We All Need a Little Encouragement: Barnabas
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. Your encouragement has been very refreshing. Today we’re going to continue to look at some character studies in the Bible, some of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly people from within the pages of scripture.
Do any of you have a nickname? Rudy is always teasing me because whenever I talk about college, I start telling a story about a friend in the fraternity, and they always have some wacky nickname. My pledge class had such nicknames as Homey Dog, Scud, Shack, and Goat. One of the fun things we would assign to pledges was to find out (or make up) how certain brothers got their nicknames. Honestly, most of them came because guys were messing around and decided “that would be a good nickname for so and so...” and it stuck.
Most of the nicknames weren't all that flattering, though. Today we are focusing on someone whose nickname was a little more flattering than the fraternity names I mentioned.
Early in the book of Acts, the early church was in a very precarious position. Persecuted by almost everyone, and often in hiding, the church continued to meet. One of the ways they got by was on the generosity of the believers. We find out about this in Acts 4:32-35.
As we read about these believers, Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, pinpoints one individual. This is Barnabas, the guy we're going to focus on today. We can read about him in Acts 4:36-37.
In the Bible, names were extremely important. If you're reading through the Old Testament and someone's name has a footnote, check it out. Often those footnotes tell what that name means. And when someone gets a nickname in the Bible, that's important as well. Joseph the Levite's nickname was Barnabas: the Son of Encouragement.
We learn a little bit about his character when we first meet him. Unlike Eli last week, who was always sitting or lying down whenever we meet him, Barnabas is selling his personal property and giving the money to the church. We can understand from this action that Barnabas was generous.
But he had more going for him than just his generosity. Let me put it another way. Barnabas wasn't the type of person who, if you said you needed help, would just write a check and be done with it. Barnabas had a heart for people.
When the Apostle Paul, who wrote many of the letters in the New Testament, was converted, the new Christians were afraid of him, and justifiably so. He had been out persecuting Christians and throwing them in prison – with the blessing of the Jewish leaders. He had a radical conversion experience, in which he saw a bright light, and a voice spoke to him, telling him this was Jesus, whom he had been persecuting. After this encounter, he was a changed man. He went from persecutor to persecuted. He went from being against the church to being the biggest missionary. But before Paul was traveling on his missionary journeys or writing letters to the churches, he was in a bad spot.
Acts 9:26-28
Here's an admission: if someone randomly comes in and says that God has told them something, I'm skeptical. But if someone I trust tells me that God has spoken to someone or that this person has something important to say, then I'm much more apt to listen. The new church had every reason to doubt Paul's sincerity. I'm sure some of them thought he was just trying to infiltrate them to imprison them. But Barnabas came to the believers to tell them that Paul really had changed. In all actuality, by doing this, Barnabas put himself on the line on Saul’s behalf. If Paul had betrayed them, Barnabas would have been held responsible as well.
You can see further evidence of how Barnabas put himself on the line in Acts 11:19-26.
Because of the great persecution that the church experienced, believers scattered. And because their belief was so strong, everywhere they went, they shared the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Word of God never returns empty: when God's people are faithful to tell others about Jesus, people will respond. That's one of the reasons that our Vacation Bible School and Faithweavers ministries and our cell groups are so important to our church – they are front-line ministries where people are being discipled into Jesus Christ.
Anyway, as the Christians in Jerusalem heard about the new believers, they sent Barnabas to them, and he encouraged them. Acts 11:23 tells us that When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.
Let me stop for a moment and encourage you. Some of you have really been struggling. Maybe you're struggling with specific sins, or maybe sinful attitudes or ways of dealing with certain people. If you're struggling, it just might be because Satan knows you aren't on the sidelines anymore and that really ticks him off. He knows you are making Kingdom differences, making eternal differences, and he hates that. If you don't have any problems at all, it might be because you aren't making any difference. It seems like it would be really easy to be the pastor of a dying church, because there aren't any real significant problems, no spiritual warfare problems, because that church is already counted in Satan's camp. But when we're doing Kingdom work, Satan will oppose it.
