KidzPort July 19th – Anti-what?

July 20, 2009

The world is a pretty big place.  Even in the early days of the church, and even in the time of Jesus, the world was still a big place.  (it was just smaller than it is today.)   Often in studying the Bible, we tend to focus on one small area of the world – Israel.  And this is not wrong – Israel is, after all, where most of the history that is in the Bible took place.  Jesus walked there, taught there, and died there.  and the church got its start there.

The biggest city in Biblical Israel was of course Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was the center of the world for many Jewish people.  But there was a problem with that.  Everyone in Jerusalem was the same.  They were mostly enthic Jews, all from the same area, all with the same ideas toward religion and politics.  But there was another great city in Biblical times that really stood out: Antioch. 

There were actually two Antiochs.  The one we’re talking about was Syrian Antioch, which was in what is now Turkey.  Antioch was called the “Cradle of Gentile Christianity.”   What this means is that there were a lot of non-Jewish people in Antioch.  It was the largest, most important city in the Roman Empire. (except for Rome, of course!)  It was a crossroads, which means that a lot of people travelled through it on the way to different places.  So there were many different kinds of people there.   Including the largest population of Jewish people outside of Israel.

Peter thought Antioch was so important that he went there himself to preach the Gospel. Paul and Barnabas went there, too.  In fact, the first time anyone was ever called a Christain was in Antioch. 

The world we live in (and especially our own city of Bridgeport) is a lot like ancient Antioch.  There are so many different people that we come into contact with every day, from all kinds of backgrounds.  Why, in our own KidzPort class, we had children with families from Brazil, Puerto Rico, Haiti, America, Canada, Jamaica and Cape Verde. And that was in one small class in one small church!!

For Parents:

• Get a bible map and try to find Syrian Antioch with your child.  Note its location, and how someone travelling from Italy or Greece to Israel or Africa would have to go through there. What kind of place must it have been?
• Read Acts chapter 11 together.  Talk about how the Gospel spread to the Gentiles.
• Look at the Bible map, and see if you can find other big Bible cities: Rome, Corinth, Athens, Ephesus, Phillippi, Thessilonica, Berea.  The map below may help.