The Evidence of the Grace of God

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We are going to hear from Gary.

I want to invite Gary up. We know Gary now. He’s been with us several times and we are grateful for that. This might—I don’t know if it’s the final time—let’s say it’s not goodbye, just see you later. Yeah, but that’s kind of your… good. No introduction. Here we go.

All right. Thanks. Thanks, Jesse. Yeah, I hope it’s not the last time. Over these last few months, as we’ve engaged together—Vital Church Ministry—with you here at Foothills, you guys have become very special to me. I look forward to being here, spending time with you. So each and every one of you—very special.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the most special of us here today, which is my wife. She came with me this time around. Finally.

Yes, she deserves those claps. She’s an amazing person, and I am a far better person when she’s with me. So thanks for welcoming her.

Well, today, we are going to talk about the evidence of the grace of God. If you remember, in the fall, we looked at the Shema from the Old Testament:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength.”

Jesus would later go on to say that’s the greatest commandment, and he tags on to it what is just like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And so that’s what Jesus says is the most important thing that you can be about.

Today we’re going to talk about what does it look like when a group of people, like us here in this room, live like it’s true?

In Acts chapter 11, there is this guy named Barnabas. His name means “son of encouragement,” and he’s sent to a church at a place called Antioch because the leaders of the church of Jerusalem heard there’s something going on up at the city in Antioch. And they’re like, somebody’s got to go check this out. We don’t know what’s going on over there.

“Barnabas, you’re nice. You go check it out. They’ll like you.” So they send him up there because he’s an encourager.

And so Barnabas goes to Antioch. Antioch at the time, for context, was the third largest city in the Roman Empire—behind Rome and Alexandria. It was a city that was fully Hellenistic, and it came with all the good and the bad that that would entail. It was a diverse, intellectual place. It was a diverse trade hub. Ideas, cultures, products flowed in and out at a very rapid rate. And so different ideas of how the world functioned and functions, different worldviews, were present there.

And worship of God certainly was—but worship of things like money, power, appearance were also there as well. And so it was a complicated and important place for the church to be. A lot like Albuquerque.

So Barnabas goes up there and in one translation, it says when he gets there, and he gets in the midst of the church, he sees “the evidence of the grace of God.”

I love that phrase so much: the evidence of the grace of God.

And so if I were to ask you: what’s the evidence of the grace of God in your life or in this community? What would you say?

Not: has God shown you grace? Not: have you experienced grace? But: what’s the evidence of the grace of God in your life and in your community?

So if someone looked closely at your life or at this church, what’s the evidence that they would know that the grace of God is real? What would it look like?

Well, Acts chapter 11, verses 19 through 30, kind of starts to frame in what that might look like for us. And though not everything in the Scripture—particularly in Acts—is prescriptive for the church, there’s a lot we can glean from, even in our own context, about how to live in Christ-centered community.

So let me read Acts chapter 11:19–30, and then we’ll unpack it together.

“Now, those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however—men from Cyprus and Cyrene—went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.)

The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.”

So when we step back and look at this story, I think there are three clear expressions of the evidence of the grace of God that Barnabas saw when he got there to the church at Antioch.

Three things:

1. They endured hardship together.

2. They invited outsiders in.

3. They looked beyond themselves to serve others.

That’s what the grace of God looked like at Antioch. I think that’s what the grace of God still looks like today. I think that’s the evidence of the grace of God: endurance, inviting in, and looking out.

Acts chapter 11 comes on the heels of Acts chapter 7. Stephen, who is an evangelist—he spreads the word of God—is killed for boldly proclaiming that God sent Jesus into the world to save it.

So Stephen’s killed. He’s proclaiming the goodness of God and that Jesus came to save the world. And in Acts chapter 8, verse 1, it says:

“On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered through Judea and Samaria.”

There’s something key there: all except the apostles.

So this church in Antioch—they weren’t important people. They weren’t apostles. They weren’t trained leaders. They weren’t people with power or status. They were scattered by persecution, and they were just ordinary believers. They were displaced, uprooted. They were carrying grief with them.

And so we shouldn’t romanticize this church at Antioch like, “Well, of course the word spread there. God was with them, and they were the apostles. They were the super-followers of Jesus.” They weren’t. They were just normal people.

So undoubtedly, they were hurt and confused and disappointed. Their plans had been shattered. They were displaced. Their sense of safety was gone. They were uprooted, unsettled, and fearful.

And in some ways, that experience isn’t foreign to us. We all know what it’s like to have our lives—as individuals and as communities—disrupted by loss, by disappointment, by trauma, by seasons where things just didn’t turn out the way we’d hoped they would.

