Qualities of a Great Missionary, Part 3

Acts 14:21-28

     Turn in your Bibles to the 14^th chapter and take a look with us at what is part three of our study of the 14 chapter, Qualities of a Great Missionary.  Really these are qualities as we've said of any great servant of Christ, be he a servant at home or on a foreign field.  Qualities of a Great Missionary is the theme, and in the verses that make up this chapter we find flowing out of the narrative as we have said in past weeks the principles are the qualities or qualifications of effective service.

     As we come to the 14^th chapter we're reminded again that we're following Paul and Barnabas.  They're on the first missionary journey.  Previous to this, they were pastors of the church at Antioch in Syria.  The church sent them out under of course the commission and call of the Holy Spirit and they went to Cyprus and then they've been touring Galatia.  We find them in chapter 14 on the Galatian tour, and as we watch them ministering the Gospel to the gentiles as the church expands, we find that in their ministry there are very evident features that just kind of rise out of the text that indicate to us factors of success.  It's not as I've said before a lecture on success factors but rather an illustration of them. 

     Jesus gave a rather simple directive frankly.  In the beginning of all of this missionary effort Jesus simply said, "Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" and that's the calling of believers that still stands.  It's basic to the missionary effort.  Further, Jesus said in the Book of Acts prior to his ascension into Heaven, "You shall be witnesses unto me."  It wasn't really an option; it was a statement of fact.  All believers upon the receiving of the Holy Spirit are witnesses.  It's only a question of whether you're a good one or a bad one.  Every Christian is giving testimony to Jesus Christ.  The issue is what kind of testimony.

     And so there is a basic commission that is really laid on the life of every believer to bare the truth of Christ to the world and you are doing that in some fashion.  The call still stands today and of course obviously what Christ wants is faithful Christians who will dedicate themselves to carrying out The Great Commission with diligence and with success, but you know as you study the history of the church, and I think that we're all aware of this; as you study the history of the church you find that it's always the minority that do it and the majority that don't.  There always seems to be in the - were we able to paint a portrait of the history of the church we would find the foreground dotted with individuals and then we would find a mass of faceless humanity in the background but the commission isn't any different for all of them.  It's just that sometimes in every period of church history there are men singularly who dominate it, and women, and then there are masses of Christians lost in the fog in the background.

It was one man, David Livingston, who so greatly influenced the continent of Africa toward God that Africa and Livingston are almost synonymous terms.  It was one man, William Carey, responsible for the redemptive transforming power of Christ being effectively presented to the teeming millions in India.  It was because of one man, William Booth, who gave himself completely go God's service that there started in the slums of London the beginnings of an evangelistic movement that encircled the globe known as the Salvation Army.  It was CH Chapin who said on one occasion, "Not armies, not nations have advanced the race, but here and there in the course of the ages an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world."  He's right, and the history of the church is no different.

     The history of the church is the history of individuals, and there are individuals that move in church history, and between the individuals there's the flow that they have created.  It's like seeing a whole lot of people lying down and then one standing up and then lying down and standing up in intervals.  The mass of the church sleeps and here and there great men have changed its history for God.  Now what is it that makes somebody dominate the foreground and somebody else get lost in the background?  What is the difference between the Christian that makes things happen and the Christian that doesn't know they're happening?  What is the difference between the success in a dynamic sense of some Christians and the sort of anonymity of another one?  Well I think the answer lies in Acts 14 and it lies in many other features in the New Testament but it's here for sure, because in this chapter I've found at least eight qualifications of a successful missionary.

     If you want to be one there are qualifications.  If you're already one, these are the qualities that made you one.  They're success factors and they're not lectured to us but they are just illustrated.  We're looking at two men, Paul and Barnabas.  Really one cast his shadow in a sense over the other.  Paul dominates Barnabas in a sense.  Both of them cast their shadow over the world and Paul's shadow still lingers over the world.  The world is still affected by what Paul has written.  Now flowing out of this record of their touring Galatia are some principles that signal their greatness, and I really am so hopeful and prayerfully hopeful that you get these because I think these can really become things that you can nail down, principles that you can get handles on for understanding what makes the difference in the Christian experience.  Now we've already discussed five of them and we'll review those and then discuss the last three that I see in this chapter. 