I want to encourage you in the face of Satan's opposition that God is so much bigger than Satan – it's no competition. It's not even like a long shot in a horse race: Satan has no chance of winning. And you are on the right side if you are living for Jesus Christ.
Notice how Barnabas is described by Luke (Acts 11:24): He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. He was known as a good man. Why? Because he was full of the Holy Spirit and had great faith. Those two necessarily go together. If you are full of the Holy Spirit, God will increase your faith. And if you continue to pray, asking God to transform you into the person He wants you to be, He will fill you with faith and make you into a good person. And the result: people will be brought to the Lord. One of the difficulties we have in sharing the Good News with people who aren't Christians is that they've often already been tainted by someone who has said they were a Christian, even attended church, but was filled with a judgmental spirit, with hateful words, or with un-Christian actions. But on the other hand, if you are truly filled with the Holy Spirit and you bear Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, then people are going to stand up and take notice.
And there will be people in heaven because of your willingness to carry the Holy Spirit with you wherever you go.
And it was because of the actions of Barnabas (and later Saul) that the believers in Jesus were first called Christians. We carry that name to this day, because of the impact Barnabas, the son of encouragement made.
Certainly Barnabas was a gifted encourager. I wonder if Paul was thinking specifically of Barnabas in that role when he wrote to the church in Rome.
Romans 12:4-8 4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
If your gift is encouraging, then encourage people. Don't wait! When I was in seminary I had a friend named Stewart who was going through a tough time of discernment. One evening he was on my mind, so I just stopped and gave him a call. He wasn't home, so I left a message on his answering machine – nothing fancy or indepth; just a “hey, I just wanted you to know that I'm praying for you” message. He told me later that he'd had a really bad day and just wanted to give up, but when he got home, there was that encouraging message on his machine.
Some of you aren't gifted encouragers. I urge you to encourage someone anyway.
We can learn how to be encouragers from Barnabas.
First of all, if you want to truly be an encourager, you have to be generous. This doesn't mean that you necessarily have to sell your possessions and give the money to the church, like Barnabas did, but you do need to be generous with your encouragement. Don't just encourage once and be done with it. Keep on encouraging others. Be a generous listener and then remember what the person said. Then you have a way to encourage someone. Be generous with your time, willing to give it to someone, to ask them how things are and actually listen to their response.
You're going to have to put yourself on the line to be a good encourager. It isn't always easy. You might have to search to find something encouraging about someone. Or in other cases, you’ll find that there just aren’t words to encourage the person who is suffering. In the book of Job, when he was suffering, his friends came to him to sympathize with him and comfort him. Basically they came to encourage him. Job 2:13 tells us that they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. They were doing awesome until they opened their mouths. But here’s the hard part: sitting in silence when you want to say something. I’m not always comfortable with silence, and I remember times when it’s been extremely hard to shut up and let the Holy Spirit work. But when you encourage, make sure that it’s the Holy Spirit who is encouraging through you.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 tells us to encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. It’s part of who we are supposed to be as Christians. Maybe you’re not a very encouraging person. What can you do to become an encourager? It might take work… but here are some ways you can go about it.
In 2007, the Heartland Film Festival Short Film of the Year winner was a movie by Kurt Kuenne called “Validation” –a fable about free parking. In this movie, the protagonist is the guy who validates parking for a mall parking garage. Instead of simply stamping people’s tickets, he validates them. “You’ve got really strong features.” “Have you been working out?” People go away with a smile.
It’s a great movie – if you are internet savvy, look it up on YouTube: just type “validation movie” in the search box (or just click – right here). This guy goes out of his way to validate people. To make them feel special. If you’re willing to be an encourager, here’s your assignment: pick someone out who you are going to encourage. Then find something new to encourage in them every day this week. My mom made me do this once as a punishment for being particularly squirrelly in Mrs. Harris’ 8th grade class – I had to say something nice about her every day. And it changed my entire outlook on her.
Here’s the advanced assignment: if you’re already an encourager, find someone you don’t like, and encourage them in the same way. If you can’t find something to encourage, how about asking the Holy Spirit, who is The Encourager, to do it for you!