Pain has this way—when we experience this disappointment, this unsettledness, this uprootedness—of turning us inward.

One person says it this way: pain makes us uncontrollably selfish because we can’t think outside our own pain.

And if studies are correct, over 50% of people in the United States right now are experiencing some form of depressive symptom. Many are not clinically diagnosed, with no large statistical variant inside the church or outside the church.

We are people who are experiencing pain and unsettledness and being uprooted. And the Scriptures never tell us to deny that. They don’t say, “No, everything’s just fine.” The Scriptures never tell us to do that—or feel or act like pain doesn’t exist.

But Acts chapter 11 tells us something really, really powerful:

Grace does not remove suffering, but it can sustain us through it.

That’s what makes a Scripture like, “I set my eyes upon the hill, to where my help comes from—to the Maker of heaven and earth”—that’s what makes that Scripture so hard and so good.

It’s actually in seeing Him, the Maker of heaven and earth—the God who is bigger than the pain we are currently experiencing—where we see Him, where we can get a little bit of space that turns us from inward to outward, and we anchor ourselves in something bigger than the current circumstances we find ourselves in.

But there are times, and maybe most of the time, where we can’t make that turn ourselves—from inward to outward. We can’t make that turn ourselves.

And you know why? It’s because we’re not made to. We’re made to lock arms together—maybe with those different than us who have a different perspective. Maybe with those who are a little further along in the pain than we are, who can point us to the grace and show us the evidence of the grace of God in the disruption.

That we need to support each other and care for each other in the pain and the disruption that we experience.

The church at Antioch didn’t have it easy. They were hurt. They were confused. They were disappointed people.

So they chose to be united in it. They united themselves to the Giver of grace that was bigger than both the pain and the struggle they were experiencing—proving again that God actually uses disruption—and I know this is hard to hear—even suffering, to bring new life.

That’s the story of the cross.

At the center of our Christian faith, we are saved from our sin that separates us from a good and loving God through Jesus, who suffered in our place.

So—tough question:

How does news of a suffering Savior spread? Through suffering servants.

That’s what Paul says in Philippians chapter 1. We don’t only believe in Christ—we suffer for Christ.

Suffering is, in fact, inevitable for the follower of Jesus. But the mission of God is also unstoppable.

The strategy of the enemy when the church was founded was to undo the church—through trial, through death, through persecution outwardly, and through division inwardly.

But that led to the gospel going to Antioch. The church endured.

God doesn’t cause the pain, but man, He can redeem it.

Because when Jesus said, “Go into the world and make disciples. Surely I’ll be with you to the end of the age,” I think He actually meant it.

And when Jesus said, “I’ll build my church, and the gates of hell won’t stand against it,” I think He actually meant it.

Enduring in disappointment and hurt and hardship and suffering together is part of the evidence of the grace of God for our world.

I know that’s not a popular thing to say. I know it probably won’t show up on a bumper sticker that any of us will put on our cars. But it’s true. Evidence of the grace of God is that the church endures.

It’s also that the church invites in.

Grace didn’t just help the church survive. It actually reshaped who belonged.

Acts tells us that at first, these scattered believers shared the gospel only with Jewish people—only people that were culturally, ethnically, religiously the same as them.

But then something changed. Some of them began telling the good news of Jesus to Greeks as well.

Outsiders started to be invited in intentionally. Former enemies became welcomed. Barriers that had defined people for generations—actually began to fall apart.

And this is where Antioch became truly remarkable.

After the persecution pushed believers out of Jerusalem to Antioch, we see believers for the first time being called Christians—at Antioch, not in Jerusalem. In Antioch.

And some scholars say this was probably a derogatory term—that they called them “Christians” at Antioch. It means “little Christs.” But here’s what I say to that: even if it was, who they were was getting noticed. It was so distinctive that they had to come up with a new word for these people.

That’s how radically they were living.

Luke, the writer of Acts, a few chapters later—in Acts chapter 13—describes the makeup of the church in Antioch. And he says it this way:

“There were at Antioch, in the church there, prophets and teachers—Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.”

Luke mentions not only their names but actually their ethnicities as well.

So basically what Luke is saying here is: in this church in Antioch—where they were being called Christians because they had to come up with a new word for this group of people, because they were so radical in how they were living—there was someone from sub-Saharan West Africa. There was a person from the north coast of Africa—what today is Libya. And there was a Jewish man of privileged upbringing. And there was a Roman citizen.

