In Peter Allison's sermon 'Living By Every Word,' the Scripture reading from Acts 11:27-30 highlights pivotal firsts within the New Testament church, including the introduction of prophets and elders. The sermon explores the roles of prophets, who spoke God's words by the Spirit's prompting, and elders, who represented and governed church congregations. It examines how the Jerusalem church supported Antioch by sending prophets due to the absence of the New Testament scriptures. Agabus, a prophet, predicted a great famine, prompting a response from the Antioch church to send aid to Judea, highlighting the mutual support within the early church. The sermon emphasizes the accuracy required of prophets and the sufficiency of God's word in addressing spiritual and material needs. Through this narrative, the sermon underscores the importance of heeding God's word and trusting in His provision.

The Scripture reading for this morning's message is Acts 11, beginning at verse 27. A little paragraph here describing the response of the church to urgent need in Judea. So Barnabas has found Saul, brought him to Antioch, and they've been a year there teaching in that church. Verse 27, And in those days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch, and then one of them, named Agabus, stood up, and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar and then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea. This they also did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul." May this word give you life and be your comfort in affliction.

Heavenly Father, please seal to us Your Word by Your Holy Spirit. Please open our eyes that we may behold wonderful things out of Your Word. Please sanctify us by Your Word and instruct us and grow us this morning. And grow us this morning. And I ask also that you would sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim your grace and the forgiveness of our sins by Jesus Christ.

In His name, Amen. Well, there's a number of firsts in this little passage, including the previous verse, where the Christians were first called Christians, or the believers were first called Christians in Antioch. And then in this passage that we read, we have prophets introduced. This is the first reference to New Testament prophets in the church. First reference in Acts.

Prophets have been mentioned many times prior to this, but it's always been the Old Testament prophets. This is the first time that they are mentioned as being in the New Testament church. And this is also the first reference to elders as officers of the New Testament church. So I thought it would be appropriate this morning in this passage of verse two in looking at how the church acted and responded here to the Word of God. It would also be appropriate to spend just a few moments looking at these two new terms, at least new in this context in the New Testament age, and that of prophets and elders.

These of course are the first mention in the New Testament church, but these are not new to the church itself. So the basic situation here is that the Jerusalem church is helping the church plants around the world. Barnabas, you remember, went up to the church in Antioch. And now it says that prophets came up from Jerusalem to this Antioch church. This is the Jerusalem church sending prophets to Antioch to teach.

This is the wider church body operating as one church, as one body. In that the Jerusalem church is sharing with this church in Antioch a need. A need for teachers. A need for prophets. Because remember, the New Testament Scriptures have not been written yet.

The Word of God is not complete. And so there is a need for prophets. And so the Jerusalem church shares their wealth of teachers and prophets. And Acts 13 lists a couple of these prophets that were up there. There was Barnabas.

There was Simeon. It was called Niger. Niger is black. There was Lucius of Cyrene. There was Manian who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch.

And there was Saul. Those were prophets that were in the Antioch church. So here we see the church is sharing. Where one church has an excess or has surplus or has gifting, they are sharing that with another church that has a need. And we're also going to see the opposite, that where the Antioch church has a surplus, where they have ability, they are sharing with the Jerusalem and Judea church in their need.

And that's just what Paul says in Galatians 6.6, isn't it? That Him who has taught the Word share in all good things with Him who teaches." So there's to be a sharing back and forth. And it's not just always in kind. It's a Sharing of spiritual gifts can be reciprocated by a sharing of material gifts and vice versa. So the Antioch Church we'll see in this passage shares their wealth with the church in Judea as well.

So it mentions here, in those days, prophets came from Jerusalem. Prophets. First reference to New Testament prophets. Many prophets before, but there was always speaking of Old Testament prophets, of Isaiah and Jeremiah and so forth. Or Joel, Old Testament prophets.

But what is a prophet? What did Jerusalem send to Antioch? Well Deuteronomy 18 explains what a prophet does. This is what it says, Deuteronomy 18, 18, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him." A prophet speaks God's words in God's name. That's what a prophet does.

Speaks God's words in God's name. Numbers 12-6 says, Here now my words. The Lord said, hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to Him in a dream." The Lord is saying very clearly, prophets speak His words.