     The first thing that was such a key to their success was they were ministering spiritual gifts.  Remember that?  We have said, and said it many times, that the Christian is most effective when he is functioning in an area where he has been gifted by the Holy Spirit, and when they were doing that they consequently were of the most effect.  Now it is true that Christians for example may not have the gift of teaching or preaching or administration or helps or showing mercy or whatever.  You may have some gifts of course, others you don't have, and yet in the sense even though you don't have a gift there is a sense in which you need to minister in all those areas.  For example, we all don't have the gift of exhortation but we're all called on to exhort each other.  We all don't have the gift of teaching but we're all to declare Christ.  So there's a sense in which we don't all have the master gift but we all in a lesser sense are called to do all these things but when we really function dominantly through those gifts that are specially given to us, then our success is really dynamic, not in terms of the world but in terms of what God wants.

     Now these guys were functioning according to their gifts.  Preaching, teaching, exhortation and administration are all apparent in this chapter.  Those are the four gifts of a leader in the church, and they had them and they exercised them and thus they were really functioning in the energy of the Spirit, and so they were successful to begin with then because they ministered their gifts.  Christians need to begin with to find their gifts and use them.  Secondly we saw they were successful because of boldness.  There's no substitute for boldness because boldness is the ability to go through opposition, and if you don't go through opposition you never get anywhere because any time you try to do something for God, what's the first thing that happens?  Opposition.  So if you can't handle oppositions you can't handle anything and that's boldness, plowing through the opposition.

     The third thing we saw that was so basic and so intrinsic to success was Divine power.  We saw in the illustration verses 1-7 dealt with boldness and versus 8-10 dealt with Divine power.  The Apostle Paul right in the middle of a sermon God just goes right through him and performs a miracle.  These guys lived in the power flow and last week we talked about the fact that some of us Christians know something is coming up and we can take a week to kind of get the power going again, but Paul just lived with the power flow and at any moment right in the middle of his sermon God just interrupted him and healed the guy.  I mean the flow was there all the time.  He lived in the power of God.  That's why his gifts ministered so effectively as well, and there's no substitute for ministering in the power of the Spirit.  Believe me, there's none.  I mean I know that from my own life.  If I have the gift of teaching I can minister the gift of teaching in the flesh or in the spirit.

     Just to give you a little homespun personal illustration, I would rather preach here than anywhere, and I mean that sincerely, than anywhere, and yet the flesh in me would say, "But Macarthur, when you preach here you have to study hard because they know everything you know and you have to come up with something different every week" and that's right, but I would rather do that.  I would rather spend 25 or 30 hours a week at least studying to tell you something once than to be a traveling speaker, and you know there's a lot of kind of glamour in being the traveling whatever who comes to town, the professional Bible teacher. That's a great ministry.  I used to do that.  For about three and a half years or so I did that.  I went all over the place.

     It was in a very real sense very difficult to really minister in the spirit, and I want to tell you why.  When you do that you find that wherever you go there are certain messages that you use, the good ones.  In the business we call them the sugar sticks.  You go back to these and you get excited as you can get when you hear you're gonna go someplace you've never been.  All your good stuff you can use.  They've never heard you, right?  That's very easy to do, and I'm not knocking it. 

It's fine if you can handle it in the spirit, and of course it was always the same things.  They always want to hear salvation, Holy Spirit, prophecy, and something about marriage and sex, always the same things, and so you had a little series that you'd come in and you'd say, "Let's see, it'll be message number 13, 14, 15 and 16 this week" and you punch your little button and that's it.  You've got it so in your brain you know exactly when they're going to laugh, you know how to build up to it, you know when they're going to cry, you know everything, you've got that little outline.  If your wife punches you in the middle of the night you sit up and you repeat the message.  It's there; let's face it.  You've got that one down pat.  Believe me, you could have absolutely no connection to God and you can give that thing.  I know.  I've been there.

