March 26, 2026 – Steadfast and Faithful in Antioch — Acts #35
Acts. 11:19-26

This tiny spot in the red circle is Israel.

  It is a very small area of the world.  Jesus was born there and, after a short sojourn in Egypt, grew up there, did 95% of his ministry there, and was crucified and resurrected there. The book of Acts begins with Jesus’ ascension from a mountain. there, and then the coming of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem.

There are 3000 baptized that day, but then trouble starts, and several apostles are thrown into prison.  Then Stephen is stoned because he professed Jesus, and the more serious persecution begins.  And up to this point, almost everything has happened in this tiny area of the world, about the size of the state of New Jersey.

But this persecution causes a scattering of the followers from Jerusalem northward into Israel, into Galilee, and then into Damascus in Syria, and as we will read in our scripture today, even further north into Cyprus, Phoenicia, and up to Antioch.  The gospel is spreading.

Acts 11:19-20   Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Gentiles also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

This is happening at the same time as the events in the previous chapter.  While Peter and Cornelius are having their visions and Peter is learning that the Gentiles can be accepted by Jesus, some followers of Jesus from Cyprus and Cyrene are sharing the gospel with Gentiles in the city of Antioch. The gospel is spreading geographically as well as to other people groups.

Now, when you hear ‘Antioch’, you think of just another town.  But Antioch is very different than any town we have spoken of in our study of the gospels and Acts. Antioch was founded in 300 BC by Seleucus I.  He was one of the 3 generals of Alexander the Great who were given control of the kingdom after Alexander’s death.  Seleucus named the new city after his father, Antiochus.  (This Antiochus was the great-great-great-grandfather of Antiochus Epiphanes, whom we know for his rule during the Jewish Maccabean Revolt.)

The city was built on the Orentes River about 18 miles from where it enters the Mediterranean Sea in what is now modern-day Turkey.  It became a center of trade routes and grew into one of the three largest cities in the Roman Empire.  The largest city in the Empire was Rome, of course, with a population of around 1 million.  The next was Alexandria, Egypt, and then Antioch.  Antioch had a population of around 500,000, about the size of Atlanta today.  

So imagine these first-century followers of Jesus, many of whom had grown up in small towns and villages of a few hundred people, their idea of a huge city being Jerusalem, the size of Rome, Ga.  Then they go to a city the size of Atlanta.  And they see what we see —  life is different in the city.

Antioch was a very Roman city, with temples, forums, public baths, gymnasiums, and amphitheaters. The main streets were paved with granite.   Now, Atlanta has the Georgia Dome, which is huge, seating almost 72,000 people.  But the stadium in Antioch, built for chariot racing, was bigger.  It was built 200 years before Jesus and could seat over 80,000.   Antioch was no small town. 

Antioch was known primarily for 4 things: trade and commerce, cultural diversity, religious pluralism, and low moral standards.  It was the kind of place many religious people might avoid.  But it was to this city that some of the Jesus followers who fled the initial persecution after the stoning of Stephen arrived.  There, in the midst of the paganism of a typical Roman city, they found a Jewish community and naturally would have settled there.  So Antioch becomes an experiment to see how the message of Jesus will fare in a metropolitan setting.  And did they find success with the gospel?

Acts 11:21   And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

In this pagan city, the gospel flourishes.  News of this great response reaches the apostles in Jerusalem, and they send Barnabus to visit the city.  

Acts 11:22-24   The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

We spoke of this earlier when we talked about Barnabus.  He was an excellent choice to send there as he was from Cyprus and thus more familiar with the Roman culture he would find there.  And Barnabus did there what he had done elsewhere.  He preached to the people, encouraging them to be faithful and steadfast.  

There are some real churchy words here (grace, faithful, steadfast purpose).  Now I just want to stop right here.  I may be odd, but I think that when you are reading, it is nice to know what the words actually mean.  And especially when you are reading the Bible, God’s Word to us, it is very important to understand what you are reading.  If you had to take a pop test this morning, could you write the definition of these 3 words?  

You might say, “ Well, I can define grace,  but I am not sure I can explain the difference between faithful and steadfast.”  We’ll come back to grace in just a minute, but first, let’s look at steadfast and faithful.  Perhaps some dictionary definitions would help.

steadfast – resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering.
faithful – remaining loyal and steadfast

Perhaps the dictionary definition will not help much in distinguishing these two words.  But Barnabus’s use of these two words together comes from his knowledge of the Old Testament, where they appear together over 50 times.  Here are a few examples:

Psalm 108:3-4   I will give thanks to you, O Yehovah, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.   For your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Psalm 115:1    Not to us, Yehovah, not to us, but to Your name give glory,  for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness!”
Psalm 117:2    For great is His steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of Yehovah endures forever.  Praise Yehovah!
Psalm 85:10  Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Again, these words appear together over 50 times in the Old Testament.  We have to go back to the original Hebrew words to really understand the difference between these two words and why they go together.  You can get a sense of the difficulty that our English versions have with these Hebrew words by looking at Psalm 85:10 in different translations.

