First Baptist Church Litchfield
February 15, 2026

      • Genesis 12:1–3ESV

  • O Church Arise (Arise Shine)
  • Across The Lands

      • Psalm 66:4ESV

  • All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises

      • Malachi 4:5ESV

      • Matthew 24:30–31ESV

  • Days Of Elijah
  • Awakening

  • Is 2026 Our Pivotal Moment?

    There are moments in life that quietly but decisively shape who we become. Some are loud and obvious. Graduations, weddings, births, and funerals announce themselves with clarity. Others feel ordinary in the moment. They pass without fanfare. Yet, when we look back, we realize everything changed there. Scripture often calls these moments appointed times. They are moments when God clarifies who His people are and what He intends to do through them.
    Acts chapter 13 records one of those moments for the church.
    What is unique about this moment is that is not driven by crisis. The church in Antioch is not collapsing. It is not shrinking. There is no moral scandal recorded. There is no persecution forcing their hand. The church is faithful, stable, and attentive to God’s Spirit and ready to be on Great Commission. There is no desperation. This is a pivotal moment of direction.
    This moment might challenge some of our assumptions. We may be tempted to assume God speaks most clearly when things fall apart. Yet here, in the church of Antioch, God is speaking when things are in order. He spoke to a church that was worshiping, praying, fasting, and listening. God moved His faithful people forward to joyfully advance the kingdom of God by making much of Jesus by in their holy living and mission.
    In some ways, Luke confronts a fallen tendency that is deeply embedded in the modern church. We are prone to separate what God has joined together. We separate holiness from mission. We separate worship from obedience. We separate personal devotion from public witness. We are comfortable with private faith that asks little of us publicly. Or we swing the other direction and pursue mission without spiritual depth, mistaking activity for faithfulness. What lies underneath both errors? Is it fear? Fear of being seen as “Right Wing Christian Fundamentalist?” Fear of suffering. Fear of obedience that costs something. Is it complacency? Apathy? Either way, Acts 13 refuses to let us live with that separation.
    In the context Acts, chapter 13 presents a decisive moment where holy living and mission are inseparably joined in the life of the church. Notice the church at Antioch is set apart before it sends anyone out. Their holiness is formed by their attentiveness to God. Notice as they minister to the Lord, the Holy Spirit speaks. He moves the church in the direction He wants it to go, meaning, missions is not generated by human initiative but flows from a consecrated people who are listening God. Notice the setting apart of Barnabas and Saul reveals that God advances His mission through a church that is first spiritually maturing before he sends them into a world in Great Commission.
    As Barnabas and Saul are sent, the gospel moves into public spaces where holy courage and faithful witness are absolutely required. In Cyprus and later in Pisidian Antioch, the missionaries proclaim Christ openly, beginning in the synagogues and then extending to the Gentiles. Their witness is both by word and deed.
    When Paul confronts Bar-Jesus, he does so filled with the Holy Spirit. His words are filled with moral clarity, spiritual authority, and a strong commitment to God’s truth. The judgment pronounced on the magician exposes the gospel’s opposition to the kingdom of darkness and demonstrates that the mission of God advances through proclamation that persuades sinners with the words of truth and lives aligned with God’s holiness. The proconsul’s conversion shows that the gospel’s credibility is strengthened when truth is matched by Spirit-empowered integrity (Acts 13:12).
    Paul’s sermon in Pisidian Antioch further reveals how mission is grounded in faithfulness to God’s revealed Word. By tracing God’s redemptive work through Israel’s history and proclaiming Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises, Paul shows that the Great Commission is not a mission grounded on innovation but continuation of Jesus’ call to repent and believe.
    Throughout the region, the missionaries call the Greek world to repentance and offers the God’s forgiveness displaying the heart of the gospel: justification by grace through Christ. The mixed responses that follow, including Jewish opposition and growing Gentile faith, highlight that obedience to God’s mission often brings both fruit and resistance. Holy living does not guarantee acceptance, but it does ensure faithfulness.
    Throughout Acts 13, the church’s life and witness reinforce one another. A worshiping church becomes a sending church. A consecrated people become courageous witnesses. As Gentiles increasingly respond and opposition intensifies, the gospel continues to move outward toward the ends of the earth. The chapter reveals that mission is the overflow of a holy people formed by God’s grace, and that the advance of the gospel depends not on human strength, but on Spirit-filled obedience rooted in Christ’s finished work. In short, Acts thirteen displays a church committed to holy Living, and God commissions them to go on mission.
    From the context of (Acts 13), I want to offer us a commission for holy living and mission for 2026.