     You know what?  I did that for just a few years and I realized that was in a sense unfulfilling.  Now I don't want you to call up the people that I'm gonna minister to this summer and say, "Remember you'll be ministering in the flesh."  I'm working on it, but you know I said to the Lord, beginning to pray about this, "Lord, I have to be somewhere where I am dependent on you where I can't go in there knowing I've got a winner."  I mean sometimes I come to preach here and I am scared because I said, "You know I work on that, Lord but it didn't fall together.  It isn't there.  I don't understand just how to put it together and where you're gonna put the emphasis" and I just pray a lot and I get down on my knees in my office before I get over here and I just really pour out my heart to the Lord and I come in here and it's over and God really blessed us. 

Other days I work through it and it's terrific, and I get done and I say, "That's good.  That is gonna get 'em.  That'll be a hot item on the table."  And you know what?  You come in here and nothing, zilch, nothing, and you go away and again you just say to yourself, "You know, dumbo, one of these days you're gonna learn."

     But you know you learn in the ministry that you can't function on your own strength.  You can't do it.  It is Divine power or it is nothing.  I mean the Spirit is the only energy the Word has the really operates, and Paul knew this.  Everything he did he did in the energy of the Spirit and he tried to get it across to everybody.  In Ephesians 3:16 he says, "I pray that you might be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man."  See?  He knows that's the only way.  Then he says, "That you might be filled with all the fullness of God.  Then you'll be able to do exceedingly abundantly above all you can ask or think according to the power that works in you but the power doesn't work until you're strengthened by the spirit in the inner man, not in your own strength."  You can't go out and minister on your own strength.  Divine Power.  Well, I don't want to get into that.  We covered that two weeks already.

     The fourth point that we saw in terms of features of a really successful work is humility.  This is so basic.  Remember that after Paul's power, the power of God through Paul had been exhibited and he healed the man and the guy jumped up and walked?  Well it was a temptation for pride.  Everybody in town in verse 11 just couldn't believe it and they said, "The gods will come down to us in the likeness of men.  Gods are here! Hermes and Zeus or Mercury and Jupiter" and they were going to worship.  Well Paul and Barnabas heard about it in verse 14 and started tearing their clothes and screaming about blasphemy and in verse 15 said, "What are you doing?  We're men of like passions with you.  Cut this out."  They didn't want any exaltation.  They were humbled.  That's a great quality.  You can't beat that.

     Jesus said that, "When a false prophet comes along he seeks his own glory.  When a true prophet comes along he seeks the glory of him that sent him."  They didn't want anything for themselves.  They said, "We're trying to turn you to God" verse 15, "not to us.  We want you to know God" and they described the God of whom they spoke. Well you know whenever you start getting proud you just have to keep remembering what you were.  Isaiah 51:1 where he says, "Whenever you think you're something, remember the hole of the pit from which you were digged."  Solomon said, "Before honor is humility and whoever humbles himself God is going to absolve."  I tell you, humility, that's a tough one but that's a basic.

     Paul expressed his attitude toward humility in 1 Corinthians 15:9.  Just listen to this.  He says, "I am the least of the apostles."  That is not hypocrisy.  That is real.  He's honest.  You say, "Paul, why would you feel like that?"  He says, "I'm not even fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. I know the hole of the pit from which I was digged.  You couldn't have gotten into a deeper hole in a deeper pit than I was in.  I was killing Christians.  I'm not worthy to be an apostle."  Then he says this, "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace, which was bestowed upon me was not in vain.  I labored more abundantly than they all."  You say, "There you go, Paul, bragging" and he says this, "Yet not I with the grace of God that is in me."  Everything was God.  God got him out of the hole to begin with and God ministered through him.  Paul didn't want any glory and neither does any successful servant of God.

