"The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord."
Acts 11:21
Providence is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. David claimed nature testifies to God’s providence when he wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2). Nehemiah, mindful of God’s providence, declared, “And because the gracious hand of God was upon me, the king granted my requests” (Nehemiah 2:8). God continues to reveal His influence in our lives today, which I was first made aware of through a story my mother shared with me when I was younger, a story that exposed me to the awe-inspiring quality of God’s providence.
When Mom was twenty-two she accepted a teaching position at a middle school in Kansas City, Missouri, which required her to relocate from Oklahoma to Missouri. The sole negative aspect of the move was that it put considerable distance between Mom and Grandmother. At the time, Grandmother resided in Clinton, a rural town in Western Oklahoma. Grandmother and Mom were very close. They had endured many hardships, including the passing of Grandfather when Mom was just six years old. One might expect that the numerous hardships would have produced cynical spirits, or weakened Mom and Grandmother’s relationship, but the opposite was true. The hardships strengthened their personal resolve to entrust life’s circumstances to God. It drew them nearer to God and thereby nearer to each other, which is what made my mother’s settling in Kansas City, a city some four hundred miles away from Clinton, that much harder to accept.
Mom often drove to Clinton on weekends to visit Grandmother. It came about one Friday morning that Mom arrived at school intending to travel to Clinton as soon as her last class concluded that afternoon at 4:00 PM. As the school day was ending, Mom was informed that she would have to attend the school’s basketball game that evening. Every teacher was required to participate in a chaperoning rotation to help ensure students behaved appropriately at school-sponsored functions, including athletic events. This obligation meant Mom would have to leave five hours later than she had originally planned. Mom knew she might experience fatigue trekking to Clinton in the twilight hours, but she determined she could complete the trip without succumbing to exhaustion. After the basketball game concluded, Mom got in her car and began the seven hour road trip.
Around 12:00 AM, Mom was overwhelmed with drowsiness and slowly drifted in and out of consciousness. Her frequent attempts to jerk herself awake were futile. Eventually, she fell completely asleep. Her car drifted off the interstate highway into an adjacent field. As Mom sped through high grass, the car jostled because of the uneven surface, which startled her awake. She immediately corrected her course by easing the car back onto the highway. Infused with a renewed source of energy and fully cognizant, Mom made the trip home, some three more hours, without further incident. Embarrassed about falling asleep while driving, Mom planned to avoid telling Grandmother about it because she feared Grandmother would discourage her from making future weekend trips to Clinton.
At 3 AM, Mom pulled into Grandmother’s driveway. Since it was not Grandmother’s custom to stay up late, Mom was surprised to see a light on in the house. When Mom stepped inside Grandmother’s house, Grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table reading her Bible. Grandmother asked Mom how she felt. Mom nonchalantly replied, “Fine”. Grandmother then inquired as to whether anything significant had transpired in the course of the trip. Convicted to abandon her predetermined scheme not to unveil what actually occurred, Mom told Grandmother about drifting into a field after falling asleep temporarily around 12:00 AM. Grandmother responded she felt she had been supernaturally aroused from her slumber at that exact hour. Because she sensed the Holy Spirit prompting her to urgently pray for Mom’s safety, Grandmother got out of bed, knelt down on the floor, and entered into a time of supplication. She beseeched God to protect her daughter and let no harm come to her. Because she was so concerned for Mom’s wellbeing, Grandmother stayed up the remainder of Mom’s trip in order to pray Mom home. That day Mom and Grandmother shed many joyful tears, attune to the fact that God’s providence had orchestrated an incredible work.
Acts 11 provides details of incredible works of God too, which underscore the Lord's providential hand. But before Luke recorded some events surrounding God’s potent nature, he wrote about a weakness that momentarily surfaced and caused much commotion. The news that Gentiles in Caesarea had received Christ’s wondrous salvation through the God-ordained meeting of the apostle Peter and a Roman centurion named Cornelius, as recorded in Acts 10, eventually made its way to Jerusalem. When Peter came back to Jerusalem some believers criticized him for entering Cornelius’s home. Because we often tend to overlook the shortcomings of the early church apostles and disciples in light of their effective efforts to usher in a great many believers, we sometimes forget that they were susceptible to faults. Thus we find one such failing listed here. The Hebrew-raised disciples had difficultly consenting to extending the offer of grace to people of Gentile backgrounds. In their minds, such pagans were unworthy of God’s redemptive blessing. This destructively discriminatory attitude therefore prohibited Gentiles, by and large, from hearing the gospel message.