    What is a commission?

    In the Bible,
    A commission is a divine authorization and assignment given by God to His people, empowering them to act in His name, carry out His purposes, and represent His authority in the world.
    A biblical commission is not self-chosen or earned; it flows from God’s sovereign initiative and is sustained by His presence and power. It always involves both obedience to God and participation in His redemptive mission.
    Jesus states this most clearly after His resurrection:
    “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18–19).
    Our commission rests on Christ’s authority, who sends His people into the world, and binds them to faithful obedience as they carry out His will.
    Commenting on the Great Commission, Calvin writes:
    “Christ does not send them out at their own charge, but furnishes them with His authority; for otherwise they would have been rash and foolish to attempt so great a work.” John Calvin, Commentary on Matthew 28:18
    Calvin reinforces that a commission is not self-appointed or driven by human initiative. It is grounded in Christ’s authority, empowered by His presence, and directed toward faithful obedience in carrying out God’s redemptive purposes.
    In the context, of Luke, the church is calling missionaries to go to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel. The church commissions them to be missionaries.

    What can we learn from this commission to help us live like missionaries in Litchfield?

    Luke offers four truths to anchor our commission for holy living and mission in 2026.

    Our Mission is A Divine Commission (Acts 13:2)

    Acts 13:2 HCSB
    As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work I have called them to.”
    John Piper wrote a book called “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.” He wrote the book to try to correct a false teaching in the church that says pastors are more or less like CEO’s and the church is to be run like according to business model. I was moved by his opening paragraph in chapter 1. Listen to what he says:
    “WE PASTORS are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no professional tenderheartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Ps. 42:1).
    But our first business is to pant after God in prayer. Our business is to weep over our sins (James 4:9). Is there professional weeping? Our business is to strain forward to the holiness of Christ and the prize of the upward call of God (Phil. 3:14); to pummel our bodies and subdue them lest we be cast away (1 Cor. 9:27); to deny ourselves and take up the blood-spattered cross daily (Luke 9:23). How do you carry a cross professionally? We have been crucified with Christ; yet now we live by faith in the one who loved us and gave Himself for us (Gal. 2:20). What is professional faith?”
    What is true of pastors is equally true of missionaries. Missions is not a professional career chosen by personal ambition or aptitude; it is a divine calling initiated by God for the glory of His name. In Acts 13:2, while the church in Antioch was fasting, praying, and worshiping the Lord, the Holy Spirit spoke, likely through the prophets, and said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” The initiative belongs entirely to God. He is the one who sets His servants apart for His purposes. In the same way that God sovereignly intervened to save Saul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, He also sovereignly intervenes to commission His servants for the work of mission.
    The phrase “set apart” carries the idea of selecting someone from among others for a specific task. It is not a general invitation but a deliberate act of divine designation. God distinguishes certain people for particular service in order to accomplish His will. The language of calling reinforces this truth. To call is to summon someone with authority, urgently assigning them a responsibility that establishes a new relationship of obedience to the One who calls. In this sense, a missionary is not merely sent by the church, but claimed by God. God sets His servants apart and calls them to give their lives to the joyful task of making the name of Jesus known among the nations.
    At FBCL, we are set apart. We are not a nonprofit organization, nor are we a government institution. We should see our Christian calling as a divine summoning by God to urgently give our lives to the joyful task of making the name of Jesus known in Litchfield and he surrounding area. With this calling, God has given us His authority and the responsibility to seek and save the lost. Our mission at FBCL is to joyfully advance the kingdom of God by making much of Jesus in the church, community, and home. Our mission is a divine commission.

