Acts 11:25-30 (NIV)
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, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Ever since the apostles had sent Saul away from Jerusalem so that things would quiet down a bit, he had been quietly working in his home areas of Tarsus in Cilicia, northwest of Antioch. God had used this down-time to show him more of His plan for him and, like so many before him, he was kept in a holding pattern until the time was right for him to get back in the game.
That time had now come, and Barnabas, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom, sensed it. He saw the leadership needs that were present in the Antioch Church and heard the voice of God clearly directing him to Saul. So, he left at once for Antioch to find him.
At the same time, Saul recognized that it was God’s leading that he should go with Barnabas to strengthen and encourage the Antioch Church. He was a gifted teacher and prophet (one who speaks the words of God to the people), and the Church was indeed strengthened through his ministry.
The word Christian, first applied to believers in Antioch during this time, carries the sense of one who is specially devoted to the Christ (Messiah), as well as one who is like Christ in character and action. And, in the case of the Antiochian disciples, both were true. Whether this term was originally derogatory or not, the Scripture here gives no indication, it points to the fact that the non-believers in Antioch saw the devotion and character of those who were believers, and in them saw a reflection of Jesus Himself.
The prophet Agabus appears twice in the book of Acts, here and in Acts 21:10-11, both times as a bearer of bad news. In this instance, he was warning the believers through the area of a coming famine that would soon ravage the Empire.
The famine left the area around Antioch largely untouched so the believers there, mostly gentile converts, decided to send provisions and funds to the brothers and sisters in Judea, which had been very hard hit, an act conforming not only to Jesus’ general “Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12), but even to his more specific standard of self-sacrificial love for those in the Church (John 13:34-35). They gathered all they could possibly spare and sent it south, with Paul and Barnabas overseeing the transportation and ensuring that the gift made it into the proper hands.
Father, your guiding hand was so evident in all these activities: helping Barnabas to find Saul, letting Saul know that this was Your calling, the success in deepening the Antiochian disciples, Agabus’ warning, and Your moving the hearts of the Antiochian Christians to send relief to the Church in Jerusalem. Help me, Lord, to listen for Your voice with that same intensity, to hear jut as clearly as they all did, and to respond with the same celerity. Amen.
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