Power of Encouragement

Now, if you are new with us and you're immediately thinking this is crowded, you are accurate. This is crowded. We put like 30 chairs that had not previously been in here in the room this past week. Adam and Brady and that crew, they like worked on it. And so what started as, I think we seat 402 in here. I think we seat around 450 or so now. Now I will tell you this, some of you are sitting in really terrible seats, but they are seats, like you are sitting, that's positive. That was good. Some of you cannot see the screen. Some of you can see half of one screen. Some of you can see half of the thing. And it just is what it is. I don't know if y'all have noticed, we are doing something out back that should solve this problem, at least for a year or two. And it's just right out back. And so it's right out there, and it's coming along. Electricians are about to be in there this week with some lifts, just going to town, baby. You know what I'm saying? That's right. That's right. If you haven't noticed, there's brick. We've got brick up on the other side. So all your friends who keep trashing us on Facebook about how it looks like a warehouse, tell them there's brick out there. Okay. Now, if you look close enough, if you look close enough, it is very different brick and all the bricks are kind of different, but we're saving money because we're painting it black. Go figure. How about that? If they ask why they paint it black, tell them to come see me. I'd love to have a conversation with them. I doubt they want to actually talk to me though. They'd rather just complain. Sorry, we're broadcasting live, so maybe you're watching right now. So I said it with a smile. Let me catch you up in like 90 seconds where we are. Now, I know I say 90 seconds a lot, and usually it ends up being like nine minutes. I don't have the ability to do nine minutes of 90-second catch-up today. Legit 90 seconds. I'm looking at a clock. I will have this done maybe in three minutes, not quite 90 seconds. We're getting there, okay? Just give me a second. Okay, here we go. Not just one second. You'll get what I'm saying. Saul, Saul was breeding, breeding, breathing out murderous threats towards people of the way. That's the way it was described. That's what the Bible describes this guy named Saul. And he's breathing out murderous threats towards people of the way. Saul was a Pharisee. He was a religious leader. He wasn't just any religious leader. He was like the leader of leaders, incredibly smart. His resume is enormous. Everything that he puts on is like puts him at the top of the Jewish people. the guy. And he has made it his one life's mission to make sure that Judaism is protected from this abomination that they are beginning to know as Christianity. They didn't quite call it Christianity yet, but that was the summation of like, this is, this is no good. They're infiltrating Judaism and they're ruining it. They're wrecking it. And we will put a stop to it. It starts by Saul overseeing an execution of a Christian named Stephen. He's like, we'll kill him and I'll arrest everyone else and we will kill all of you too. Saul goes to religious leaders in Jerusalem and says, hey, I don't want to just do this here in Jerusalem. I want to take this show on the road and go to neighboring cities. They give him permission. He gets letters. His first stop is a place called Damascus. On the way to Damascus, he has this enormous light hit him so hard, didn't literally touch him, but it hits him so hard in the eyes, he falls off his donkey. And when he gets on the ground, he looks and he cannot see anything, but he hears a voice. And he swears for the rest of his life that he hears the voice of Jesus. And then Jesus asks him, why are you persecuting me? And he says, Brian, I don't even know who you are. Who are you? And he says, I'm Jesus. Why are you persecuting me? For three days, Saul is blinded. He prays. That's what we know from a historian named Luke. And he says, hey, he prayed for three days. And eventually, this guy named Ananias, a Jesus follower, goes and finds Saul. And this house praying, blinded, he prays and lays hands on him. And the historian says something like scales falls off of Saul's eyes and he can see. And from there he says, hey, I believe in Jesus. I know I was killing and arresting people for believing in him. I was wrong. I believe in him. He was baptized right there in Damascus. And then we get to a place where he goes to Arabia. He doesn't give us any details of what he's doing in Arabia. We don't have, in fact, it's a very short little sentence in a further, a future writing that he tells us he goes to Arabia. There's, nobody else knows what in the world he was doing there. He was there for about a year or so, is what we do know. And when he comes back, he goes back to Damascus and he begins to preach and teach about Jesus. And it's going great. Like he is letting people have it. Now people are confused, like, wait, wait a second. Wasn't this the guy that was here to arrest all the people that believe what he is now saying is true? Yes. Things have changed. They get so frustrated with him because he's brilliant, because he continues to prove. wrong all of the jews there that say hey we're waiting for a messiah a savior a christ we're waiting for that guy and uh this jesus this these jesus followers keep talking about is not him we cannot have a crucified messiah we can't have a crucified savior that makes no sense our savior will be political he'll be a king he will overthrow the roman government that's what we're waiting on well he uses their own scriptures to prove that he's right and they're wrong And since he knows a lot more about their scriptures than they do, they get so frustrated, they decide, we're just going to kill you. And so his followers, or not his followers, his friends decide the only way to get him out of the city is to lower him in the middle of the night out of basket down the outside city wall. He does and he escapes. And that's where we pick up in Acts chapter 9, verse 26. