Acts 11: 27 “In those days some prophets came down fromJerusalem to Antioch. 28 One of them named Agabus stood up and predicted through the Spirit that a great famine would sweep across the entire Roman world. (This happened under Claudius.) 29 So the disciples, each according to his ability, decided to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gifts to the elders with Barnabas and Saul.”
When the crisis first hit the world, nobody was prepared! People were frightened and didn’t know which way to turn of how to behave. In fact, even Christians were at their wits’ ends! The entire Roman world was rocked!
“What?” you ask. “What do you mean ‘Roman?’” Wait, you thought I was talking about the COVID – 19 pandemic, didn’t you? Guess what? We are not the first generation to face a crisis, nor are we likely to be the last. So let’s look at the response of the early church.
The Christians knew that the famine was coming because one who was a trusted prophet said so. In those days, much of the grain was produced in what is now Libya and in parts of Israel and southern Italy and in some parts of what is now Greece. But if the rains failed in these areas, so did the grain. At the same time, it took days or weeks or even months of arduous travel to get from point A to point B; preparation was extremely important. And preparation is something at which the Christians in Antioch evidently excelled.
We know very little about the poverty level among the Christians of Antioch, but we can assume that most of them were small tradesmen or craftsmen and women eking out a living. There might not have been very many rich people in the Antioch church; however, these believers had two things going for them: they were loving and generous. As soon as Agabus gave the prophecy, the Christians in Antioch began planning and gathering their resources to send to Jerusalem. Why Jerusalem? At that point, Jerusalem was still the headquarters of the early Christian church. News might have reached Antioch that the rains had failed in Israel, leaving the coastal plane dry and barren. Since most of Israel was dry and barren anyway, this meant that things would be very difficult for the church leaders in Jerusalem. Fortunately, Saul and Barnabas were available and ready to travel. Everyone knew Barnabas to be utterly trustworthy. While people were originally quite skeptical about Saul’s conversion, everyone knew Saul to be an honest man. And by this point, Saul and Barnabas had spent an entire year in Antioch, so the believers there had gotten to know both of them extremely well.
In recent months we have witnessed sad examples of people grabbing and hording resources, including toilet paper and disinfectants. Much of this hording was motivated by fear. Why weren’t the Christians in Antioch afraid? After all, if this was a world – wide famine, wouldn’t they be affected as well? We have no answer apart from this: these people fully believed that if they would be generous to others, God would take care of them also. One of the good things about the early Christians was that they had intensively studied the sayings of Jesus that we have preserved in the Gospels. And Jesus had advised his followers “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide yourselves with purses that will not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “(Luke 12:32 – 34)
WHERE IS YOUR TREASURE? In recent months, we have seen jobs, money, and other “trustworthy” things evaporate. There is nothing on earth that cannot either fail or be destroyed or be stolen. If your faith is in anything than the one true living God, one day you will be severely disappointed. The early Christians in Antioch knew this principal well; they were not sharing out of abundance but rather out of faith. Each of us has a choice to make every day: will we act out of faith or out of fear? If you have no basis for faith, you are only left with your fears.
God told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 33:27 – 28 “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. So Israel dwells securely; the fountain of Jacob lives untroubled in a land of grain and new wine, where even the heavens drip with dew.” Today you have a choice: Trust God and live in faith OR refuse to trust God and live in fear. The choice is yours. What will it be?
PRAYER: Father God, please help us to live in faith and to trust you always and forever. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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