The Word Beneath the Paint

For the believer who has been painted over so often he's forgotten what was written first.

Men who'd been driven out of their own city arrived in Antioch with nothing arranged and started talking about Jesus to Greeks.

Nobody had authorized it. There was no plan, no letter from anyone, and no office in that city they could have applied to. They simply couldn't stop saying what they'd seen, and a great many people believed them. When the news traveled back down the road to Jerusalem, Barnabas was sent up to look at whatever was going on.

The account is careful about what he did when he got there. He didn't correct anybody and he didn't take charge. He saw it, and he was glad. Then he went off to find Saul, brought him back, and the two of them stayed in that city teaching for a full year.

Somewhere in those twelve months the neighbors gave that group a word, and it's the word you've been painted over with ever since.

The first word written on you came before every coat that's been rolled over it since. The written Word records it being given in Antioch before any later name existed, and the Holy Spirit keeps it live in you today rather than leaving it under somebody else's history.

What Four Coats of Paint Do to a Wall

He's been asked to repaint the end wall of the community hall, and he's started by taking the top layer back to see what he's working over.

Under the cream there's a green from about 2011. Under the green there's a mural somebody's youth group did, mostly hands and doves. Under the mural there's lettering in a heavy serif, and he can make out a curve and a stroke before the scraper takes too much.

Four coats in twenty years, and every one of them was somebody's good idea at the time. Nobody painted over anything out of spite. They painted because a wall gets tired and a new group arrives and the old lettering had faded until you couldn't read it from the road anymore.

You've been painted that way. Not maliciously, and not by enemies. You've simply had layer after layer of somebody else's vocabulary rolled over you, and you can't always find the first thing that was written.

The Word the Street Supplied

Here's the closing line of the verse that ends that year in Antioch:

And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.Acts 11:26 (KJV)

There's no ceremony anywhere in it. Nobody voted, no council convened, and no founding document was drawn up to settle what they ought to be known as. It's a sentence about a nickname.

Notice who supplied it. Not the teachers, not the believers, not anybody inside the room. It came from the street, from traders and neighbors who'd watched a group of working people for twelve months and built a word out of the only name those people kept using.

You're described by whose you are before anybody paints over you with which side you're on. Scripture gives that name to disciples who never asked for it, and the Holy Spirit keeps the description current rather than archaeological.

The First Coat Is the One the Wall Absorbed

Here's what I'd take off that scaffold if I could carry a single thing.

Every later coat sits on the surface. That's what a coat is, and it's why a scraper takes it off in an afternoon. The first coat is different. It went onto bare plaster, and the plaster drank it. You can strip that wall back for a week and still find the color in the grain.

The word given at Antioch is the first coat. It went onto believers before there was anything on them to cover, which is why it's still showing through after twenty centuries of rolling and why nobody ever had to strip a wall to get back to it.

That's why the man with the scraper stops when he reaches the serif lettering. Everything above it was applied. That layer was absorbed.

You carry a word that the plaster drank, so nothing rolled over it since has ever replaced it. The written Word gives it as a description of what believers plainly were, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping that color showing through you.

I'm Not Asking You to Strip the Wall

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would wound you and I won't write it.

The mural wasn't vandalism, and the green wasn't a mistake. A youth group meant every hand and every dove. Somebody chose that green because the hall was dark and wanted warming. Each coat was love applied by people doing their best with the wall they'd been handed.

This isn't an instruction to scrape anything back. It's a reminder of what's underneath. If this word became a fifth coat to roll over the other four, it would have become exactly the thing it describes the absence of.

You can leave every coat where it is and still stand on the first one, because keeping both costs you neither. Scripture sets the Antioch name underneath every later name without canceling one of them, and the Holy Spirit keeps it load bearing instead of competing.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.