Qualities of a Great Missionary, Part 1
Acts 14:1-10
In our Bible study for this Lord's Day, we find ourselves in the 14th chapter of the book of Acts and we invite you to turn with us to the 14th chapter. The Spirit of God has laid upon our hearts this most wonderful passage for today. Really, the whole chapter is taken together in this message and so we'll be taking it, as we often do, in parts but in the 14th chapter, verses 1 through 28, we find what I have entitled "Qualities of a Great Missionary." Now it could well be entitled qualities of a great servant of Christ any place, not necessarily a missionary, whom we assume to be somebody on foreign soil, but since the passage deals with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, certainly these are qualities of a great missionary.
We know that every job has qualifications. It doesn't matter what it is that you're applying for, and you're all very aware of this, there are certain qualifications that need to be met. Whenever you apply for a job, you fill out an application form and you're interviewed and the questions are asked to determine whether you qualify. Some jobs demand rather simple qualifications; other jobs demand rather complex ones. The simple job, for example, requiring physical dexterity and strength, limited mental capacity, the ability to follow orders, a limited amount of education, even these have their qualifications. The very complex jobs that are rather scientific that demand upwards to mental genius and the graduate degrees and psychological strength and capabilities of administration and leadership and so forth, all of the gamut in between, all of these kind of things are really just a matter of qualification. If you fit the qualifications, you're fitting the job.
I remember one time when I was in college, I needed a job and since I enjoyed athletics, I thought it'd be great to get a job with the Parks and Recreation and so I applied but then, of course, the first thing they do is find out whether you can throw a ball or do anything like that and I passed all of the physical qualifications in athletics and then they gave us a mental capacity and aptitude test and I passed that. The third test was a psychological test which I failed and it's never ceased to prey upon my mind that I failed that psychological test. There were five men interviewing me to determine whether I was psychologically capable of handling 50 kids on an elementary playground during the summer. Well, it was amazing. I went to the city hall and went through the whole thing and they didn't pass me. I think it had a little to do with the testimony of Christ that I gave which may have been a little heavy at the time but nevertheless I didn't pass and all of us have been through things like that where for some reason or another we didn't qualify or we did qualify and we had a positive response, but jobs demand qualification and the world is very qualification conscious.
Young men get out of college and immediately they're hit with all kinds of corporations and all kinds of programs that have a whole list of qualifications and if somebody doesn't qualify for anything, they tell them to go into the service, you know, and maybe they'll teach him a trade or something and he'll come out qualified. Qualifications are very important and, believe me, if the world is that hung up on qualified people, the church can be no less and I believe that God demands out of those of us who are fit for service that we really endeavor to meet the qualifications and I'll say this in a further statement, that it is God's design to use the people who most closely fit the qualifications for the most significant tasks. So if we as Christians ask ourselves why it seems that we never really get in on what God is doing, it may be that we have not endeavored to really be qualified. I believe God wants highly qualified people. If the world needs qualified people to do everything from directing Parks and Recreation to figuring out scientific formulas to send men into space, if the world needs qualified people for all of that, that's very mundane and very transitory and very temporary, believe me, God wants the most qualified to do the things that He has to be done because they are ultimately and eternally significant.
Now as we come to the 14th chapter of Acts, we're going to see some qualified people. There are a lot of missionaries on the field who aren't qualified. There are a lot of missionaries who are. Well, here's a couple who were super qualified. They manifest qualifications that are basic to effective service for Christ, whether they be a missionary on a foreign soil or whether you be the missionary to your house and your neighborhood. These are qualifications that really render service effective. Now there are at least eight of them that I find in the chapter and we'll look at them over the next couple of weeks.
Let me say this at the very beginning. In the 14th chapter, you could read this chapter and never hear of one of those qualifications. You say, "Well, you're reading them into the text." No, I'm taking them out of the narrative. The chapter is about Paul and Barnabas who went from Iconium to Lystra to Derbe, back again and went home and while they were doing it, they were preaching and creating trouble but I'm not about to say that and quit though that is the historic narrative of the passage but, in the flow of that narrative, they exhibit these eight qualities of effective missionary service and the beautiful thing about it is this and I always approach a passage the same way. I always ask the Lord, "Show me, Lord, what in this passage is practically applicable to us today." And the thing that just flew out of these verses to me were these qualities that made these men so effective.
Now notice, this is not a lecture listing the qualities. This is looking at two men who simply exhibited them in the action of their life and that's a lot better, isn't it? This isn't a chapter where Paul preaches eight qualities of being a good missionary. This is a chapter where Paul just exhibits them without saying a word and we can see them just leaping off the page and so here we see them in practice, not just talking about it but doing it. Now let's note these qualities. Quality No. 1 that makes for effective missionary service or makes for effective Christian witness is this: the ministry of spiritual gifts...the ministry of spiritual gifts. Now this is generally revealed throughout the chapter and we'll take it just in a general sense and then we'll get specifically beginning at verse 1 into the flow of the text. But we know that Paul and Barnabas are the missionaries.