So prophecy then is the work of the Holy Spirit in person. Agabus was shown, we see in this passage, he was shown the information that he spoke about this coming famine by. He was shown that by the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit that put those words in His mouth. Luke records another prophecy that Agabus gave in Acts 21.

And we see the exact same pattern there. The Holy Spirit put the words in His mouth. Acts 21 verse 10 says, And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And when he came to us, he took Baal's belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus says the Holy Spirit. And then he went on to say what the Holy Spirit was saying.

You see, God put His words in Agabus' mouth, and Agabus spoke God's words in God's name. See, when he says, thus says the Holy Spirit, that's exactly analogous to the Old Testament phrase, thus says the Lord. Remember, that was the identifying words of a prophet. He came saying, thus says the Lord, because the words that He was speaking weren't His words, they were the words that the Lord was speaking. And we are accountable.

We are accountable to the words spoken by God's prophets, as if God Himself had spoken those words. In other words, when God sends His prophet and puts His words in that prophet's mouth and He speaks them to us, we are just as accountable to those words as the words that God Himself spoke from Mount Sinai. Deuteronomy goes on to explain in verse 19, we read verse 18 a minute ago, and it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of Him." In other words, God's saying, when a prophet speaks in My name, We have to regard it as if God Himself were saying it. God will hold us accountable to what His prophets speak, just as if He had said it Himself. So when God sends His prophets, they speak with His words in His name and with His authority.

And the prophets' words are the words of God. This is how it would be in a house I grew up in, in my home, if my father would send some directions by one of his children to give to the other children. And they would always come and say, well, Father says you should do this. You see, and if we ignored what that child was saying, maybe they were even a younger sibling. But if you ignored what that sibling was saying in the Father's name, then you were disobeying Father Himself.

So this is what the Lord says. The accuracy standard for a prophet of God was 100%. Not 99.9999, 100%. If so much as one word fell to the ground of All that God spoke, that prophet was a false prophet, and that God had not sent. In fact, anyone who would presume to speak a word in God's name that God had not commanded them to speak was to be put to death.

That was a capital crime. Deuteronomy 18 goes on, But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that that prophet shall die." And then the Lord goes on to say, and if you say in your heart, well, how shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? And then so the Lord gave us a test by which we can determine if a prophet is a true prophet or not. He says, when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously.

You shall not be afraid of Him." You see, this is the same standard for New Testament prophets. It's not acceptable to be 78% accurate, 90% accurate, 95% accurate, 99% accurate. It's not acceptable. If you are only 99% accurate, you are not a true prophet. You are not a prophet of God.

If you presume to speak a word in God's name that God has not spoken, the Lord says their life is forfeit. See, because the New Testament equates Old Testament prophets with New Testament prophets. Or it equates New Testament prophets with Old Testament prophets. Both did the same thing. And the New Testament uses the exact same word for Old Testament prophets as it did for New Testament prophets.

In Acts 2, we remember Peter equated what was happening at Pentecost with what Joel had prophesied in Joel 2. That the Spirit was being poured out on all flesh, resulting in prophecy. See, this ties the New Testament speaking of the Word, the New Testament use of the word prophet with the Old Testament use of the word. They were doing the exact same thing. They were speaking the words which God put in their mouth and the exact same standard applied to them.

The New Testament prophets were the foundation of the church in the New Testament. The apostles and the prophets. In Ephesians 2, Paul said, Now therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. He told the Ephesian church, you were built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Now, you can only lay a foundation once, can't you?

Once the foundation is laid, then you build the superstructure of the house on top of the foundation. You don't lay the foundation again. In fact, that's what Paul told the Corinthians. He said, for we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, you are God's building. According to the grace of God which was given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation." Paul is speaking as an apostle and as a prophet.

He's saying, I've laid the foundation and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ. No other foundation can anyone lay. Once the foundation is laid, you can't lay another one.

The foundation that the New Testament church was founded on was Jesus Christ. He was the cornerstone. And he spoke through his prophets and apostles. And so once the foundation has been laid, you don't lay it again. There's no further need for New Testament prophets and apostles.

And Paul also stated himself in 1 Corinthians 13 that prophecy would pass away. In 1 Corinthians 13, but where there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether they are tongues, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect has come, in other words when that which is complete has arrived, Then that which is in part said will be done away.