    Our Mission is a Special Personal Commission (Acts 13:2)

    It’s not only a divine commission, but it is a personal one as well. You will notice that only Paul and Barnabas was chosen to go and plant churches. Not everyone is meant to be a missionary.
    God gifts the church with apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ (Eph 4:12). Many of these gifts to the church must remain in the body to ensure the church matures in Christ. As the church matures in Christ, God chooses to take some of those people and call them to be missionaries, like Barnabas and Saul. Some of you will be called to a personal commission to go to the ends of the earth. The church is filled with such people, like Adoniram Judson.
    When Adoniram Judson graduated from college and seminary he received a call from a fashionable church in Boston to become its assistant pastor. Everyone congratulated him. His mother and sister rejoiced that he could live at home with them and do his life work, but Judson shook his head.
    “My work is not here,” he said. “God is calling me beyond the seas. To stay here, even to serve God in His ministry, I feel would be only partial obedience, and I could not be happy in that.” Adoniram Judson
    Although it cost him a great struggle he left mother and sister to follow the heavenly call. The church in Boston still stands, rich and strong, but Judson’s churches in Burma had fifty thousand converts, and the influence of his consecrated life is felt around the world.

    What does this mean for us as a church in 2026?

    This means the church is not to ask first, “Am I called to go overseas?” but rather, “Am I living in full obedience to Christ right where I am?” Partial obedience is disobedience. Judson’s words expose a temptation that exists not only for missionaries, but for all believers; to let fear resist God’s call on our lives.
    Is it possible to serve God sincerely while still resisting His specific call on our lives?
    For Judson, the answer to that question meant leaving home. For others, it may mean staying put but surrendering comfort, ambition, control, or fear.
    Holy living for the church, then, means every one of us must hold our lives loosely before the Lord. It means as a body of believers we must individually be willing to stay or go, to speak or suffer, to give or be sent, all for the sake of Christ’s name. Missions is not something the church supports at a distance; it is something the we as disciples of Jesus embodies together.
    As the church matures in Christ, God will continue to raise up men and women to be sent out, but He will do so through a congregation that understands its own calling to live distinctly, sacrificially, and obediently for the glory of God and the good of the world no matter at home or in the mission field.
    In this way, the church participates fully in God’s mission. Some go with their feet, others go with their prayers, their generosity, their faithfulness, and their visible obedience. But all are called to live set apart lives that make the worth of Christ unmistakable, so that whether near or far, the name of Jesus is made great through His people.

    Our Mission is a Holy Corporate Commission (Acts 13:3)

    Though God takes the initiative to call his people and equip them to go, the church still cooperates with God an sends them.
    Acts 13:3 HCSB
    Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off.
    The tense of the verb ‘I have called’ suggests that God had already made the decision, and it was the church’s responsibility to carry out his will. The church fasts and prays for God’s guidance. These were two very important brothers in the Lord. They spent a year teaching and discipling brothers and sisters. they raised up elders to shepherd (Act 14:23) and deacons to serve. This was an important calling, so they marked it with fasting and praying.
    The church gathered around Paul and Barnabas and laid hands on them. One commentator notes, The ‘laying on of hands’ was an act of commissioning. It expressed both a blessing and identification with the two in the work to which God had called them and released the two to their new service.
    This is a formal occasion for the church. We recognize that God is taking some of our fruit in ministry and sharing it with others, for the joy of others. We make sure the missionaries are edified and equipped to do the work. We support them financially and with prayer. We give them respite when they come home and send them off encouraged to keeping moving God’s kingdom forward.
    But let us not miss this point. Although not everyone is called to the mission field, all of us are called to the missionary lifestyle. While not every believer is called to cross cultures or plant churches, every believer is called to live a set-apart life for the sake of God’s mission. The church as a whole is a consecrated people before it is a sent people, and it is sent precisely because it has been set apart by God.
    Scripture describes the church as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9). Peter makes it clear that the churches identity and purpose is rooted in holy living. God sets His people apart to be holy so that they may “proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” In other words, holiness is never an end in itself. It is the means by which God makes His saving power visible to the world.
    Just as God takes the initiative to call missionaries, He takes the initiative to call the entire church to holy living. Through the gospel, God separates His people from sin, self-rule, and worldly allegiance so they can represent Christ within it. Holy living is the public credibility of the church’s witness. A church that belongs to Christ must look like it belongs to Christ, because the message it proclaims is embodied before it is preached, and with a credible life we proclaim and incredible gospel.

