Antioch, Part 3

6 · The pastor reinforces Paul's Christ-centered priority with a second Pauline text that explicitly names Christ's death and resurrection as the matter of first importance

In 1 Corinthians 15, he says it explicitly.

For I delivered to you what was of first importance, that Christ died according to the Scriptures and was buried and was raised according to the Scriptures. Meaning this is the thing, the one thing, the main thing.

7 · The pastor uses Stephen Covey's principle about keeping the main thing the main thing to illustrate the discipline required to maintain singular focus

A productivity writer, Stephen Covey— so you may know Stephen Covey from back in the day, his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was a big thing and a lot of people still use that. He has a section on the phrase, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." Now, when I read that, as, you know, my dad, I think, gave me his book when I was a teenager, and I'm looking, and I'm like, "What are the productivity tools? How can I be, you know, effective?" And I remember reading this section and thinking, "Well, my dad just wasted his money.

This is— a child could come up with this. This is what I got? The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing?" Right? But as Covey unpacks it, you begin to realize There's a brilliance there. There's a profundity, if I could use that word, there, that the main task in your life is to figure out what the main thing is and then keep that thing the main thing.

8 · The pastor applies Covey's principle directly to the church's calling, naming Christ and him crucified as the main thing that must remain the main thing in all spheres of church life

That is what we're talking about, church. The main thing for the Christian and for the church is to keep Christ and Him crucified the main thing. Thing in our lives, in our fellowship, and in our relationship to the world.

9 · The pastor returns to the paintball metaphor to illustrate the danger of losing focus on the primary objective

Now, again, in— here's what happened in the first paintball game that our church was playing, right? First paintball game, I think we figured that the task was to take other people out, right?

And so we just fought back and forth furiously for 30 minutes. And I think it was one of those games where, like, you— if you get hit, you'd go back and wait 5-minute timeout, and then you got to come back or something like that. And so we just kept throwing people at each other, just, and guys were making cool shots. There were dives, there were rolls, and everybody's trying to, you know, be Jason Bourne out here. And yet, it resulted in nothing.

'Cause if we'd been smart, we would've remembered what is the goal? The goal is getting the flag. And probably what we should've done is created a diversion and then sent everybody over there and sent like 2 guys down the field and actually grabbed the flag, which we did by accident in the end, right? Right? If you don't keep a clear objective, you're never going to win.

10 · The pastor issues a corrective claim distinguishing Christ-centeredness from all secondary goods, then demonstrates two concrete implications: the gospel crossing ethnic barriers and the church maintaining unity across differences

So this church, this is the flag. This is the flag we must take in our lives and in our church. If we build an impressive multi-thousand person building, if we plant 10 churches in the next 10 years, if we succeed in getting our favorite political candidate elected, if we somehow manage to feed and clothe every person in a 10-mile radius from this building, if we do all of that but we lose the center of Christ and him crucified, we have utterly failed. And I'm not saying that those things are not important—secondary issues, tertiary issues—those are important, but they are not Christ and him crucified. So let me ask you this, friend: Is the main thing in your life the main thing in Scripture?

Is your life defined by the main thing in the Bible? The reality is, this main thing, Christ and him crucified, defines reality. It defines the universe. Does it define your life? This affects everything, right?

A big topic of conversation in our world today is racism, rightly. People are trying to figure out, how do we eliminate racism? What's the solution to bring people of different races together? And you could read 100 books, you can have 100 proposals, but brothers and sisters, if Christ and him crucified is not at the center of our efforts to bring ethnic unity and to bring reconciliation in the gospel, then we failed. I know a big thing right now is everybody has personality tests, everybody wants to understand themselves, everybody, in a good way, I think, is into counseling and self-care and all this stuff.

And if you know yourself better than everything, you got every, you know, I'm a lion, Enneagram 15 with this, and you know, I'm just like, and I'm a, you know, this is my personality, I'm a BGA5679er, and I'm like, oh, okay, whatever. If you understand all of that, but what defines your life is not that you've lived and died, been buried and raised with Christ, your self-identity is not complete.

So, here's what I want you to see. When you keep the main thing the main thing, it has profound implications on the church. It doesn't just— you think, "Well, that doesn't do anything." It does everything. Two examples. First, when you have Christ and Him crucified at the center, the gospel gets across barriers that it could never cross otherwise.