Peter relayed the sequence of events that led to his Caesarean journey and how God had made it abundantly clear that salvation was equally necessary and merited for Gentile audiences. Perhaps Peter’s testimony bore more credibility than most as he was likeliest one of the strongest proponents of isolating grace to the Jewish community. If Peter was guided to preach to a Gentile household then surely God had approved and sanctioned a widespread, global gospel mission, which entailed a Gentile evangelism crusade. At the conclusion of Peter’s remarks, the disciples in Jerusalem had no further objections. They recognized the hand of God and praised Him by proclaiming, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18).
Acts 11 then documents how the word of truth made additional expeditions into Gentile hearts, principally in the city of Antioch. Located some twenty miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea in ancient Syria, Antioch was one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire. It contained a very sizeable Gentile population. Acts 11:19 states disciples traveled as far as Phoenicia, the island of Cyprus, and Antioch to tell others of Christ. They originally witnessed to Jewish people in those regions, but thanks to the spiritual labor of Christians from Cyrene and Cyprus, the legacy of Jesus Christ was shared with Greek individuals in Antioch, which ignited a great spiritual awakening. Antioch would later become the launching point for each of Saul’s three missionary journeys.
When the church in Jerusalem learned that many Gentile salvation experiences had taken place in Antioch, the disciples sent one of their foremost leaders, Barnabas, to investigate the report and establish a correspondence with the young church. Barnabas was a commendable representative to minister in Antioch for his primary attribute, and spiritual gift it would seem, was encouragement, which explains why the apostles called him Barnabas (meaning “son of encouragement”) instead of his birth name: Joseph (meaning “adding”). Already in Acts, Barnabas was identified as having a propensity to encourage the church fellowship. He sold a field and donated the proceeds to the church for ministry use (Acts 4:36) and he vouched for Saul when the believers in Jerusalem refused to meet with the infamous persecutor because they assumed Saul’s salvation was a ploy to infiltrate the church and further disrupt it (Acts 9:26-27). Barnabas’s heartening disposition was therefore aptly suited to spur and advance the work that was underway in Antioch.
When Barnabas reached Antioch he quickly found God’s liberating change abounded with the people. He implored the believers there to remain loyal and faithful to the Lord. He encouraged them to hold fast to God with all their heart. Barnabas’s words and actions, with the providence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, ushered in even more believers. In yet another confirmation of Barnabas’s desire to promote the goodness of God, he left Antioch to find Saul who was presently living in Tarsus, Saul’s hometown. He had come to reside there after some disciples in Jerusalem transferred him out of the city of David for his own protection according to Acts 9. This event caused Saul to temporarily fade from the scene for a substantial period, which might have tarried indefinitely had Barnabas not retrieved Saul and reestablished him in a prominent ministry role.
That Barnabas would seek out Saul and invite him to come to Antioch speaks volumes about Barnabas’s character. He did this likely knowing Saul’s ability to preach would soon overshadow his ability to encourage. Barnabas recognized Saul’s giftedness of wisdom, knowledge, and evangelism. He sought to put it to use, even if it meant his scope of impact would diminish in comparison to Saul’s. In fact, from this point forward, Saul became the foremost agent in their missionary partnership (Acts 14:12).
Saul accepted Barnabas’s beckoning and went with him to Antioch. For over a year, they taught the believers there. Luke records that disciples were first called Christians at Antioch (Acts 11:26). The word “Christian”, which means “little Christ”, was likely an insulting designation non-believers ascribed to a people whose teachings they could not understand. But the title became one that the disciples in Antioch embraced for it affiliated them with Jesus, the Messiah. Regardless of the circumstances that introduced the Christian label into societal dialogue, the term is a banner that has proudly lasted for some two thousand years.