Now let me review what's happened. The church has expanded in the Book of Acts and, incidentally the Book of Acts is the record of the expansion of the early church from Jerusalem to Rome, and the church has expanded and, as it has expanded, the Lord has begun to reach the Gentile world. He established a beachhead, first of all, in the Gentile world in a town called Antioch, a great major city in the world, Antioch in the land of Syria. A church was established there that had five great leaders. Two of them were Paul and Barnabas. From those five, the Spirit of God said, "Separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the work that I have called them to do," and Paul and Barnabas were sent from that church in Antioch to reach the Gentile world. They began what is classically known as the first missionary journey and they took off to the west and they went to Cyprus, an island. They proceeded across the Mediterranean Sea from Cyprus into the area known as Galatia. Last week, we saw that they went to a town called Antioch...not to be confused with the former Antioch; this is a different one...and there they preached Christ and created a riot. They were thrown out of Antioch. They didn't tuck their tail between their legs and crawl home. They proceeded further into Asia Minor, Galatia particularly, to a town called Iconium and, as we pick them up in verse 1, they have arrived at Iconium carrying the gospel to the pagan world, but the thing that we see in this chapter as they minister is that they are ministering their spiritual gifts.
Now we here at Grace have talked much about spiritual gifts. We have talked about the fact that every Christian at the moment of salvation receives spiritual gifts. A spiritual gift is not a natural ability. It is not something you exercise in your own strength. It is simply a channel through which the Holy Spirit ministers through you to the body. There are varying spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans chapter 12 and all believers should be aware of theirs and should be ministering them because this is how God uses you. Now as we look at these men, we find that they exhibit spiritual gifts and I'll show you the four dominant ones that they exhibit. The first one is the gift of preaching. One of the spiritual gifts, I believe, is the gift of prophesy or preaching. In verse 1, it says, "It came to pass in Iconium, they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke," and here they exercised the gift of preaching which is a spirit-given ability to declare the gospel with clarity and power. Not everybody has that gift, right? They had it. They used it.
Down in verse 21, "And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many...that's the City of Derbe...they returned again to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch. There they are doing it again, exercising the gift of preaching or prophesy. Verse 25, "And when they had preached the Word in Perga, they went down to Attalia." There again, the gift of preaching. They had the ability then given them by the Spirit of God to proclaim the gospel with power and with effect. That's the gift of preaching but they had another gift and I believe gifts come in combinations. They had the gift of teaching, also. If you'll notice verse 21 again, it says, "And when they had preached the gospel to that city and had taught many..." Verse 22, "Confirming the souls of the disciples..." The only way to confirm somebody is to establish them in the doctrine of the Scripture. So they exhibited again the gift of teaching...the gift of the preaching and the gift of teaching.
Thirdly, they had another gift that I think goes with spiritual leadership. It goes with the Apostles. They had the gift of exhortation. The gift of exhortation is just what it says. It's exhorting people. Sometimes it's exhibited publicly. Sometimes it's exhibited in a one-to-one basis in counseling. But it's the ability to encourage somebody to pursue a certain course of action, so first they would preach the gospel, then they would teach doctrine, then they would encourage people to follow what they had learned. Those three gifts belonged to these men. Notice verse 22, "Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." And so the gift of exhortation.
They had another gift. They had the gift of administration. The gift of administration, the Bible says, is the ability to put the pieces together to make things function. Notice verse 23, "And when they had ordained elders in every city, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed." They went back after they'd gone through those cities and organized the church in each city on their return. That's the gift of administration. Now here, friends, we have a marvelous insight into what gifts the Holy Spirit granted to the early Apostles. He gave them the gifts of preaching, teaching, exhortation and administration. Those are leadership gifts and I believe that in the main, though perhaps not exclusively, in the main, those are the gifts that pastor-teachers and evangelists still have today...preaching, teaching, exhortation and administration. Certainly, those are gifts necessary for the teaching pastor and the evangelist to declare the gospel, to teach doctrine, to encourage people to follow it and to organize for effective functioning within the body. Those are the gifts of leadership and they exhibit them here, I believe as Apostles, and I believe they are still the gifts belonging to pastor-teachers, for the most part, and to Biblical evangelists.