It says in verse 20 that the gospel crosses over to the Hellenists, to the non-Hebrew speakers. Non-Jews. So John Piper says this: "Until now, the gospel was spreading mostly along the monocultural lines of Judaism, from synagogue to synagogue, with the exception of Cornelius in Acts 10. But in Antioch, someone broke through the barriers of language and culture and spoke the gospel to the Gentiles." Now, what leads a Christian to do that? What leads somebody fleeing for their lives from Jerusalem to show up and go, "That guy who doesn't look like me, or talk like me needs the gospel.

How does that happen? It happens if you believe that no one is really better than anyone else in the sight of God. It happens when you believe the ground is level at the foot of the cross. And it happens when you believe that there is also no one beyond the reach of Christ to save. So when you see that person that's different from you, you don't think, "Well, I'm better than them." You think, "Man, they need Jesus just like I did." But you also think, "Well, they're not so far that Jesus cannot reach in and transform and and save them.

That's how the gospel gets there.

11 · The pastor introduces the second implication of Christ-centeredness—church unity—by pointing to the radically diverse leadership team in Acts 13 as evidence

A second illustration of this is that keeping Christ and him crucified at the center of the church maintains the unity and builds the unity of the church. Remember in Acts 13 that we see this really diverse leadership team in the church, right? Barnabas, kind of a normal, good Jewish guy. Then you have Paul, the preeminent Jewish scholar and Roman citizen.

And then you've got Manaen, who was an aristocrat in the Jewish world who grew up with Herod. Then you've got one guy from Africa and then one guy that's very Greek, and you have them all serving together.

12 · The pastor imagines the inevitable cultural and political tensions within the Antioch leadership team to make the unity they actually maintained more remarkable and to emphasize that only Christ could produce such unity

And do you think, man, do you not think that they had some hard, weird political conversations? And you're like, "Man, the Roman Empire's the worst." And one guy's like, "Well, that's what got me through school." You know, and another guy's like, "Well, I'm a Roman citizen, actually." "I just hate the Roman citizens. I wish—" "Oh, you're a Roman?

Oh, okay. Well, sorry, Paul. I didn't mean—" I mean, you know what I mean, right? And you're thinking, you know, they're shooting the breeze and they're like, "Oh, man, I love this kind of music. Don't you guys love that?" And the guy's like, "I've never heard that in my life.

Screaching cats, and, you know, they're trying to eat dinner. And the Jewish guys are like, "Oh, sorry, can't eat that. Oh, can't eat that either. And actually, also that. And then, yeah, that too." You know, and you have all of this going on.

What allows them to be together? Christ and him crucified. That's the thing that binds them together.

13 · The pastor applies the Christ-centered unity principle directly to the congregation's current cultural moment, addressing social media conflict and political division with concrete instruction to maintain unity through the gospel

So let me encourage you, church. Let me encourage us and stir us up by way of reminder.

That our call is to share the gospel with people no matter what they look like, no matter how different they may be from us. We must build relationships across political lines, across cultural lines, give the gospel to anyone who needs it, which, by the way, is everyone. And we must maintain unity with other believers who think differently, who may have different convictions. Man, this last year has given us plenty of opportunity for that, has it not, friends? Anybody caught off guard by a friend that they thought they knew all of a sudden firing off on Facebook about an issue and you just all of a sudden are like, "Oh, Susan, I— how dare you?" You know, and you're just thinking.

And, you know, your spouse is like, "Oh, we should invite Susan and Greg over," or not, you know. And like this is what happens, guys. What's the only thing that's going to bridge this? Christ and him crucified. When you at that dinner table know You need Jesus.

I need Jesus. We're undeserved recipients of grace with a bright future ahead of us. That brings the church together.

14 · The pastor signals the shift from the first major division (objective: Christ-centered) to the second major division (posture: hopeful)

All right, second. That's first, Christ-centered.

That's our objective. Second, though, our posture must be a hopeful posture.

15 · The pastor defines the hopeful posture as resilient confidence in God's promises, distinguishes it from both wishful thinking and faith-as-magic, and demonstrates it from the Antioch church's bold missions sending despite their persecuted origins

And when I mean hopeful, I don't mean like a, "Eh, I hope it works out," you know. I mean a resilient, unshakable, sure, and steady confidence in who God is and what he has promised. The only reason I was able to get all the way down to that end of that paintball field and grab the flag is an insane and unrealistic and undeserved confidence in my own abilities to do it, right?

That's not what God's calling us to do. He's not just calling us to believe, like, "Oh yeah, try to work up some faith. If you can get faith level 100—" Sometimes I almost think people think of God like, "Well, you gotta have faith and confidence, and once you get to level 100," something awesome is unlocked, and then you kind of go, psh, another, and then a car is unlocked, and then a miracle is unlocked. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about moving forward in faith to what God has called us to do in the power that God has given us to do what he's called us to do.