     There's a fifth thing that we've studied and just continuing to review here, and that is persistence.  Another great feature of successful effort is persistence.  You couldn't stop Paul.  I mean the guy was just absolutely unstoppable.  They tried to stop him in verse 19 with about as strong an effort as imaginable.  "There came certain Jews from Antioch and Iconi" and by this time he's in the town of Lister and he's moving on.  "Persuaded the people in having stoned Paul.  Threw him out of the city supposing he'd been dead."  They stoned him.  You think well, that'll fix him.  Not really.  Verse 20 says, "He rose up, went back into the city and the next day went 30 miles to Derby."  We talked about last week the unbelievable characteristic here.  How could this guy possibly get up from being stoned until he was obviously in their eyes at least dead, walk back in town and the next day go to Derby, and what did he do when he got there?  "He preached all over the place", verse 21.  You say, "When does he rest?"  He doesn't know the meaning of it.  He is persistent.

     Now last week I went over that and somebody said to me, "John, you avoided the issue of the verses."  I said, "Well what's the issue?" and they said, "Was Paul dead or wasn't he?"  And we just kind of kidded about the fact that there's a big debate about whether Paul was dead and he was resurrected from the dead or whether this was just a time when he was nearly dead and he was revived. Now that's not a big point in one sense and yet in another sense it is an important point so let me speak to it.  This is a footnote, free for nothing, just doesn't come with the message.  I'm adding it.  Anyway, do I believe Paul was dead and resurrected?  I just have to say I don't think so.  I do not think Paul was dead.

     Now some people connect this with the time when he said, "I knew a man of 14 years who was caught up into the third Heaven" and all this thing and they think this is when this happened when he died for a little while and went up.  I don't think you can connect those two.  There's no way you can connect them scripturally because they don't connect.  Obviously you'd just piece them together arbitrarily but I don't believe he was dead and I'll give you some reasons why I don't believe he was dead.  Number one reason is the word "supposed" or "supposing."  It says there, "Having stoned Paul drew him out of the city supposing he'd been dead."

     Now the word "supposing" is the word "namidsoe".  Now this word is an interesting word.  It has two meanings.  The first meaning is to have a custom, like it was a custom to do this or it was a custom to do that, but the second meaning is to suppose something.  It is very obvious when it is used to mean accustom and when it is used to mean supposing.  It is obvious from the context of any passage where it appears.  Now it is used to mean supposing many times in the New Testament.  Far and away the vast majority of those times - get this - it means to suppose something that is not true.  Got that one?  That's the key to the interpretation.  Far and away, in fact I think only two or three times, it is used otherwise.  It is used far and away to mean to suppose wrongly and that is its use in the Book of Acts.

     For example, Matthew 5:17.  Let me just share this with you because I think this is kind of an important point just to show you how the language is a help in interpretation.  People say is it important to know Greek?  Well it is helpful believe me.  Verse 17, "Think not that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets.  I have not come to destroy but to fulfill."  The word "Think" is namidsoe.  "Are you supposing that I come to destroy the law?  Is that a right supposition?  No.  I am not come to destroy but to fulfill."  So again, namidsoe is used in terms of supposing something that is not true. 

Matthew 10, another supposition, verse 34, then we'll go to chapter 20.  "Think not, suppose not that I've come to send peace on Earth.  I came not to spend peace."  Again, they're supposing something that is what?  That is wrong.  They're supposing that he came to send peace.  He says, "No.  I came to send a sword."

     Chapter 20 verse 10 is again another use of the word and we'll just look at that one quickly just to give you something to bounce off of.  "But when the first came they supposed that they should have received more."  Remember the deal about the wages that were paid to the people at work that day?  "They suppose but they didn't get more.  They supposed wrongly again."  Now in Luke 2:44 it is used by Luke the same way.  Now you come to the Book of Acts and how is it used there?  Chapter 7 verse 25 talking about Moses.  "For he supposed his brethren would've understood how that God by His hand would deliver them but they understood not" so they're accused again supposing something that is wrong. Chapter 8 verse 20 Peter said to Simon who tried to buy the Holy Spirit, "Because you supposed the gift of God may be purchased with money, your money perished with you."  Again he supposed a wrong thing.