There were all these different backgrounds and faith upbringings—Jew and Gentile, the chosen people and the previous outsiders. Different socioeconomics, different races, different colors. Men and women. Groups who had been seen as less than human previously—being valued and loved. People who were enemies now being united.

That was so different, they had to come up with a new word for it.

These people, who were naturally divided in virtually every way, were supernaturally united in community by the grace of Jesus—and the world took notice.

And I suspect the world today would as well.

Maybe this is our actual best chance to display the evidence of the grace of God in the here and now.

A great number of people turned to the Lord at Antioch. They accepted the invitation to become part of the church. And I’m sure it was in part because they saw themselves as they walked through the door.

We’ve talked about this in our summits, in our “Focusing the Church” process that came up this weekend. But I’ll say it again as well, because I think it’s so important:

Anyone who walks through those doors on a Sunday morning is asking two questions:

1. Am I safe?

2. Do I belong?

In Antioch, people saw themselves. And they began to answer those questions: yes.

Would people here?

The church I pastored before I became Executive Director of Vital Church Ministry—I was there for 16 years. You’d hear us say pretty often that we value making the most of our time and place in history, meaning God could have put us anywhere, at any time, in any place.

And He chose, in His sovereignty, to put us here and now. And we think He did it on purpose.

I’m just wondering: do you think an unthinkable display of unity among believers might actually get noticed now, in our time and place in history?

It seems Jesus knew the answer to this would be yes. Because in John 17, He actually prays that we would be united in this way.

He prays for followers. I think it’s amazing—not just general followers. He prays for us today. And He tied unity directly to the world knowing that God sent Him.

Jesus knew our inconvenient unity would be a shining light in a foggy world to bring people home.

That’s what’s at stake here.

If we don’t experience that—if we don’t experience unity, radical unity with people that are different than us but united by the grace of Jesus—if we don’t experience it here, it’s not God’s fault.

He gave up everything to see it happen. He gave up His Son to live and love and die and rise again—for every single person to know that they matter deeply to God.

Unity is the evidence of the grace of God.

And lack of it is on us.

And living the grace of Jesus didn’t mean—and doesn’t mean—that you just brush over things that are different: our differences, or challenges, or even sin.

We don’t just brush over those things because we’re scared our unity is so fragile that if we’re honest, the whole thing falls apart.

The believers living in the grace of Jesus meant they needed to be honest with each other—about differences, about challenges, about sin that held them back from being the people God had called them to be—for the sake of each other.

And they reckoned with that together. And they held on to each other as they reckoned with that.

It was messy—and it was beautiful.

If you read the rest of Acts, you see it. If you read the letters from Paul, you see it.

They reckoned with the differences. And they held on to each other through it.

Barnabas saw this. He saw the evidence of the grace of God in this community that invited others in.

And then in verse 25, Barnabas went to Tarsus and gets Saul—who we call Paul, right?

And when he found him, he took him to Antioch.

I think this is absolutely amazing.

So Paul was there in Acts chapter 7, approving of the murder of Stephen. He was striking people down for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus—this unifying love of Christ, this grace of Christ.

And then two chapters later—Acts chapter 9—Paul comes face to face with Jesus. And it knocks him on his backside. Literally. You should read it. And then he’s baptized.

And Barnabas brings Paul to Antioch.

Barnabas sees the evidence of the grace of God in Antioch—was being lived out through outsiders being invited in—and he thinks:

I have to take Paul there.

And I have no doubt that Barnabas took Paul there—and stays there—in part because he saw how they invited people in. He knew the answer to that question:

Would Paul be safe here? Would he belong here?

And the answer was yes.

And he says, “I gotta go grab him.” And he takes him there.

Paul joins the church for a year. And the church at Antioch ends up sending Paul out as a global missionary.

That’s part of why we have half the New Testament—because he goes and plants churches, and he writes letters to those churches.

Hollywood could not have written a better resurrection story.

Paul is catalytic in starting the church in Antioch by his hate—and he is sent out by the church in Antioch to spread the gospel in the world by its love.

It’s incredible.

Grace turned a persecutor into a missionary.

The church endures hardship—it’s the evidence of the grace of God. It’s also the evidence of the grace of God that the church invites in outsiders.

And lastly, it’s the evidence of the grace of God when the church looks out.

During this time of uncertainty, this time of disruption, prophets show up at Antioch and they warn: there’s going to be a famine—not in their neighborhood, somewhere else.

And instead of hoarding resources and turning inward because there was so much disruption going on, the church at Antioch decides to help. They look out.

The Scriptures say each one gave as they were able. They looked out. They chose generosity.

Verse 29: “As each one was able, they decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea.”
“This they did, sending their gifts to the elders by Barnabas and Saul”—or Paul.