That's what we're talking about. And you see this in the church in Antioch. Man, this church in Antioch, they are not a timid church. They are not a fearful church, right? You think that they should be.

They were planted out of persecution, right? If anybody has a past to be like, "You know what? We're good for 10 years. We're just going to stay here and huddle up and kind of heal up for a second." But that's not what you see them doing. You see them investing their two best, their two kind of founding pastors in missions work, confident that God will be with their founding pastors as they go and confident that God will be with them as they stay.

That's the kind of confidence I believe God is calling us to have.

16 · The pastor explains the literary function of Acts 12 within the Antioch narrative—it appears to be a discouraging interruption between chapters 11 and 13, introducing doubt about God's protection just before the church's major missions advance

Now, we read from chapter 12 in our Scripture reading, and at first chapter 12 seems a little bit like a detour, right? Chapter 11, it's— they're moving and shaking, the church in Antioch is planted, and they're helping. And then chapter 12, and then chapter 13, the church sends out Paul and Barnabas. But in the middle, in chapter 12, you have this story that at first seems like a bizarre interruption.

It doesn't seem encouraging in any way, right? We read that part that Herod seized James and killed James. You think about how important this was, how defining this would have been. The Jerusalem church, founded in many ways on the leadership of these 12 apostles, all of a sudden one is gone. All of a sudden people are wondering, is God really going to take care of us?

Is this— are we going to be able to keep going? Right? And not only that, they— he captures Peter, puts him in prison, and is ready, just waiting to take his head off.

17 · The pastor walks through the security details in Acts 12:4-6 to emphasize the utter impossibility of Peter's escape by any human means, building tension and demonstrating the severity of the situation

And look at what happens. Look at the language here.

The language here is— everything about this language is like, Peter ain't getting out of here alive, right? Look at verse 4. Herod seized him, put him in prison, he delivered him over to 4 squads of soldiers to guard him, right? So you're like, "Man, that doesn't— that seems tough." And then verse 6: "Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night Peter"— this is their security— "was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison." So, in other words, like, he is literally bound up with two guys, with two chains, with sentries outside, four squads of soldiers, right? Here's the point: no one is breaking out of there.

No one is breaking into there, right? Herod knows these Christians, weird stuff happens with them, okay? All of a sudden people are getting healed, or dead men are coming back from life. We're not taking any chances. We're going to take 40, 50 guys.

We're going to lock this thing down, right?

18 · The pastor steps out of the exposition to directly shepherd the congregation through their current emotional state, acknowledging the week's difficulties and naming why this passage is needed now—to build confidence when circumstances feel overwhelming

And there will be times— let me just say this, especially this week— there will be times in our lives where that's what life feels like, right? Where you feel chained up, you've got people right here, and even if you could break out of that, there's more barriers over here. Or maybe for us advancing the gospel as a church, we're like, well, man, maybe God's calling us to take a step of faith, but man, I don't see how we could possibly do this because what about this and what about that and this and this and this? There's just no way.

This is why Acts 12 is where it is in the Scripture, to grow our confidence and our hope in God and his promises.

19 · The pastor walks through the angel's appearance and Peter's miraculous escape, emphasizing both the divine power at work and the comical human confusion of both Peter and the praying church

Look at verse 7: "And behold, an angel of the Lord—" Now, we're not meant to be impressed by the angel, but by the Lord who sent him. "An angel of the Lord stood next to him." You're like, "How'd that angel get in there?" Well, it helps if you can control all of matter and time and eternity, as God just pops him in there. "And light shone in the the cell, and he struck Peter on the side and awoke him, saying, 'Get up quickly.' And the chains fell off his hands. And what you see is this almost comical scene where Peter, he kind of, he goes, 'Oh, it's a dream.

You know, it's a dream. It's a metaphor. It's like the thing with the, you know, the Cornelius thing, right? The sheet. This is one of those.

It's like a metaphor. I'm metaphorically being 'Escorted out of prison. What does this mean, Lord?' You know, and he finally walks all the way out of the prison. He's looking back, he sees all the squads of soldiers, and he kind of, like, wakes up and goes, 'Oh, this is real. I'm not metaphorically freed.

I'm actually free. Like, this is a real thing.' And then he goes to the believers, and here's what the believers do. They do not believe that it is Peter, despite the fact that they are in the house praying for his release. Right? They're like, "Lord, please help Peter.