     Well Acts 16:27, Acts 17:29, Acts 21:29, verse Timothy 6:5, all those passages use it in the sense of supposing something that's wrong.  Now watch this.  Then you go back to verse 19.  "They stoned Paul, threw him out of the city, supposing he had been dead."  The dominant use of the word is to suppose something that is not so.  So on the basis simply of that dominance it would seem most likely that he was not dead.  They were supposing it rather than it being so.  Second reason, if he was dead they wouldn't need to put the word "supposing" in there, right?  They'd just say, "Having stoned Paul they drew him out of the city because he was dead" so you don't need to have the word "supposing" if the guy is dead.

     In fact watch this.  If it was a miracle of resurrection - hang on to this thought - if it was a miracle of resurrection then putting the word "supposing" in there takes away the power of the miracle, doesn't it?  Because you could say easily, "Well, it wasn't really a miracle."  They only thought he was dead, so if the Spirit was trying to get a miracle across to us a miracle of resurrection, he would not have put the word "supposing" in there.

     Third reason, the Holy Spirit is not in the business of minimizing resurrections.  If this was a resurrection of the Apostle Paul I think you would have a lot more said about it that is said there, especially in the Book of Acts.  The Book of Acts is dominated by a careful explanation of miracle after miracle after miracle.  For the Holy Spirit to do a miracle like that and not make it clear means that the very purpose of the miracle is disallowed.  What is a miracle for?  A sign that points to the truth, but the sign there is so small you can't even read it, and the Holy Spirit is in the business of making billboards.  If this was a resurrection of Paul you'd have a lot more information about it than just there, and Luke is in the business of making clear cut, precise statements about miracles.

     I mean he goes on and on about the guy who was crippled in verse 8.  If there was a miracle of a crippled man walking that took up three verses you can believe the resurrection of the Apostle Paul would take a few more than it does down there.  You say, "Well then you don't think it's a miracle."  No, I didn't say that.  I think it's a miracle that a guy stoned one day is taking a 30-mile hike the next day.  That's not a miracle of resurrection.  That's a miracle of restoration.  All right.  That's a footnote; back to the message.

     Persistence.  He was persistent, up and at 'em again.  Persistence is a fabulous quality.  Couldn't deter him.  I was reading this week some of the life of Robert Morisson of England who set his heart on going to China as a missionary and he studied Chinese in England and London.  In 1807 he came to New York to get a ship around the Cape to go to China and he tried to get passage on a ship and he couldn't' get it because China didn't accept foreigners and nobody wanted to haul him over there and have to haul him all around because they couldn't unload him in China.  Finally he booked passage and he landed in China.  He got off, went in a warehouse, stayed in a French warehouse in the city of Canton near the docks and stayed there for six months.  During those six months he learned to cook Chinese food and to dress in Chinese clothes and to kind of adapt himself in Chinese culture and he spent the time studying the Cantonese dialect.  Preaching was illegal but he gathered over the next months and years a little group of people around him, never more than 10 in private, in hiding, and behind closed doors he endeavored to instruct them.  Seven years after he landed in Canton he baptized his first convert.  That's persistence, seven years.

     Finally working all day and night, day after day, month after month, he finished the Book of Acts, translated it into Cantonese, and he succeeded in having it printed but an argument arose among the craftsman, Christian craftsman had a fight.  They were the craftsman who by hand chiseled out of wood every character for his Book of Acts, and he was further going through the New Testament, and they had a big fight and the fight was so blatant that the authorities found out about it and put a stop to all his printing, and all the effort of all those months was halted.  The printing was stopped; no more copies made, no future printing, no future preaching.  He was forbidden from all of it.  Say what did he do?  He persisted, which is what he should've done, stayed on the job because he believed God was in it.  He mastered the language and listen to this, he translated the entire Bible into Cantonese, a massive work.

     He also accomplished a six-volume Chinese/English dictionary so that missionaries would not only have the Bible but they'd have the dictionary to learn the language.  All of this in early 1800's, 27 years of a loneliness and self-sacrificing persistence, and he paved the way for every missionary that ever gave the Gospel to a person who spoke Cantonese since, and today there's an academy in free China Taiwan and it's called Morrison Academy and we haven't forgotten because he was persistent.  Never preached to big crowds but he was persistent, and Paul was persistent. 