In Acts 11:21, Luke conveyed the Lord’s hand was upon the missionaries who shared their faith in Antioch. God helped them successfully communicate the limitless worth of Christ’s love. In essence, divine providence was critical for people to readily hear and receive the message of faith. Through this narrative, we find three key characteristics of God’s providence. One, God’s providence confirms God’s power. The hand was frequently referenced in the Bible to figuratively illustrate God’s supremacy. Moses testified of God’s dominion when he told the Israelites, “Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand” (Exodus 13:3). David praised God for His supremacy when he wrote, “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15). Even Jesus brought attention to God’s unyielding clutch when He cried from the cross, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
To say that the Lord’s hand was involved in bringing the people of Antioch into a saving relationship with Christ reinforces the essentiality of God’s participation in human affairs. Although we often try to ignore our desperate natural condition, mankind is devoid of hope without God’s intercession. We are weak without Him, but strong in Him. In other words, we serve a God Who comes to the aid of His people and makes available His great power, and can help us in our time of distress.
Two, God’s providence confirms God’s presence. There is a pervasive connection to God’s intervention in Acts 11:21. God was not passively watching the toil of His disciples being carried out; He was right alongside them. Overseeing them. Guiding them. Assisting them. Blessing them. Clearly, God fostered the spiritual climate in Antioch so that the people would be amenable to the Christ-centered messages being presented to them. But God also engaged Himself in the disciples’ work by way of the Holy Spirit.
As tempting as it may be to dismiss God’s presence, especially in challenging circumstances, God intimately cares for us and seeks to be actively immersed in the events of our lives. He does not tire of intimate fellowship with us. He does not grow weary of us, despite our many transgressions. He longs to be near to us and to extend us mercy in order to restore us to a right standing with Him.
The notion that God does not concern Himself with us nor desires to intercede on our behalf is not supported by biblical passages such as this. People sometimes argue that God allows tragedies to occur without any trace of concern or action, thereby abandoning mankind in our darkest hours. Such thinking is grossly incorrect. God loves us immensely and is ever concerned with hardships that befall us. In fact, Psalm 56:8 says God counts and records every tear that we shed. This Old Testament verse does not reflect an emotionally detached, coldhearted God, but rather a sensitive, embracing God, a God Who yearns to have His presence known and enjoyed by His people.
Three, God’s providence confirms God’s purpose. Not only was God’s hand upon the disciples witnessing, His hand was upon the people listening for many turned to the Lord. God’s purpose is that humanity will find salvation though His Son. The apostle John wrote, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). God’s providence includes the intention for mankind to find forgiveness for our sins through Christ’s redeeming sacrifice at Calvary.
Antioch became one of the most important cities responsible for the spread of Christianity in the first century, second only to Jerusalem perhaps. This did not happen by chance; it happened because it was God’s will. The Lord changed the spiritual landscape of the world so that many would arise and pronounce Jesus is their Savior. God’s providence gives us precisely what we require for life’s journey. In His care we find the strength to carry on. The courage to not give in to doubt or disappointment. The faith to entrust every day to God. The motivation to believe God is able to do abundantly more than we ever could do on our own.
Acts 11 closes with a prophecy that was delivered in Antioch, yet another confirmation of God’s providence. Some disciples from Jerusalem went to Antioch after Paul and Barnabas had ministered in the Syrian city for over a year. One of those disciples, a man named Agabus, foresaw that a severe famine would spread across the Roman Empire, a prediction that was rendered through the power of the Holy Spirit. Moved to provide for the needs that would soon be appearing in the Judean region, believers in Antioch gave according to their ability. Their benevolence was likely focused on Jerusalem because it was the epicenter of the Christian movement, and was therefore primarily responsible for the gospel’s pilgrimage to Antioch. The gratitude for salvation produced a generosity that would serve and satisfy many upcoming needs. Committing their donations to Paul and Barnabas for transport to the elders in Jerusalem, the disciples in Antioch responded to God’s providential foresight in a transparent, timeless fashion.
When was the last time you praised God for His providence?
No comments:
Post a Comment