Please rescue him." Somebody's knocking. "Just tell them to go away. We're praying. We're praying for God to release Peter. He says he's Peter." "It's a ghost.

It's some guy with a joke, right? We gotta pray here." And all of a sudden they realize, "Oh, no, it is. This is Peter." Not metaphorically freed, but actually freed.

20 · The pastor names the structural reversal in Acts 12—from Herod's apparent triumph to God's sovereign victory—and signals that this reversal is meant to produce a theological effect in the reader

And then here's what goes. It doesn't just end there.

Then it goes on to the second passage we read, that Mike read, that here's the reversal, okay? Beginning of chapter 12, Herod reigns and rules, James is killed, and Peter's in chains. But by the end of the chapter, Peter is freed, Herod is killed, and the Lord rules and reigns. Right? That's meant to do something.

21 · The pastor synthesizes Acts 12's theological purpose: to establish that despite all opposition, the Lord reigns, preserves his church, and advances the gospel through the power of the living Word and the Spirit, not human strategy

In backdrop to chapter 13, as they're about to send people out, the first missions workers intentionally sent from one place to another. The backdrop to that is this: that Satan may rage, the world may rage, there may be chaos and turmoil and suffering, but through it all, the Lord reigns. Through it all, the Lord acts to preserve his church. And through it all, the Lord advances the gospel until the day his Son returns. This is what you see, brothers and sisters.

Man, I hope this is building some faith for you for this next week, because I got to the end of this week with like my faith level at like 2, right, out of 100 or something like that. Like, I'm not— I wasn't fired up. Man, I hope you are getting fired up by this passage. And I love the end phrase: "But the word of God increased and multiplied." Again, the power of the church is not, man, Peter's a brilliant strategist, Paul's a brilliant kind of rhetorician, orator, they got all the right people doing amazing things. No, the way the church is preserved and advances is because the living God is is among them and advancing the gospel.

The Word of God is not this sort of dead— the word of the gospel, we're meant to understand, that it's not this dead, dry, you know, Annals of Julius Caesar. You know, you open that thing up, nobody's getting anything except for dust in their face. The Scripture, you open it, the Word of God, you proclaim it, and it is alive. And not only that, but we've seen throughout that the Spirit of God The Spirit of God that's advancing the gospel through the Word of God. The Spirit of God is alive in and among the church itself.

Barnabas, a man full of the Spirit, right? The Spirit speaking to the church, encouraging the church, building up the church. The church is being advanced by God, is probably the way to say it, not even the church is advancing itself.

22 · The pastor directly applies the Acts 12 confidence to the congregation's current state, diagnosing the temptation to timidity and calling them to Acts 13 boldness in multiple forms of gospel advance

So, let me just ask you, friend, where is your level of hope in God right now? Maybe this week, were you tempted to look around at the circumstances of your life, or our country, or our world, and shrink back in timidity, shrink back in discouragement?

Man, I think this passage should propel us forward to be Acts 13 Christians, willing to go, willing to send, willing to stay, willing to labor for the cause of the gospel.

23 · The pastor offers a critical clarification to prevent misapplication of the confidence principle—it applies to God's work, not personal ambitions—and grounds the confidence in Jesus's explicit promise about building his church

And let me just say this, side note, and I just want to clarify this. This is not like your own personal agenda. I'm not speaking this to be like, "Man, I really— my dream is to have a Lexus someday." And I'm not speaking this to say, "Yeah, the Lord is going to give you that." I'm saying this: when Christians take up the work of God, the power of God goes with them. So maybe there'll be times where you're running up against a wall in your life.

You're like, "I just don't know why it's not working." Well, have you— taken up the call of God, the cause of God in your life? 'Cause if so, then Jesus promises behind you that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So, I don't know about the Lexus, but you can count on that.

24 · The pastor signals the sermon's closing movement and frames the Paul Schneider illustration as a synthesis—a concrete demonstration of both Christ-centeredness and hopeful confidence lived out in extreme circumstances

All right, let me end by doing this. As we close, I want to give you a living illustration of what this looks and feels like.

Because I think that's helpful. What does it mean to be someone with a crystal clarity on what the main thing is and an utter confidence in God's ability to advance the gospel despite the circumstances of your life?

25 · The pastor introduces Paul Schneider's backstory—a World War I veteran who turned to theology because only the gospel had power to rebuild broken humanity, and who faced Nazi opposition for refusing to conform to the state church

I want to introduce you to prisoner number 2491. His name was Paul Schneider. He had purposed to become a doctor, but he was called to serve for Germany in World War I and returned home a shaken and broken man.