Grace creates that kind of posture.

Paul would later go on to write to a church in Ephesus. He would say:

“Remember, it’s by grace that you have been saved through faith. There is no boasting. There is no earning. This is grace. It’s a gift from God.”

But because that’s true, remember this:

“Now, out of that grace, you are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He prepared in advance for you to do.”

You’ve been saved by grace. You didn’t earn it. But now you’ve been freed up to display His goodness in the world—to display His generosity, to display His grace.

So the church at Antioch—they looked out beyond themselves to the need of others. This diverse church had a missional, outward mindset of sharing the gospel and sharing what they had to point people to that gospel.

And in some ways, I think, well, of course they served the world in need.

They saw themselves.

They were diverse. They represented the world. And so when they heard of need, they said, “These are my people. Of course we have to help.”

It wasn’t somebody else’s problem. It was theirs. And they chose service over comfort.

For Foothills Fellowship, again, our time and place in history—just a couple of things to kind of remind us of the need in the world and the opportunity we have to show grace:

Currently, there are 70.8 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced from their home—what you might call “refugees.”

In our world, 690 million people are currently undernourished.

I’ll get a little closer to home now.

Tonight, 3,000 men, women, and children in this city won’t have a place to lay their head.

And 1 in 5 people in this city are facing hunger.

I don’t say that to create any kind of guilt or anything like that. I actually want to applaud how this church has been missional in its outreach.

Your impact in the world outpunches your weight.

But will you continue to see the need in the season ahead? In a season that might have you turning inward—will you continue to look out?

Will you see any of yourself in the need in the world around you?

Will you have enough space in your own disruption to see the needs of others?

The One we follow did.

Jesus noticed, and He stopped, and He cared for the needy—on His way to Jerusalem, to take on a cross, to take on all the sin of all the world.

He passes through Jericho, and as the pace of ministry quickens and the disciples were pushing Him on, He hears someone in the corner—pushed to the margins—say:

“Son of David, have mercy on me.”

And the disciples are like, “We don’t have time for your need. We’ve got things. We’re busy. We’re trying to get on mission over here.”

And Jesus stops. And He pushes through the crowd to a man born blind. And He bends down and gets face to face with him and says:

“What do you want me to do for you?”

Do we have time and space in our lives for that?

The One we follow did.

That’s why serving others isn’t a side project for the church. It’s the evidence that grace is alive.

I want to close with this.

When Barnabas arrived at Antioch, he didn’t say, “Man, this church has it all figured out.”
He didn’t say, “This church is so comfortable to be a part of.”
He didn’t say, “This church is so impressive.”

He said:

“There’s the evidence of the grace of God here.”

Because he saw:

• A church that endured hardship instead of walking away.

• A church that invited people in who never thought they belonged.

• A church that looked beyond itself to meet the needs of others, even in their own uncertain times.

So, Foothills: Why endure? Why invite in? Why look out?

Because Jesus—Acts chapter 1, verse 8—said:

“You will be My witnesses to the ends of the earth.”

And why else?

Because every single person you lock eyes with matters deeply to God, and they deserve to know it.

The world isn’t asking you to be louder. The world isn’t even asking you to win more arguments.

The world is asking you if what you believe actually changes how you live.

So here’s the invitation:

Will you endure together—through the pain, through the disappointment, through the unknown?

Will you invite in those who don’t look like you, or think like you, or come from where you come from?

And will you look out, choosing service over comfort, so that others can see the grace of Jesus?

Because when we do—if you say yes to that, if you take on that charge—you actually won’t have to convince the world that the grace of Jesus is real.

They’ll see the evidence of it.

So let me pray that that would happen.

Father God, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for this church at Antioch, which can be a guidepost for us. You put this in Your Word for us to glean from—so it’s a gift in that sense. So thank You.

Father God, I know that none of those three aspects of the evidence of the grace of God—enduring, inviting in outsiders, and looking outside of ourselves to serve others—none of that is easy. None of it’s convenient. And none of it is what we can do on our own.

It’s actually bigger than what we can accomplish.

But I’m grateful that You say You’ll be with us. That You will empower us by Your Spirit. And so there’s a huge gap between what we can accomplish and what You’re calling us to.

And so we desperately need You—by Your Spirit—to come.

We sang earlier, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

We need this. Bless us with the power to be this kind of church—that maybe, just maybe, this city, because of these people in this room, would see the evidence of the grace of God.

That they would know that it’s real by how they live.

And we pray this in the powerful and redemptive name of Jesus.

Amen.