NIV  –  Love and faithfulness meet together….
KJV  –  Mercy and truth are met together…
NASB  –  Graciousness and truth have met together…
NASB 1995  –  Lovingkindness and truth have met together…

So which is it?  The word in Hebrew that is variously translated as “love”, “mercy”, “graciousness” or “lovingkindness” is hesed.  Why is it that these different translations of the Bible give us all different words for the Hebrew “hesed”?

To answer that, let me tell you a story of a tattoo.  In 2019, my daughter told me she wanted to get a tattoo.  I am not the biggest fan of tattoos (well, I wasn’t until 2019 anyway).  She said she wanted to get the Hebrew word for “Grace” tattooed on her wrist, and she wanted it in my Hebrew handwriting.  I couldn’t exactly turn that down.  But I told her if she was going to have a word permanently placed on her arm, she should really understand what that means.

There are two Hebrew words that people frequently translate as ‘grace’. In fact, if you Google images for “grace” tattoos, you will see both.  Hen (pronounced ‘chen’) and hesed (pronounced  ‘chesed’) In both the ‘ch’ sound is a guttural back of the throat sound, not like the ‘ch’ in our word ‘children’.  Hen is best translated as ‘favor’ or ‘grace’, and it is found 69 times in the OT, as in this verse

Genesis 6:8    But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yehovah. 
Genesis 6:8  (KJV)  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 

Now this was a wicked time in the world.  But think about this: no other humans outside Noah’s family found favor with God.  They all drowned.  Why did they not get grace?  Why was Noah spared? 

The answer is in the next verse

Genesis 6:9   Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.

This verse tells us why Noah found favor with God when no one else did.   God called Noah righteous.   That is where the grace comes in.  Noah wasn’t perfect, but God’s grace allowed him to look on Noah and see someone who sought to do right and walk in God’s ways, so God, with great grace, calls Noah righteous.  

Don’t think for a minute that Noah earned God’s favor.  There is nothing Noah could have ever done to deserve any favor from God.   Nor is there anything we can do to earn God’s favor.   God is so full of grace that, despite all our bad qualities, he still sees something in us that leads him to show us favor.  He sees us leaning in towards Him.  That effort to do the right thing.  That one step in God’s direction.  Even though Noah failed and even though we fail, because of grace, God sees enough in us to grant us favor in His eyes.  That leads us into a covenant relationship with Him.

This is important.  If someone taught you that the Old Testament is all about law and the New Testament is all about grace, then let me apologize on behalf of whoever misled you. The Old Testament is full of grace.  There is not one person in all of the Old Testament who was worthy of God paying a second of attention to.  None.  They were all sinners.  Only because of grace did God interact with any of them.  The children of Israel understood grace.  They thanked God every morning that they woke, that they had air to breathe.  They knew they needed the grace of God.  All those sacrifices they did —they knew they could not atone for sin.  None of those sacrifices covered the sins they committed on purpose. There was no sacrifice you could make for any premeditated sin.   And they knew that they had all committed intentional sins.   They knew their only hope was God’s grace to forgive them anyway.

Psalm 51:16-17   For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

We looked at this verse last week, but here it is again.   David knew that after he designed a plan to take another man’s wife and then murder that man, no sacrifice on an altar could cover his sin.  He had no hope except to fall down on his knees before God in repentance and pray for grace.  Now David had no idea who would pay the penalty for his sins; he didn’t know about Jesus and how he would die for all of our sins, but he threw himself on the mercy and grace of God to somehow take care of it.  The people of the Old Testament knew very well that there was no way to stay in good relations with God only through sacrifices – they knew they needed grace. 

So you see this word “hen” for grace all through the Old Testament.   There is the initial grace granted by God that allows him to look on us with favor.  As we talked about last week, God looks on a sinner and, in grace, gives us the gift of repentance to initiate our relationship with Him.  So there is grace and repentance, and then we enter a covenant with Him.  You can read about Abraham’s covenant in the Bible, or the covenant at Mt Sinai between God and Israel.  And there is the covenant we make with God when we take that step towards him in repentance. 

In most covenants, both parties have obligations.   We promise to turn over control of our lives to Jesus, to make him king of our life.  We promise to follow his path, to obey his commandments.  And God promises to forgive our sins and remove the penalty of sin from us, to lead us in the right paths and watch over us, to cause everything to work towards our good.  There are so many promises in Scripture that God makes to us when we enter into a covenant with Him.

And that is where the other word, ‘hesed’, comes in.  Hesed is the way that God acts towards us, based on the obligations of a covenant relationship.  It is the description of God’s behavior towards us, acting as he promised in his agreement with us.  So you can see why our English translations struggle to give us the full picture of God’s covenantal actions towards us.  Because God responds to us in all these ways: with love, with kindness, with mercy, and with grace.  And that is all summed up in the Hebrew word, hesed.

