Sometimes we can get very confused when reading the Bible because people either have more than one name or there are so many different people with the same name! There are several ‘Herods’ in the Bible (Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa I and II, for example), and this applies to many other people too, leaving us to have to clarify which Mark or Joseph we are talking about! Often, a name change is given which signifies God’s action in people’s lives (Abram became Abraham, ‘exalted father’ becoming the ‘father of many nations’; Jacob the deceiver became Israel, the one who had wrestled with God, for example.) So it can be important to be sure to define who we are talking about when names change.

In the book of Acts, we read about the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9) and until Acts 13, he is referred to by this name. In Acts 13:9, however, we read that ‘Saul… was also called Paul’, and for the rest of that book, and in the many letters he wrote, it is by this name he is known. We might find this confusing, but it’s important to remember that this man was both a Jew and a Roman citizen, and as such would have had more than one name (just as we often have two or more given names.) Saul was a Hebrew name, and it’s highly possible that our New Testament apostle was named after the first king of Israel (both were from the tribe of Benjamin.) In Greek, however, this name was translated ‘Saulos’, which in that language was also an adjective describing someone walking or behaving in an effeminate way. Perhaps it’s because now, at this point in the story that Paul is starting his missionary journeys to the Gentile world, that the transition is made to use his Roman name Paul: we don’t know for certain. But one thing we do know. Names define us and identify us and it’s interesting that as Paul fulfilled his divine calling to be an apostle to the Gentiles, he adopted a Roman name. Hudson Taylor, Barnsley missionary to China, invested his whole life in evangelising the Chinese, even adopting Chinese clothing in order to identify himself with their culture. Paul would later say, ‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.’ (1 Cor 9:22) We may well have to change and adapt many things to reach people (including names), but what is important is that the gospel is taken to the ends of the earth.

One of the things I have found difficult during this period of lockdown is being bombarded by statistics on a daily basis. Mark Twain popularised the saying, ‘There are lies, damned lies, and statistics’, and despite my fondness for the Radio 4 programme ‘More or Less’ which deals with statistics, I generally find that statistics overwhelm me, and I run from them. I’ve found it hard to deal with daily death tolls, numbers of confirmed Coronavirus cases and other statistics being thrust at me by news briefings and struggle to put these into any meaningful context. Awful though these statistics have been, for example, it’s probably more shocking to look at other causes of death (including abortion) and see how these figures compare. They are generally so much higher that it’s mind-numbing.

We generally don’t cope well with statistics because most of us need the personal touch to identify with situations. Thousands of deaths wash over us; the death of someone we know touches us personally. It’s the reason war films often focus on a family or group of characters for whom we care and with whom we can identify: ‘Saving Private Ryan’, for example, brings us the horror of the D-Day landings, but gives us real individuals whose destiny matters to us.

It can be a little bit like this in the Christian journey too. We need the personal stories in the Bible to give us insight into God’s personal dealings with individuals. Not only can we relate to these stories so much more easily, we see from these that God really does care for and value the individual. Jesus said, ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.’ (Luke 12:6-7)The abstract truth that God loves the world can be just as daunting as statistics; this reminder that we are personally known to God brings the truth home to us in a much more vivid way.

Luke tells us many stories of evangelism in the book of Acts, but these are often filtered through the medium of personal stories. We hear about the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius and his family, Saul’s conversion. When it comes to the first missionary journey to Cyprus (Acts 13:1-12), we find that the main focus of attention is on the Roman governor there, Sergius Publius, and on a sorcerer named Elymas. This type of personal detail reminds us of the proverb: ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’

World evangelisation sounds as scary to me as the daily statistics being poured into my ears each evening. How on earth can we evangelise the whole world? It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and therefore to give up. But, as with so many other things, the method is the same throughout history and wherever we are. How do we evangelise the world? One person at a time.

Every person matters. Every conversation is important. Every prayer, every testimony, every time we share something of God’s goodness with someone else, we are involved in the Great Commission. Never forget the personal touch (even if you can’t physically touch someone right now!)

The whole question of how we hear God’s voice has occupied people for centuries. Books have been written on the subject and there is far more to this question than can be answered in a short post! But as we look at Acts 13:1-3, we see three crucial elements mentioned which I think facilitated the response that was to lead to the first missionary journey and the spread of the gospel to the wider world.

Worship, prayer and fasting are mentioned in these verses, and it was from these activities that the Holy Spirit spoke (we are not told in what form, though the mention of prophets and teachers may hint that this came through a prophetic word). These three things need to be at the heart of every church’s life.

Worship involves all that we are and do. We often think of it in terms of praise – singing to God, bowing before Him, lifting our hands, playing instruments. The word itself implies service, however (Rom 12:1 in the NIV talks of worship, whereas in the KJV it talks of ‘reasonable service’), and the Message version of Rom 12:1 makes us realise that worship really is about everything: ‘your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life.’ In terms of church gatherings, I do believe there is a vital place for adoration, praise and worship, however, where our gaze is firmly fixed on who God is and what He has done and I’m firmly convinced from the Bible that music and singing have a vital role to play in this.

Prayer is our communication hotline to God and involves both listening and talking. The implication is that once they heard from God, they needed to continue to pray before action was taken. I’m convinced we often react and act first and pray second, and this is a problem every church needs to address. Prayer will often involve waiting on God. We have absolutely no clue from Acts 13 how long it was after they heard the Spirit speak to them that they set out on the journey, but it’s clear there was no precipitous rush. Often, we are in a much greater rush than God is; prayer keeps us in line with God’s timings.