And what was in part? Prophecy, word of knowledge, and tongues. These things were all in part. And once that foundation is complete, Once the Scriptures were complete, then there was no more need for that which was only in part, which were the New Testament prophets and apostles. See, until the New Testament was complete, Paul is saying that the church knew in part, they prophesied in part, but when that which would be complete has come, then what's only incomplete is done away.

So Revelation 22 says, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book. And this book here is referring to the Bible. And it's a different word than what is used in Revelation 10 to speak of just the book of Revelation. There it's a different word.

It's a little book. This is the Bible that is being spoken of here. So if anyone adds to this prophecy, then God is saying He will add to them the plagues that are in this book. And if anyone takes away the words of this book or this prophecy, God would take away His part from the Book of Life, from the Holy City, and from the things that are written in this book. So, prophecy, once the foundation was laid, prophecy, the apostles and the prophets ceased.

And we no longer have New Testament prophets or apostles. But in those days, the Scripture is not yet complete and the foundation is still being laid. And so there are prophets who are speaking the Word of God. Now the other office that's mentioned here is elders. They took this collection and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Now what are elders? Well, elders were established in the Old Testament. And so Luke introduces the term here with no further explanation because this word would have been very familiar to the Jews, and Theophilus, a converted Levite in particular, would have been very familiar with elders and their function. And so Luke just introduces this word with no explanation needed. There are two terms that are used in the New Testament and in the Old Testament to describe the leaders in the New Testament church.

They are elders and overseers. The Greek word for elder is where we get the word prespitter, or prespitary, which is an assembly of elders. And the Greek word for overseer is where we get our word episkopos, which is often translated as Bishop. So elders were men who exercised authority as representatives of various bodies of people. The key differences with overseers are, first, that elders represent people.

Elders represented bodies of people. And secondly, Elders exercised corporate authority rather than individual authority. They exercised authority corporately rather than individually. And typically they exercised it in a judicial or legislative capacity as opposed to an executive capacity. Whereas overseers, on the other hand, were typically responsible for a specific function, and they exercised oversight as individuals over that function that they were given charge of.

Now the New Testament uses these two words interchangeably, but they are different words and they are different things. And As with overseers, people with many different giftings functioned as elders. There were prophets, there were teachers, or preachers that all could function as elders. But not all elders were equally gifted. Those are gifts.

Teaching, preaching a messenger, a prophet, those are gifts that God has given to His church. And elders often exercised those gifts. But not all elders were equally gifted. Some elders exercised gifts that others did not have. Not all elders were prophets, for example.

And of course, not all prophets were elders either. These gifts could be exercised outside of the office of elders. There were women that were prophets. But there are no women elders. See, now if you're interested in all the scripture passages, I've compiled extensive listings of the passages from which all these characteristics are drawn, and I'm happy to provide them to you.

It would be a little tedious to give them to you this morning. But if you're interested in seeing the Scriptures where these conclusions are drawn from, I'd be happy to provide that. Just see me afterwards. But just briefly, some of the characteristics of elders is that first they were representatives of the people. They represented a body of people.

They met as a session, a sitting, an assembly. And they exercised authority corporately. And because of that, the elder is very infrequently mentioned in the singular. You never hear about an elder. You always hear about the elders do something.

And this text is one more example of that. It was sent to the elders, plural. In fact, it's only used once in the Old Testament in reference to an office. And in that case, there was no exercise of authority. So elders exercise authority corporately.

And as the people's representative, what elders did in session, the people did. And That's an important aspect of government. Church government and even civil government and family government. What the elders as the representatives of the people did in session, the people were said to do. And so reporting something to the assembled elders constituted telling the people they represented.

And that's how it's used in Matthew 18 when it says tell the people, tell the congregation. When you tell the elders, you have told the people that they represent. And many different bodies could be represented by elders. There were elders of the priests, There were elders of Israel, there were elders of the congregation, there were elders of the city, there were elders of the land, and these were all different groups, they had different governments, there were elders of the people and elders of the priests. So these are all distinct groups that are represented.

We also see that elders represent the same groups of people in the New Testament as they did in the Old Testament. They represent the church, the congregation. They can represent civil bodies as well. And these two governments are distinct. The civil government in the Old Testament was distinct from the church government.

Different bodies of elders, or different elders or different rulers over those elders. Those are two distinct governments. And one more point on the elders that I think is helpful to keep in mind is that the apostles also functioned as elders. Peter and John, leaders in the church, both identified themselves as apostles and as elders. Peter calls himself a fellow elder.