    Our Mission is a Kingdom Suffering Commission (Acts 13:3)

    The church sends them off. Don’t miss the pivotal moment in these five words. They were sent away not knowing of they would ever come back to Antioch.
    Paul opens his second letter to the Corinthians church
    2 Corinthians 1:6 HCSB
    If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in your endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.
    Paul is teaching that the sufferings and hardships endured by pastors and missionaries are not accidental or wasted, but intentionally designed by God for the salvation of His people. Missions does not merely involve activity or expansion; it inevitably brings affliction into the life and comforts of those who are sent. Yet that affliction is not a sign of failure. God ordains it as a means of ministry, using suffering to authenticate the message proclaimed and to display the power of the gospel. In this way, mission is rightly understood as a commission that includes suffering, through which God brings life, salvation, and endurance to His people.
    When Adoniram Judson wrote a letter to his future father-in-law asking for her hand in marriage. Listen to what he says regarding missions.
    “I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world ? Whether you can consent to her departure to a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life? Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death? Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall resound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?”
    His biography notes His wife, Ann did go through many hardships while on the mission field. She had 3 pregnancies: The first ended in a miscarriage while moving from India to Burma; her second child, Roger, was born in 1815 and died at 8 months of age; her third child, Maria, lived only 6 months after Ann herself died in 1826 of smallpox. Adoniram Judson himself lost 2 wives and 6 of 13 children on the mission field. Ann, and Adoniram, suffered through many other trials while serving as missionaries. Ann, herself, suffered hardships and died, but she died “for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home,” as Judson wrote above. They left their homes and their family to spread the glory of God to an unreached people group. 
    As you follow Acts 13-14, God leads Paul and Barnabas to plant churches in Iconium, Lystra, and moved the gospel toward Pisidia and Pamphylia. Paul and Barnabas make their way to Perga and then down to Attalia. They suffered immensely in their calling. Thy were insulted in Antioch. Paul was almost stoned to death in Iconium. As it has been for the church since its inception, so it will be for us. To be holy is to be set apart in a wicked a crooked generation. To be on mission is to go that that very generation calling them to repent and believe. We trust God will save the elect knowing some of us will have to lay down our lives like our Savior. Our mission is a suffering commission.

    2026 is Our Pivotal Moment

    If 2026 is a pivotal moment for us, it will not be because we discovered a new strategy, program, or reacted to cultural pressure. It will be because we did what the church in Antioch did. They worshiped the Lord. They fasted. They prayed. They listened. And when God spoke, they obeyed.
    If we are to live holy lives on mission in this moment, we must begin where Antioch began. We must recover worship that is more than routine. Worship that trains our hearts to love Christ above comfort, reputation, and safety. Worship that reminds us that Jesus is Lord, that His kingdom is advancing, and that our lives belong to Him.
    We must also be willing to pray with real dependence. Not prayers that merely ask God to bless what we have already decided, but prayers that say, “Lord, search us. Lead us. Show us what obedience looks like now.” Prayer that confesses our fears. Prayer that asks for courage. Prayer that seeks clarity for how we are to live distinctly in our homes, our workplaces, our schools, and our community.
    And yes, we must seriously consider fasting. Not as a ritual, not as a badge of spirituality, but as a tangible way of humbling ourselves before God. Fasting trains us to say no to legitimate comforts so that we can say yes to deeper dependence. It reminds us that we do not live by bread alone. It slows us down long enough to listen. If Antioch fasted to discern God’s direction, perhaps we should not be surprised if God calls us to do the same.
    As we look toward 2026, will we ask the Lord to set us apart again?
    Will we ask Him to expose any divided loyalties, any comfortable disobedience, any fear that keeps us quiet?
    Will we ask Him to show us how to live holy lives that make the gospel visible right where He has placed us?
    And will we be ready, if He so chooses, to send some from among us for the sake of His name?
    Some of us will go far. Most of us will stay near. But all of us are called to live as a people who belong to Christ, who listen to His Spirit, and who joyfully advance His kingdom through holy living and faithful witness.
    If 2026 is our pivotal moment, may it be said that we did not rush ahead of God, and we did not shrink back in fear. May it be said that we worshiped, we prayed, we fasted, and we obeyed. And may God, by His grace, use our faithfulness to make much of Jesus in the church, in the community, and to the ends of the earth.

      • Acts 13:1–3ESV

      • Matthew 28:18ESV

      • Acts 13:2ESV

      • Acts 13:3ESV

      • Acts 13:3ESV

      • 2 Corinthians 1:6ESV

  • I'll Tell The World I'm A Christian
First Baptist Church Litchfield
pastorjason.fbcl@gmail.com
217-324-4232
http://www.firstbaptistlitchfield.org/
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