Fasting means to go without food, not in order to lose weight but to spend time with God and to focus our attention on God. Fasting essentially is a way that we discipline ourselves spiritually, for we are so governed by our appetites. When we fast, we acknowledge that God is more important than our hunger, that ‘man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ (Matt 4:4) Prayer and fasting are often mentioned together, as in Acts 13:3, and this shows us that there must be discipline and sacrifice if we are to hear and obey God.

These three things need to be higher on our agenda than anything else, I think, if we are to hear from God the specific instructions we need to help us do His will.

What is the main business of the church? This is something which has been debated for centuries. Many things can be considered, but we must always remember that Christ is the head of the church and we are His body, not the other way around. He is the One who ultimately dictates what the ‘main business’ of the church is and His parting words to His disciples make it plain that making disciples has to be the key focus (Matt 28:18-20, Acts 1:5-8). This main goal of evangelism and missions is not just to reach the lost, however, but also to glorify God, for (as John Piper puts it in his book ‘Desiring God’), ‘the glory of God is the supreme goal of history.’

In Acts 13:1-12, we see a turning point in church history. Until this point, people have preached the gospel wherever they have been scattered, but this is the first time we see a local church (Antioch) sending out people (Barnabas and Paul) for the specific purpose of evangelism and mission. Howard Marshall says, “The importance of the present narrative is that it describes the first piece of planned ‘overseas mission’ carried out by representatives of a particular church, rather than by solitary individuals, and begun by a deliberate church decision, inspired by the Spirit, rather than somewhat more casually as a result of persecution.”

There are many questions left unanswered in this narrative, particularly as we consider the rather enigmatic manner in which the Holy Spirit makes His will known to them: ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ (Acts 13:2) We may want to know exactly how He spoke (through the prophets mentioned in the preceding verse?) and how it became clear what this work was to be and where it would involve them going, but our only clues are in the truths that this happened while they were worshipping and fasting. Worship, service, and self-denial are at the heart, therefore, of hearing God speak – and, it must be added, in determining how we respond. (Acts 13:3) We can’t offer formulaic answers, for God speaks to us personally and the manner in which He does this will vary according to individuals and situations.

It must have been a blow to the church to lose two of its leaders in this way, but they recognised the importance of the ‘main business’ of mission and evangelism and sent them on their way with their blessing and commendation. May we have ears to hear the Spirit’s voice as they did and be just as committed to mission as they were.

Shakespeare wrote, ‘Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.’ (Macbeth, Act IV, sc iii). All of you know that I’m most at home with words. They are my solace and strength in so many ways.

Over Easter I spoke about how death is an affront to us because God has placed eternity in our hearts. All humanity instinctively grieves over death because somehow we understand this was not how life was meant to be. All death causes us to stop, to reflect, to pause, and one of the strangest aspects is when the bereaved person wakes up on the day after discovering the death of a loved one and realises life is going on all around them as if nothing has happened. The sun has risen. The birds are singing. People are still chatting and laughing. You wonder how that can be so when your world has tilted and shifted so irrevocably. How can life go on when this life no longer will?

Our thoughts during a pandemic are relentlessly forced to think of death. Daily briefings pour statistics at us of confirmed cases and deaths related to Covid-19 in ways that mean panic and fear are stoked. I have been left angry and frustrated at this, because deaths occur every day and are not heralded or spoken about, and yet perhaps they ought to be. I don’t mean to minimise the grief felt at every death at this time, for each person’s death matters. But I am not at all convinced that this daily bombardment is helpful or healthy.

In the midst of all this, I am having to deal with death personally: the death of my father, suddenly and unexpectedly following a fall at his home. Suddenly, he is an additional death statistic that’s unrelated to the pandemic (and therefore unmentioned on the news bulletins), but his death brings death close to home. My family is mourning a father, a father-in-law, a brother-in-law, a grandad, a great-grandad. His church family feels shocked and helpless at the loss of their member. The manner of death doesn’t really change the reactions to death. I still woke yesterday and listened to normality with a strange sense of detachment, even in these abnormal times.

The truth is ‘in the midst of life we are in death’. I learnt this at an early age and have always been acutely aware of how fragile and precious life is. But, as Garry preached on Sunday evening, Jesus came to free us from the fear of death (Heb 2:14-15). I am confident my father is now in the presence of the One who defeated death and therefore my grief and mourning are filled also with hope. Whether we live or die, those who have trusted Christ as their Saviour belong to the Lord. (Rom 14:8) That’s all that really matters, and it’s why the gospel message must be shared with all at this time when, for once, death is allowed to be in our thoughts.

When I was at school, in both maths and English I was taught that double negatives make a positive: in maths, if you multiply two negative numbers, you get a positive number (I’m not sure I ever understood why) and in English, I was taught that two negatives cancel each other, resulting in a positive. ‘You ain’t seen nothing‘ means you actually have seen something.

Double negatives are sometimes used to create litotes, a deliberate understatement for effect. I think this is perhaps why the NIV translates 1 Corinthians 15:10 as God’s ‘grace to me was not without effect’), thus drawing our attention to God’s amazing and utterly effective grace. In Greek, we are told God’s grace is not in vain or empty or barren (J.B. Phillips translates this as ‘the grace He gave me has not proved a barren gift‘), but the English version does make us pause over the phrase to be clear we actually understand what Paul is saying.

Double negatives make us stop and think. Other versions put the positive spin on the phrase to make Paul’s meaning crystal clear (the Message version says ‘I’m not about to let His grace go to waste‘; the Voice version says ‘I have made sure His grace to me was not wasted.’) I quite like the linguistic effort of working through the double negative, however, to reach the conclusion that God’s grace is effective in every situation and for every person. Grace is that all-purpose ingredience vital for every day!