so even though the Lord is sitting at the right hand of God, by the power of his spirit and through even angels, he is accompanying us in the work. And so it is a co-laboring. And if you just follow through as we go through the book of Acts, you're going to see a lot of this.

Man working and God working to build his church. Jesus has a goal and that goal, he confessed it while he was on the earth upon this rock, I will build my church. What's the rock? It's the crucifixion, the gospel upon this rock, I will build my church.

And the book of Acts is a testimony of the church being built. Now, I want to write up here on the board, this is going to be a little bit more of a study. There are three stages to church building and you see this in the book of Acts.

The Lord is building the church and we are co-laborers together with him. The first thing you have to do is to preach the gospel and that's where the great commission starts because you need souls. You need to save souls.

And so the Lord adds to the church daily such as should be saved, Acts it still. And so the preaching of the gospel is the first thing that needs to be done. Then when you get a bunch of people together like us here, we have a congregation, there needs to be the, what's the word I used here? There needs to be the establishing of the church, establishing order in the church, order.

In other words, there needs to be offices, elders, deacons, certain gifts need to rise up in the church. And when Paul gave Titus a ministry to go forth to the fledgling churches in the book of Titus, here's what he says, tells Titus to do. To Titus, mine own son, after the common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, for this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou should set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city.

And so if you would have been in the early church and we did this here and you'd have gone and preached in an area where there was no preaching before and there would be people converted and they would start gathering together. Well, the next thing, once they gather together, the next thing you do is set things in order. By the way, God is a God of order.

God likes order. First Corinthians 14 says, let everything be done decently and in order. And so setting things in order, we're going to see some of that here today.

God is a God of order and so establishing order. And then the third thing is sustaining the body, sustaining the body. And so this is how you plant a church.

You preach the gospel, gather souls, you set things in order, and then you sustain it. You continue to sustain the church. We've been trying to do that for 31 years.

Paul in Barnabas comes to the early church there, fledgling church, and says that they're to continue in the faith, that they're through much tribulation, they enter into the kingdom of God. And so starting a church by preaching the gospel, establishing a church by setting the church in order, and then sustaining it, just sustaining the church. Now I've shared some of these things in the past, but I think this is a real blessing.

Turn with me to First Corinthians once. First Corinthians chapter 12. And God has got all the tools available to get this work done.

This is the work that the Lord is trying to accomplish. Salvation of souls, setting the church in order, and then sustaining that church. And he's given us the tools to do that.

And I'm going to jump in here. Let's go back to chapter 12, verse 1. Paul writes here, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles carried away unto these dumb idols, even as you were led.

Wherefore I give unto you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord by the Holy Ghost. Now verse 4, 5, and 6. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.

And there are diversities of operations, but it's the same God which worketh all in all. Now you notice here that these gifts are divided up into three sections. And actually these three sections actually correspond to these three areas of building the church.

You know, God has just desired to build his church. And he says, I have all the tools. I have all the gifts in order for you to do it.

And I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but the first group of gifts here is in verse number 4. It says, Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And that word gifts is the word charisma. Charisma.

You've heard the charismatic gifts. The charismatic gifts. And those charismatic gifts have a purpose.

And if you go into the book of Acts, those charismatic gifts were used during the preaching of the gospel. By the way, the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, healings, all of those were to minister to the unbeliever. They were out there while they were out preaching the gospel.

God is building his church. He says, We start by preaching the gospel, and I've got some gifts for you. You take these gifts, and you'll find in the book of Acts that when God manifests the charismatic gifts, it's out there.

That's why we don't see a lot of healings and miracles like that because we're not out there, out on the mission field preaching the gospel. And so we need to be more out and about. And those charismatic gifts, look at verse 4. It says, Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

Notice it's the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God that gives these gifts. And this group of gifts is mentioned here in verse number 7 through verse number 11. I'm going to read down through here.

And notice how the word Spirit shows up over and over again. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit with all. For to one is given by the Spirit, the word of wisdom, to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another, faith by the same Spirit.

Notice all this Spirit. And another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another, working of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another, discerning of spirits, to another, diverse kinds of tongues, to another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these work at that one and self-same Spirit.

Now these gifts, the Bible tells us, are given by the Holy Spirit of God. And, you know, the charismatics emphasize, and I think they do some things wrong. What they do wrong is they bring the gifts that are supposed to be used out there preaching the gospel to the lost, they bring them into the church.

And they make that the emphasis. And that's exactly what happened in 1 Corinthians where Paul says, tongues are not for assigned to the believer, they're for assigned to those out there, the unbeliever. And he directs them into a proper use of the gift.

And then the Lord's going to set the church in order. And so he needs certain gifts to do so, and that's the administrative gifts. And we see them in the book of, administrative, we see these in the book of Ephesians, Ephesians.

And look at verse number 5 with me. And there are differences of administrations, but it's the same Lord. In verse 4 it's the Spirit, in verse 5 it's the Lord, and in verse 6 it's God the Father.