Do any of you have a nickname? Rudy is always teasing me because whenever I talk about college, I start telling a story about a friend in the fraternity, and they always have some wacky nickname. My pledge class had such nicknames as Homey Dog, Scud, Shack, and Goat. One of the fun things we would assign to pledges was to find out (or make up) how certain brothers got their nicknames. Honestly, most of them came because guys were messing around and decided “that would be a good nickname for so and so...” and it stuck.
Most of the nicknames weren't all that flattering, though. Today we are focusing on someone whose nickname was a little more flattering than the fraternity names I mentioned.
Early in the book of Acts, the early church was in a very precarious position. Persecuted by almost everyone, and often in hiding, the church continued to meet. One of the ways they got by was on the generosity of the believers. We find out about this in Acts 4:32-35.
As we read about these believers, Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, pinpoints one individual. This is Barnabas, the guy we're going to focus on today. We can read about him in Acts 4:36-37.
In the Bible, names were extremely important. If you're reading through the Old Testament and someone's name has a footnote, check it out. Often those footnotes tell what that name means. And when someone gets a nickname in the Bible, that's important as well. Joseph the Levite's nickname was Barnabas: the Son of Encouragement.
We learn a little bit about his character when we first meet him. Unlike Eli last week, who was always sitting or lying down whenever we meet him, Barnabas is selling his personal property and giving the money to the church. We can understand from this action that Barnabas was generous.
But he had more going for him than just his generosity. Let me put it another way. Barnabas wasn't the type of person who, if you said you needed help, would just write a check and be done with it. Barnabas had a heart for people.
When the Apostle Paul, who wrote many of the letters in the New Testament, was converted, the new Christians were afraid of him, and justifiably so. He had been out persecuting Christians and throwing them in prison – with the blessing of the Jewish leaders. He had a radical conversion experience, in which he saw a bright light, and a voice spoke to him, telling him this was Jesus, whom he had been persecuting. After this encounter, he was a changed man. He went from persecutor to persecuted. He went from being against the church to being the biggest missionary. But before Paul was traveling on his missionary journeys or writing letters to the churches, he was in a bad spot.
Acts 9:26-28
Here's an admission: if someone randomly comes in and says that God has told them something, I'm skeptical. But if someone I trust tells me that God has spoken to someone or that this person has something important to say, then I'm much more apt to listen. The new church had every reason to doubt Paul's sincerity. I'm sure some of them thought he was just trying to infiltrate them to imprison them. But Barnabas came to the believers to tell them that Paul really had changed. In all actuality, by doing this, Barnabas put himself on the line on Saul’s behalf. If Paul had betrayed them, Barnabas would have been held responsible as well.
You can see further evidence of how Barnabas put himself on the line in Acts 11:19-26.
Because of the great persecution that the church experienced, believers scattered. And because their belief was so strong, everywhere they went, they shared the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Word of God never returns empty: when God's people are faithful to tell others about Jesus, people will respond. That's one of the reasons that our Vacation Bible School and Faithweavers ministries and our cell groups are so important to our church – they are front-line ministries where people are being discipled into Jesus Christ.
Anyway, as the Christians in Jerusalem heard about the new believers, they sent Barnabas to them, and he encouraged them. Acts 11:23 tells us that When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.
Let me stop for a moment and encourage you. Some of you have really been struggling. Maybe you're struggling with specific sins, or maybe sinful attitudes or ways of dealing with certain people. If you're struggling, it just might be because Satan knows you aren't on the sidelines anymore and that really ticks him off. He knows you are making Kingdom differences, making eternal differences, and he hates that. If you don't have any problems at all, it might be because you aren't making any difference. It seems like it would be really easy to be the pastor of a dying church, because there aren't any real significant problems, no spiritual warfare problems, because that church is already counted in Satan's camp. But when we're doing Kingdom work, Satan will oppose it.