When we have the body meeting in Acts 15, it is the Apostles and the Elders. But the Apostles don't operate apostolically there with their prophetic office. They operate as elders. They operate with a parody of the other elders. And so this is a New Testament office then.

These are the leaders of the New Testament church that represent the congregations. And when this gift is sent, it is sent, notice, to the elders as the representatives of the Jerusalem church. The gift is sent to them for them to distribute and manage. So it says then, we come back to this text and this prophecy, one of them named Agabus stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. This famine prophesied by Agabus, Luke says, happened in the reign of Claudius Caesar and we know that he reigned from 41 to 54 AD.

And his reign has long been associated with famines around the world. There was a famine in Rome in AD 42, a famine in Egypt in AD 45. Due to flooding along the Nile River, it reached three feet higher than its highest previously recorded height in the last hundred years and when it got that high when it got actually three feet lower than then it reached that year Basically all the crops were lost, you couldn't farm. So that brought a flood. There was a famine in Judea in 46 AD, and in Rome again in 50 AD.

This is a statement, Luke says, that there was a famine, great famine throughout all the world. Like many other statements like this in the Bible, unbelieving commentators and Bible scholars have questioned the existence of this universal famine throughout all the world, because they couldn't find any evidence of a famine throughout all the world in the extra-biblical writings. But is as always the case, further study proves these doubters wrong, as it always is. And what these scholars realized is that universal famine does not require a failure of crops or harvest around the world. But rather, it's to be found in a general increase in the price of food and in the universal inability of the poor to purchase food at the market prices.

You see, since poor people don't have large reserves of money, or food, they are the first to suffer when there is a significant increase in the cost of food, in the cost of living. Whereas wealthy, on the other hand, they spend a much smaller portion of their income on food. And so in times of price increases, scarcity, they are able to spend a little bit more on food and continue to have food. And so while it does create a stress on all classes of society, these shortages result in actual hunger and starvation on the lower poor classes in a society. And as the famine becomes more severe, the impact moves up in the social structure.

And so when the famine reached the height of its peak In Judea, historians record that Helena, who was the queen of Adiabene, and a Jewish proselyte, so that's a country that was over in Nineveh, where Nineveh used to be, and it was right in this time would have been at its zenith, it's part of the Parthian Empire. When she visited as a Jewish proselyte, when she visited Jerusalem and saw that many people were dying because they didn't have money to buy food, She was moved with compassion and she sent her agents to Cyprus to buy dried figs and she sent her agents to Egypt to buy grain. And this was at considerable personal expense and she transported that food to Jerusalem to feed the people. And so what we can say, and what even unbelieving scholars have acknowledged, is that this great famine throughout the world consisted in a high cost of wheat, caused probably by a series of shortages. First, the Egyptian flooding in the Nile and the failure of their harvest, followed by the failure of the Syrian, which would include the Judean, crops the following year.

And so you have shortages from the Egyptian shortage, but then followed again by shortages in Syria. And so before the prices can recover, you have another shortage driving the prices up. So these prices became very high and very difficult for ordinary people or poor people living in Judea to purchase food. So this famine that Luke speaks of here is not an absolute absence of any food, but rather it's the price of grain that goes so high that people aren't able to afford the food. If there was no food, then no amount of money would enable Helen to buy food.

There wouldn't be available. Money wouldn't solve the problem if there was no food. So it's a price problem, probably caused by inflation in Rome as well as food shortages. And so, Agabus prophesied by the Holy Spirit that this was going to happen. And we read then that these disciples, they're called disciples in the Antioch Church, decide to send aid.

And they decide as individuals. It's not the elders that made the decision here. It's not a prophet that said what they were to do. But Rather, these are people, saints in the Antioch Church, responding to a prophecy about a famine that they decide as individuals to send aid. This is a very complicated sentence, but the sense of it is that the disciples determined to send relief.

The disciples, but they determined this according to their financial ability. That word ability there is specifically financial ability. These disciples determined to send aid, and the amount that they sent, that they determined to send, was based on their financial ability to do so. And this is what Paul also taught the Corinthians. He said, breaking into a sentence there in 2 Corinthians 8, he said, but now you must complete the doing of it.