This is the Trinity here, giving each of these gifts. So the second group of gifts here is the administrative gifts. And let me just read it to you.

We're going to look at this passage here in a little bit, but you don't have to turn there now. Listen to what it says about who gives these gifts. It's the Lord Jesus.

It says in verse 7 of chapter 4, but unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity and gave gifts unto men. He gave some apostles, some prophets.

By the way, we're going to see prophets and teachers here in the book of Acts. He gave some apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. And so these administrative gifts are to set the church in order.

And they're given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now you're going to see in our passage here when we get to it, these administrative gifts, prophets, teachers are mentioned. In this church of Antioch, where this church has just been established, souls have been saved, and things are being set in order.

And then this last group is just the sustaining of the church. And that's what we call the operational or the motivational gifts. And those are given to us in Romans 12.

And I'm not going to take the time to read it, but if you go back and read Romans 12, that group of gifts, it says that God gives them. So God gives those in Romans 12. Jesus gives these in Ephesians 4. And the Spirit of God gives the gifts, the charismatic gifts, here in 1 Corinthians.

Now I say all that just to say this. As you go through the book of Acts, you're going to see this very thing happening. Starting out of the preaching of the gospel in different areas, then establishing the church, then the sustaining of the church.

And God has given all the tools that are necessary to finish his work. You've heard me tell this illustration, but my children used to get me gifts for my birthday. They'd come and ask me, what do you want for your birthday? Well, I'm the kind of guy, I just don't need anything.

And so we'd end up getting, they'd get me a group of bananas or something and wrap it up. Or they'd get me a pair of socks, you know, the typical thing. Some hand lotion, different things like that.

Finally, I got wise. I was reading the Bible one time and I realized that God likes to give gifts, not for our pleasure, but he likes to give gifts to enable us to do his work, to function in his work. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to start asking for gifts that I can use in my work.

And it's been wonderful ever since. Not to say that the bananas were not a good gift, but paintbrushes. Last time I got a chainsaw.

You know, things that I can use for my work. And when you think about God giving the church gifts, he does so because he's trying to build his church. Those gifts are not given for you to use on yourself.

That's why many people use them to glorify themselves or to make themselves look spiritual. That's not the purpose of them. The purpose of the gifts was to build, build the kingdom of God and to build his church.

And so with that in mind, I'd like you to go back here. And that's the introduction. Acts chapter 13, because the church at Antioch has just begun.

And when we read down through here, we're going to see some of these gifts being established here. God is raising up men to fulfill this. The gospel has already been preached.

You go back and read how the gospel came to Antioch and people were saved and charismatic gifts were being used. Now it's establishing this church and setting it in order. And that we have the mention here of some of those administrative gifts.

Let's start reading here at verse number one of chapter 13. Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers. Those are two of the gifts that are mentioned there in Ephesians chapter four as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Menaeum, which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul.

Now there are five men that are mentioned here and God brings them out who have certain gifts, prophets, teachers, and we're establishing now the church and setting things in order. And these individuals are being raised up by God, being given gifts by God in order to establish the church. And I think that's God's will.

You know, we've been here 31 years, we've had plurality of elders, but again, I'll mention to you, I don't think that we're in the order that God wants here until we have a plurality of elders. And we need to establish that here because it's a biblical concept and I think will function a lot better with a plurality of elders. Well, there's five names that are mentioned here and prophets and teachers.

I think we all understand teachers, those who are gifted to communicate the word of God. And by the way, churches need those kinds of individuals. And I believe there are individuals here that are gifted, that have the gift of teaching, that need to rise up, that need to see the importance of building the church.

And when you get to the judgment and that resurrection day and you're raised up before the Lord, you're going to be judged on how you were involved in this right here. This is what's important. And I'm thinking that probably all of us are going to be gifted and the Lord is going to say, what did you do with your gift? What did you do with the gift of a teacher that I gave you? You gave me the gift of a teacher.

Oh, that was interesting. I never realized it. And it's buried.

Buried. And so, you know, you take the church at Antioch. I don't know how big that church is, maybe a hundred people, maybe 50 people.

I don't know. But there are five men mentioned here, five of them who had the gift of a prophet and the gift of a teacher. This is a very early church, a very fledgling church.

And yet God is establishing it, raising up different gifts, different men in the church. And I have no doubt there's men here and right inside of you is a spiritual gift. And this church may lack for an inability or an unwillingness for people to say, I'm going to give God, you know, priority in life and I'm going to seek to build his kingdom and build the church.

We do a lot of things. We build business. We build bank accounts.

We build a lot of things. But to have a vision for eternity and the final judgment and how I'm going to be judged, not based upon how much I have or what possessions I have, but how I use my gift for eternity or his building of the kingdom of God. Another gift is a prophet.

And there's many avenues we can go there. A prophet declared the word of God. A prophet also was one who back then, you know, they didn't have the New Testament and they would gather together and they needed some prophets who could say, thus saith the Lord and proclaim the New Testament truth, just like the Old Testament prophets.

Thus saith the Lord. Well, praise God.