Remember we looked at some of the 50 verses where the aspects of God’s character, ’steadfast love’ and ‘faithfulness’ go together.  Steadfast love is hesed.  It is the mercy, love, and kindness God shows to us as members of the covenant.  And the word for faithfulness is emet.  Emet is the word for truth.  Sometimes ‘emet’ is not translated into English in the Bible but just written as the Hebrew word with English letters, “amen” or “truth”.   So these words together describe covenental love that is true, trustworthy and unfailing.

The reason emet is sometimes translated as ‘faithfulness’ is that it means that, when it comes to the covenant God made with us, He is true.  We might say a friend is a ‘true’ friend, meaning they are loyal and trustworthy.  We say someone is ‘true’ to their word.  That means they are faithful to what they say.

And that is why these two words are often seen together when they speak about God.  Because God’s hesed, his covenantal love, is true and trustworthy.  God acts as he promised to us, always, every time.  As in this verse:

Lamentations 3:22-23 (KJV)   It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”

And it was this verse Thomas Chisholm put to music that you know so well. “Great is thy faithfulness, O God, my Father;  There is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not; As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be.”¹   Great is your truth, your emet, Father, that your hesed does not fail.  Though I continue to fail you, you do not fail; your hesed is new every morning.

Acts 11:22-24   The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

So Barnabus exhorts the Jesus followers in Antioch:  remain faithful with steadfast purpose.    Be true to the covenant you entered into with Jesus.  God will be faithful.  There is no doubt.  The question is, will we be faithful to God?  Will we be true to the promises we made to Jesus to follow his ways, keep his commandments, and make him king of our lives?

As we read through the First Testament, we see God constantly sending the prophets to ask the people: “Why haven’t you been faithful to me?  Why did you go off worshiping idols?  Why did you mistreat the widows and the strangers in the land?  Why haven’t you kept my commandments as you promised? I have been faithful to you, but you have been unfaithful.” God looks on us and the covenant we made with him.  And he asks the same questions of us.  Why haven’t you been faithful?

We have a real problem in the church today.  We have not understood the concepts of hen and hesed.  We cling hard to the concept of God’s grace and favor on us, but we have forgotten that we made a covenant with God and that we have responsibilities under our covenant with Jesus.  As Skip Moen says, we have divorced hen from hesed.

“The logic of Hen hasn’t changed. But you would never know it listening to today’s contemporary evangelism.  Today, we have a God who is expected to show favor on all, regardless of their willingness to demonstrate true repentance. Today, the only requirement is some modest  indication of remorse and an intellectual acknowledgment of the fact that “Jesus is the Son of  God.”
By disconnecting hen from hesed, the Church has effectively removed any continuing transformation of behavior in the life of the disciple. Today, repentance does not entail acting differently when there is an opportunity to repeat past sinful behavior. Today, repentance means just asking for forgiveness again. Today, evangelism does not come with a clear message of the necessary obedience to God’s instructions for living.”²

Barnabus knows that the only way the followers of Jesus have a chance to grow in the huge city of Antioch is to live lives faithful to the covenant they made with Jesus.  Because the temptation to depart from His path will be strong in this pagan city.  They must live as they promised to live.

God’s grace is so amazing.  That he can see someone like me, with all my failures, and not be disgusted but can look on me in love.  And then show favor to me, undeserving me, and give me the gift of repentance, that I might fall to my knees in sorrow and mourning for my sin.  Grace that He, the creator of the universe, would enter into a covenant relationship with me.   And God is faithful, and he is true.  He will keep His promise to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  And what does God want from us in return?  God speaks the answer in Hosea 6:6.  

Hosea 6:6 “For I desire hesed and not sacrifice,”

What God wanted from the people of the First Testament was never sacrifices.  They were just a demonstration of the covering for sin until Jesus came.  What God really wanted then, and what he wants now, is hesed from us.  If hesed is the way God acts in response to his covenant with us, that is what he wants from us.   He wants us to act as we promised in our covenant with him.

If we are going to be God’s people in a sinful world, we have to be true to our commitment to Him.  To walk in his ways, to obey his commandments, to treat people as He treats us, to forgive others as He forgives us.  To do all he asks, because he is our king.  

May we walk faithfully in Him. 
Oh, and the tattoo.  Here is the picture my daughter sent me right after it was done.  (I added the words)

Hesed.  It is how God treats us every day, with grace, love, kindness, and mercy, just as he promised.  And it is what he wants from us. To be true to our promises we made to Him, to follow his ways and live as he instructs us. Barnabus tells the people in Antioch and us today, this is the way to spread the gospel.

1.  Chisholm, Thomas Obediah.  1923.
2.  Moen, Skip.  “Under His Wings” Jan. 6, 2012 on skipmoen.com.