Now in addition to those gifts...incidentally, those are permanent gifts; if you have any questions about this, we do have a study on the gifts that you can follow through...but in addition to the permanent edifying gifts, such as those which still exist today, there were special gifts just for the Apostles which we don't have today. In 2 Corinthians 12:12, just a brief review, "Truly the signs of an apostle...says Paul; and there he says there are some signs that belong to Apostles...were wrought among you...and here they are...signs, wonders and mighty deeds." Now Paul says that Apostles were given the ability to perform signs which created wonder and they had the ability to perform mighty deeds. This is the gift of miracles. It is a temporary gift given to them to confirm their preaching. If a preacher comes to town and preaches, how are you going to know he's telling you the truth? If you got three guys giving you three messages, you believe the one who raises the dead, right? You believe the one who has the wonders accompanying him because it shows that God is attaching to his ministry supernatural evidence and so God attached to the Apostles supernatural evidence. You say, "Don't we need that today?" No, because anybody, any place, can determine whether we speak the truth by comparing us with the Scripture and so the Scripture becomes the confirmation today, whereas miracles were the confirmation in the day before the Scripture was completed.
When the Apostles came to the congregation of whom the Hebrews were a part...the letter of Hebrews is written. It says, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at first was spoken by the Lord but unto us by them that heard Him." It was confirmed to us by them with signs, wonders, mighty deeds and diverse gifts of the Holy Spirit, so when the gospel was preached in the early days, there were certain special gifts given to these men in order that they might confirm their message and that the message might be believable as it was accommodated by supernatural miracle. So in the apostolic day, they not only had these permanent kinds of gifts, these edifying, body-building gifts, but they had the gifts geared to convince unbelievers. Miracles is one that they had, obviously, from verse 3. It says that "Unto them God granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands." Secondly, the gift of healing, verse 8. They saw a cripple. Paul said to him, "Get up," verse 10, and he did and that was a miracle to establish in the minds of an unbelieving people that this message was of God. So they exhibited spiritual gifts.
Now let me hasten to say this. As we have seen so many times in the Book of Acts, it is not a question of sitting around, saying, "Oh, I wish God would use my gifts." It is a question of already functioning with your gifts and then being moved by God into critical situations. Do you understand the difference? Remember how we saw Peter? It says that "as Peter passed from all quarters." Isn't that a terrific statement? He's just going everywhere doing everything. The Spirit of God put him here, put him there, and put him there and put him there, and he kept doing things and we told you at that time when we studied that that God doesn't dust off crusty Christians who haven't done anything and stick them in critical situations. God uses people who are already overdone, busy and actively ministering their gifts. In the flow of the Christian's life, he ought to be ministering his gifts and, as you minister your gifts, just in the flow of life, the Spirit of God will direct you to the strategic places where you're going to see those gifts maximized.
From the time of Paul's conversion, he began to minister. It's in the same chapter that he was saved that it says he was preaching in Damascus and he preached and kept preaching and never stopped preaching and he was teaching. Paul, from the very beginning, began to minister his gifts and consequently when it got to be time for Barnabas to look for a good guy to help him in Antioch, the one guy that he wanted was the guy he knew was functioning already and he chased all over the place until he finally found Saul and hauled him off to Antioch and made him his co-pastor. Why? Because the Spirit of God is always in the business of collecting people who are functioning already.
I'll never forget a missionary who told me that if a person isn't a missionary at home...it's inevitable...99 times out of 100, they never become one on the field because where you are geographically has nothing to do with your commitment and they look for people who are already functioning people and always the Holy Spirit has done that and so when the Holy Spirit wanted a couple of missionaries to go to Cyprus and then to Antioch of Pisidia and then to travel to Galatia, He didn't go to some new group of converts and say, "Now let me have a couple of you who aren't doing anything. You're not on the publicity committee or you're not on this committee or you're not working over here in evangelism and you're just kind of nothing. I want to send you to Antioch of Pisidia which will be a tough place to go." No, not at all. He picked the two busiest guys going in the Gentile church, Paul and Barnabas, and said, "Get out. You're my man." That's the way God operates.
And so we find then that to begin with really effective missionary service wherever it is demands the ministry of spiritual gifts. If you're not ministering your spiritual gift...watch...then you're not functioning in the way the Spirit of God designed you to function. You say, "John, I don't even know what my spiritual gift is." Then you're even a further step removed from effectiveness and you need to read Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, pray, be filled with the Spirit and see what the Spirit does through you. People say, "Well, how do I know my gift?" And I even heard of the computer thing where you can send in all your qualifications and they'll send you back your gifts. No, that's not the way to do it. You want to know what your spiritual gift is? Just be filled with the Holy Spirit, see what the Holy Spirit does and say, "Oh, so that's what my gift is." Look at it in retrospect and stay with it. They were ministering spiritual gifts.