You desire to do it, now you must do it, basically, so that there may be a completion of what you have. For if there is first a willing mind, that's the desire to send, it is accepted according to what one has and not according to what he does not have. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but by inequality that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack, that there may be equality. See, this is what's happening here in this church. These are people in this church who had the financial ability to send help.

And so Paul concludes with quoting from the gathering of manna in the Old Testament, that he who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack, because they gathered according to their need. And so this is the basis by which these disciples determined to send a gift according to their financial ability to do so. And they determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea. Now that's a, to send relief, that word is where we get our word diaconal from. They're sending diaconal aid.

We could have translated it, determined to send diaconal aid to the brethren dwelling in Judea. It's one word. So relief is they are sending aid, diaconal aid. And they choose to send it by the hands of, they send it to the elders. They send it to the elders for the elders to handle the disbursement of.

The elders there would know who locally had a need and how best to use that funds. And so they send it to the elders. They don't try to determine on their own who should have the money. They leave that up to the local elders in the church as to how best to utilize that money. That's another important principle.

We see here, first, it's a voluntary gift. It's not a tax. It's not a tithe. It's a voluntary gift that they have their own free will desire to send and it is sent to people who locally can be trusted and responsible for dispersing it appropriately. But the gift is also sent by responsible people.

They send it by no less than Barnabas and Saul, both of whom were prophets in the Antioch Church, and both of whom were teachers in that church. So they chose two very trusted people to carry this gift. Because remember, they wouldn't have been carrying credit or bank account. They're actually carrying the money that they're sending. So there's a need for good judgment in carrying this money to Jerusalem.

It's not a trivial thing to get the money from Antioch down to Jerusalem. They didn't have the same kind of credit banking system that could transfer money from one country to another like we can do today. So they send it by Barnabas and Saul. And this is the trip then that Saul mentions, I believe, in Galatians, where he says after 14 years after his salvation, he made this trip to Jerusalem. So if he was saved about AD 32, which I think is about when he would have been saved, then this trip would have happened right about AD 46, which would have been right about inconsistent with when we understand the famine to have been.

And it's also right in the middle of the reign of Claudius Caesar. So what do we learn then? What do we see in this passage? I mean, there's two simple things, two obvious things that we learn. First, these people, these disciples, feared God.

They put weight on His words. When God sent His prophet and put His words in this prophet's mouth, they acted in response to those words. They didn't just take this as a nice-to-know piece of information. No, there's going to be a famine down there. They acted on those words.

They said God is speaking to them. He's giving them knowledge for which they are responsible for how they use that knowledge and what they do with it. So they feared God in this sense. Like Acts 9 said, the churches were walking in the fear of God and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. They were walking in the fear of God.

They put weight on His words. And when they heard about this famine, they determined that they would act on that and send aid to those who weren't able to buy food, who couldn't afford the food like they were able to afford it. And the second thing that we see here is that God knows all of our needs. And His Word addresses all of our needs. God knew all the needs of the people that were suffering in the Judean churches.

People that weren't able to buy food, who didn't have the funds to buy a sufficient quantity of food at their high prices. God saw that. He's aware of those needs. And He sent His Word to the church in Antioch. And through them, He provided for those needs.

The Lord knows our needs. We should always be ready to bring our needs to the Lord, remembering that He does know those needs. And we can trust in Him to supply all of our needs according to His riches and glory. The Lord knows how to care for those who are His children. And He does.

His Word isn't just about, we would say, spiritual things. It is certainly about those things. But it is also about all of our material needs as well. His Word is sufficient for all of our needs, physical and spiritual, material and immaterial. And so it's very right that we learn to ask the Lord for all the needs, not just spiritual ones, but our physical needs as well.

And certainly not just our physical needs, but our spiritual as well. The Lord knows our needs and His Word addresses them. His Word is sufficient. His Word is sufficient that we might be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Let us pray.

Father in heaven, We thank you for the complete sufficiency of your word. We thank you that you know all of our needs, that you know them even before we ask them. And you certainly know them in advance. And we ask for your grace to trust in you to provide for our needs. We ask, Lord, that we might remember that you see and you take notice of and you do care about all that we experience.

For You are the one who is sending us those experiences and help us to trust, to rest in Your Word, to hope in Your Word. You Lord are our refuge and our hiding place. And we hope in your word. In Jesus' name, Amen.