     And you know what the key to persistence is?  Remember what we talked about last time?  The key to persistence is maximizing every opportunity.  You see, you're running along, opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, obstacle.  What happens?  There's an opportunity behind that obstacle.  Did you know that?  Behind every obstacle is an opportunity, and the determination is whether or not you want the opportunity bad enough.  If you do you'll push through the obstacle - persistence, time, vying up every opportunity.

Paul said in Collasians 4:5, "Redeeming the time, buying up the _____ opportunity."  What do you do with your time?  Boy, supposing that you have a life of 70 years, which could be accurate for many of you, 70 years.  Now if you took every minute of that time and added it all up, how would that life be broken down?  This is just looking at life in a sense of total time spent.  Three years of those 70 would be spent in school.  That's total time.  Eight years in entertainment, six years in eating, for some of us.  Hmm.  Five years in transportation, four years in conversation - that would vary too - fourteen years working, three years reading, and twenty-four years of sleep.  How much time for God?  Eight years in entertainment.

     If you came to church every Sunday for the service and you prayed five minutes in the morning with your Bible and five minutes and night and lived 70 years you would've given God five months.  Not much, is it?  Time.  What are you doing with it?  How persistent are you?  How persistent are you in maximizing every moment?  Idle moments.  Hmm.  You're gonna account for those.

     Romans 13:11, "And that knowing the time" - Paul lived like Andrew Marvel.  He said he could always hear time's winged chariot hurrying near.  Paul was racing the clock.  He was racing time all the time.  He says, "And knowing the time" imagine his whole life looking over his shoulder just pursuing, "Knowing the time it is high time to awake out of sleep."  Some Christians are as good to God asleep as they are awake.  They don't do anything either way because they're spiritually asleep, so when they're physically awake they're spiritually asleep.

     It was Keats who was haunted by the fear that he might cease to be before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain and he did.  He says, "It is high time to wake out of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."  In other words in terms of the future aspect of salvation Christ coming.  "The night is far spent, the day is at hand.  Let us therefore cast out the works of darkness, put on the armor of light and let's get it on!  Let's get it together!  Let's get going!  Time is chasing.  No more wild parties, drunkenness, desire for forbidden beds, shamelessness, strife and envying and all that stuff.  It's time to get rid of all that."  Persistence.  James said, "What is your life?"  It's what?  Vapor.  Here for a little time, vanishes away.  Ever seen the vapor rise off the tea glass?  That's your life.  Grab it.  Time is the only chunk of eternity you have.  Grab it.  Persistence.

     So the qualifications we've already seen - gifts, boldness, divine power, humility and persistence.  Now let's look at the three for today.  Follow-up is the first one.  Oh, this is so good.  I want you to get this 'cause this is something you can pass on.  This is basic principles.  Another thing that makes for a great effective Christian service is a commitment to follow up what you begin.  It's so basic.  Verse 21, "And when they had preached the Gospel to that city" their work in Derby, that's the farthest post they go, "They then had taught many.  They returned again to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch."  They could've gone from Derby straight back to Antioch or Syria, just hopped over the wilderness.  They went all the way back through every city they'd been in and retraced their steps.  Why?  They believed in follow-up. 

They went all the way back.  Why?  Because the Great Commission is not to make people Christians, it's to make them what?  Disciples.  So it was dangerous to return.  I mean they'd been kicked out of every town they've been in and it was taking their life in their hands but they believed so much in follow-up that they took their life in their hands.

     They went back to the town where they'd been stoned, they went back to the towns where they'd been thrown out and their lives had been threatened.  They went back fearlessly because they believed in follow-up.  Sure it was dangerous.  It was dangerous to go back but it was more dangerous for those new babes not to have meat and milk so they went back.  I love that verse 21 'cause that teaches follow-up.  Don't ever lead anybody to Jesus Christ that you're not willing to nurture.

     Now what is follow-up made up of?  Four things and these are timeless things that I still think if any of you are discipling somebody here are the four things you're gonn