You know, the Bible is very strong in urging us to do this. In Romans chapter 12, Paul lays it on pretty thick. He says beginning in verse 6, "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us...we have these gifts...whether prophecy, let us prophesy...if you got the gift, use it...ministry, let us wait on our ministering or he that teacheth, on teaching...get with it...he that exhorts, on exhortation: he that gives, let him do it with liberality; he that rules with diligence, he that shows mercy, with cheerfulness." In other words, if you've got a gift, use it...use it. 1 Peter, the end of the chapter...I should say at the end of the book chapter 4 verse 10, "As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold...or multicolored...grace of God." If you got some gifts, use them. They're not even yours. You're a steward of them. You're holding them in trust for God. Don't waste them. Use them. Determine your gift; use it. That's the beginning of effective missionary service. These guys were functioning in every capacity. They preached, they taught, they exhorted, they administrated. The dominant gifts which they possessed, they used and they had all along been using them. We can trace back and we'll find preaching, teaching, exhortation and administration revealed in the life of Paul or Barnabas already at least once in the Book of Acts before this ever happens. They already were functioning people in the Body of Christ. Consequently, the Spirit chose them for the specific task to which they come in the 13th and 14th chapters.
All right, now there's a second qualification that really comes out of the first seven verses and now we'll get into the text proper and that is this: boldness. Somebody told me...I forget who it was...recently that the thing they had learned most out of the Book of Acts and appreciated most and had made the most difference in their life as a Christian was the concept of boldness. Now for us who have been studying the Book of Acts for any time, it's a review, isn't it, because we've seen so much boldness in the Book of Acts, we're almost overwhelmed by it but here it is again and the reason the Spirit repeats it so often is because it's truly a part of the early church and it's also because we need to know about it. We need to be reminded that boldness is a basic ingredient to the Christian experience, and I'll show you why in a minute, but let's begin by looking at verse 1 and let's follow the pattern of boldness revealed in the City of Iconium.
"And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews...Paul and Barnabas...and so spoke, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also the Greeks believed." Now there's a couple of things that just really hit me here. They came to Iconium, which is about 100 miles southeast of Antioch. You remember they were thrown out of Antioch. They messed up Antioch so badly that the city split wide open. Finally, they kicked them out but they didn't go home. They didn't quit. They didn't go back and lick their wounds and say, "Oh, we've got to get a new strategy to reach the Gentiles," and then invent some gospel blimp or something. They stayed right where they were and pursued the path the Spirit of God had led and they came to Iconium. Now I like this: "They went both together into the synagogue of the Jews and so spoke that a great multitude believed."
There's one word in that verse that escapes most eyes and it escaped mine the first couple of times I read it and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. That's the word "so." They so spoke that a multitude believed. There is speaking and then there is so speaking. You say, "What is so speaking?" That's speaking in the energy of the Holy Spirit. The only time anybody is going to believe, the only time you're going to have any kind of response at all, is when you so speak that it could happen and the only time you have so spoken that it could happen is when you have spoken in the energy of the Holy Spirit...right?...which means they ministered their gifts. They so spoke that results happened. You go out and try to minister your gift in the flesh and you know what'll happen? You'll speak...period, paragraph. And then there are the times in the energy of the Spirit when you have so spoken that multitudes have believed. You see, there's a big difference. Just watch those little ones. They'll get you. So...very important.
So they so spoke that people believed. Now this little old frontier town, which was officially a Roman colony since Emperor Hadrian, was little out in the boondocks a hundred miles from Antioch. Its population was the usual conglomeration of ex‑soldiers, expatriates, Jews, Romans, Greeks, Syrian merchants and some half-civilized natives who inhabited the area and it was a typical kind of frontier dusty, dirty place, not much bigger than a village, though it was a fair sized city, and it's an interesting footnote, too, that Paul usually went to large cities. He left the evangelization of the village to the people that got saved in the city. I think it would be good if some missions realized that this is the pattern of the New Testament. Now times were that he did go to small towns but usually large cities and then when they got saved, they would go to the villages.
Well, he came to Iconium and it says in verse 1 that he went to the synagogue and again here's the same pattern, isn't it, that we've seen before. He goes to the Jews. Why? Because he loves them. Because he knows there's a ready-made audience. Because he knows they know a little about the Old Testament so he has kind of a base on which to go. He knows also that if some of the Jews get saved, they can help him win the Gentiles. Let me give you another reason I haven't given you before. Another reason to go to the synagogue first is because if he went to the Gentiles first, you'd never get to the synagogue. You see, if he evangelized the Gentiles, the Jews would have written him off and the synagogue never would have been open, so he started with the synagogue and went from there.