He wrote, "My discharge to the home front found me determined to devote myself to the study of theology." Listen to this. "Because here alone was power to rebuild a heartbroken nation." and a heartbroken humanity. So as he studied and became a minister, took over, I think, his father's church, and as the Nazis rose to power, they began to threaten pastors like him. There's an official Nazi church that was under the control of the Nazi Party, and he did not want to conform to that.

26 · The pastor quotes Schneider's own theological conviction—citizenship in heaven and confidence in its ultimate victory despite present suffering—and then narrates his arrest and eventual martyrdom, establishing the cost Schneider paid for his confidence

He writes this: Certainly, we still live in this world and with this suffering people, and also share its sufferings.

But we have a commission and a calling from another world, and our citizenship is there. And we know that in spite of everything, this world, this heavenly world, will one day be victorious.

Eventually, Schneider was taken to a concentration camp and became prisoner 2499. 1941. To the best of historical record that we know, he was the first pastor martyred by the Nazis.

27 · The pastor narrates Schneider's daily practice of shouting the gospel at roll call despite beatings and isolation, quoting the actual sermon Schneider preached until his martyrdom

But there's an account from one of the fellow prisoners that Schneider was in the camp with that made it out. The account was that Schneider in the camp refused to stop speaking about Christ, was beaten repeatedly, was put in isolation. But he had this particular habit that— let me allow the prisoner, fellow prisoner, to describe it for you. They say this: Every morning, Schneider's voice was heard ringing out loudly and clearly from the solitary confinement building almost across the whole square when tens of thousands had lined up for roll call. So imagine the scene, right?

He is in his cell, all he can— he has a tiny window— he waits every day for roll call and with all the breath in his lungs yells this: Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save us from our sins. If we have faith in him, we are put right with God. We need not fear what man may do to us because we, through Christ, belong to the kingdom of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, has promised that we, by faith in him, may participate in his resurrection. He said, I am the resurrection and the life.

He that believes in me shall never die. Accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior, and God will receive you as his child.

This sermon he gave repeatedly until he was killed.

28 · The pastor closes the Antioch series with a pastoral charge synthesizing the entire message: urgency in light of uncertainty, confidence in God, sacrificial gospel advance, and singular focus on Christ crucified

Now, church, as we close this kind of miniseries on being an Antioch church, this is my burden, okay? My burden is this: that I do pray that after the last year and a half, we feel more urgency for the call of Christ in our generation. We do not know if the next month is promised us. We do not know what the next year will bring. We do not know if we have another decade together as a church.

But we know this: the task is urgent and our confidence in God is sure. So therefore, brothers and sisters, may we be an Antioch church sacrificially advancing the gospel. May we be a church that cares deeply about our city of El Paso and the surrounding region. May we be a church that sacrificial leaders are raised up, servant leaders are raised up, where we work with other churches and support them, where we one-to-one minister to one another, and that we do all of this faithfully week after week, year after year, preaching one message until Christ returns, and that is Christ and him crucified. And may we in our city be known more than anything for one thing: for Christ.

Amen.

29 · The pastor begins to transition to the closing prayer but pauses to offer one final Schneider quotation, signaling its particular relevance to the congregation's moment

Would you stand and let's pray.

Oh, I got to give you one more quote from Schneider before we pray. Ah, this is— I think this is a word for us, church, in many ways.

30 · The pastor quotes Schneider's metaphor of the church as a small boat in a storm with the sleeping Lord on board—an image of apparent fragility held secure by divine presence and coming intervention

He says this: We do not see how the poor, unprotected little boat of the church can be preserved among the powers and the forces of the world. But then we must remember, in this boat The Lord is with us, and soon he will be up.

31 · The pastor prays evangelistically for any unbelievers present, then for the whole congregation to embody deeply rooted confidence in God and singular gospel proclamation like Paul Schneider

Let's pray.

Father, I do pray today, Lord, I pray that if there's anyone here that does not know Christ, that they would hear Paul Schneider's— what is it, 70, 80-year-old sermon— and believe in Jesus Christ and be assured of the hope of heaven and adoption by God into his to his family no matter what the rest of the day or life, their life holds. And may they look to you and believe on you. And may all of us, Father, may we be a people full of deeply rooted confidence and hope, not in ourselves, not in our circumstances, not that we can see things working out, but rather confidence in God and his promises. And in light of that, God, may we live our days out preaching one sermon like Paul Schneider over and over and over again. Accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior and he will receive you as his child.

Amen.