Thursday, August 11, 2016
Acts 11:20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, evangelizing about the Lord Jesus...
CENTERS
In the eleventh chapter of Acts, we have an interesting bit of history: how the center of Christian witness shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch. This is interesting because it occasionally shifts also in our day. You and I may worship in America. But our ancestors came from around the world, and many studied God's Word far away from here. The center of our Christian witness can change.
Not that some church leaders sat down and decided, "We think that Antioch would serve as a better center for spreading Christianity." No, it was the persecution that followed Stephen's martyrdom that scattered the believers. But they took with them the good news of Jesus wherever they went. At first they conversed only with fellow Jews. Then some men from the Mediterranean island of Cypress and the African city of Cyrene came to Antioch and talked with non-Jews. It doesn't say they preached, but just that they talked with some non-Jews of Antioch, speaking the good news about Jesus, and the hand of the Lord was with them, and many believed.
Many times God has used his children in this way. They were not all preachers. But, scattered by a variety of circumstances (sometimes even disasters), people, talking with the people they met, have told them the history of Jesus and what a future that history had given them. They did this not because they felt guilty about their failures to do mission work, but from the joy that overflowed their hearts because the love of God had been poured out upon them in Jesus, their Savior and King.