I want to encourage you in the face of Satan's opposition that God is so much bigger than Satan – it's no competition. It's not even like a long shot in a horse race: Satan has no chance of winning. And you are on the right side if you are living for Jesus Christ.
Notice how Barnabas is described by Luke (Acts 11:24): He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. He was known as a good man. Why? Because he was full of the Holy Spirit and had great faith. Those two necessarily go together. If you are full of the Holy Spirit, God will increase your faith. And if you continue to pray, asking God to transform you into the person He wants you to be, He will fill you with faith and make you into a good person. And the result: people will be brought to the Lord. One of the difficulties we have in sharing the Good News with people who aren't Christians is that they've often already been tainted by someone who has said they were a Christian, even attended church, but was filled with a judgmental spirit, with hateful words, or with un-Christian actions. But on the other hand, if you are truly filled with the Holy Spirit and you bear Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, then people are going to stand up and take notice.
And there will be people in heaven because of your willingness to carry the Holy Spirit with you wherever you go.
And it was because of the actions of Barnabas (and later Saul) that the believers in Jesus were first called Christians. We carry that name to this day, because of the impact Barnabas, the son of encouragement made.
Certainly Barnabas was a gifted encourager. I wonder if Paul was thinking specifically of Barnabas in that role when he wrote to the church in Rome.
Romans 12:4-8 4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
If your gift is encouraging, then encourage people. Don't wait! When I was in seminary I had a friend named Stewart who was going through a tough time of discernment. One evening he was on my mind, so I just stopped and gave him a call. He wasn't home, so I left a message on his answering machine – nothing fancy or indepth; just a “hey, I just wanted you to know that I'm praying for you” message. He told me later that he'd had a really bad day and just wanted to give up, but when he got home, there was that encouraging message on his machine.
Some of you aren't gifted encouragers. I urge you to encourage someone anyway.
We can learn how to be encouragers from Barnabas.
First of all, if you want to truly be an encourager, you have to be generous. This doesn't mean that you necessarily have to sell your possessions and give the money to the church, like Barnabas did, but you do need to be generous with your encouragement. Don't just encourage once and be done with it. Keep on encouraging others. Be a generous listener and then remember what the person said. Then you have a way to encourage someone. Be generous with your time, willing to give it to someone, to ask them how things are and actually listen to their response.
You're going to have to put yourself on the line to be a good encourager. It isn't always easy. You might have to search to find something encouraging about someone. Or in other cases, you’ll find that there just aren’t words to encourage the person who is suffering. In the book of Job, when he was suffering, his friends came to him to sympathize with him and comfort him. Basically they came to encourage him. Job 2:13 tells us that they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. They were doing awesome until they opened their mouths. But here’s the hard part: sitting in silence when you want to say something. I’m not always comfortable with silence, and I remember times when it’s been extremely hard to shut up and let the Holy Spirit work. But when you encourage, make sure that it’s the Holy Spirit who is encouraging through you.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 tells us to encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. It’s part of who we are supposed to be as Christians. Maybe you’re not a very encouraging person. What can you do to become an encourager? It might take work… but here are some ways you can go about it.
In 2007, the Heartland Film Festival Short Film of the Year winner was a movie by Kurt Kuenne called “Validation” –a fable about free parking. In this movie, the protagonist is the guy who validates parking for a mall parking garage. Instead of simply stamping people’s tickets, he validates them. “You’ve got really strong features.” “Have you been working out?” People go away with a smile.
It’s a great movie – if you are internet savvy, look it up on YouTube: just type “validation movie” in the search box (or just click – right here). This guy goes out of his way to validate people. To make them feel special. If you’re willing to be an encourager, here’s your assignment: pick someone out who you are going to encourage. Then find something new to encourage in them every day this week. My mom made me do this once as a punishment for being particularly squirrelly in Mrs. Harris’ 8th grade class – I had to say something nice about her every day. And it changed my entire outlook on her.
Here’s the advanced assignment: if you’re already an encourager, find someone you don’t like, and encourage them in the same way. If you can’t find something to encourage, how about asking the Holy Spirit, who is The Encourager, to do it for you!
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