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him. not believing that he was really a disciple. So this is getting better. So he almost gets killed in Damascus. We're talking about Jesus. They lower him in a basket over the wall in the middle of the night. And he decides, shoot, I'll go to Jerusalem where all the really good Jesus followers are. And when he shows up, he's like, hey, I want to meet with the Jesus followers in the city. And everybody's like, I ain't. No, sir. No, sir. Because they were thinking smart. If I was Saul, this brilliant statistician, this strategist, and I wanted to arrest and kill all of the followers of the way of Jesus, what would I do? I would figure out a way to get them all in one place. And I would get them. You know what I'm saying? That's what I would do. And so they were like, we are not that stupid. We are not getting together with you. It's not going to happen. Zero chance. It didn't matter what they had maybe heard about Damascus and how maybe he was run off because people wanted to kill him. They didn't care. We are not that dumb. It's not going to happen. Zero chance. Now, I do want to clarify, when it says he tried to join the disciples, that simply means Jesus' followers. They decided to trap, no chance. Here's the deal. Let's take it out of the biblical narrative. Let's go into our own lives just for a second, and I think this is true. People often remember your damage before they recognize your redemption. So if you're the person in your family or in your community that used to wreak havoc in people's lives, and you've decided, hey. Jesus has changed my life, and all of a sudden you try to reinsert yourself, it makes sense why people might be like, I don't know if this is right. I don't know if this is genuine. I'm not sure I can trust this change in you. I'm not sure that I can believe exactly what you say has happened has happened. After all, last time we saw you, you were lying about something else. Why would you not lie about this? I get it. It creates some tension. It creates a little bit of stress that we have to manage. Like, if you're the person who's had the transformation happen in their life, what should we do? How do we prove to someone that change is genuine? How do we get them to see us differently? That's so hard. I'm not sure there's a really simple answer, but I will tell you this. I will tell you this. If you and I are that person that walks into our family or our community and we have changed because of Jesus, we have to set good expectations for ourselves first. Not for other people. We've got to realize that we have caused damage. We have made it difficult for people to trust us sometimes. We have created memories that are not just going to float away and disappear. We have to remember, I'm going to have to do hard work. I cannot expect them just to snap their fingers and think that I'm fine. And that starts with me. It starts with me. As the person that's been transformed, that starts with me, and I can't put that expectation or responsibility on anybody else. It starts with me. That being said, if you're a Jesus follower on the receiving end of someone who's been transformed in your community or in your family, shouldn't we be the first people to be able to sniff that out? Shouldn't we be the first people that says, hey, I would like to investigate. I would like to look into, is that a legitimate change? I actually might even be a person that would look at this with a lens that is hopeful it actually is true. Should we not be leading our family and our community to figure out, hey, is this a good change? Or should we be the ones who are the skeptics on the front end? Should we be leading the charge, assuming the worst? This is dangerous because you might get burned. Who do you want to be? Do you want to be the person that hoped too much or that was too skeptical? Do you want to be the person who somehow saw the best in someone or just always assumed the worst? What kind of people do we want to be? Is our reputation of being right, does that matter more than taking a chance and possibly being wrong about their transformation? It creates a tension that exists between both sets and individuals. A realization that if I'm the offender, I cannot expect you to get on board with it, and I got to earn your trust all over again from zero. At the same time, attention for a Jesus follower that says, maybe we would lead the way in seeing redemption for what it is, or at least hoping redemption is what it is. So let's get back into it. We go to the very next verse, Acts chapter 9, verse 27. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. So remember, Paul's looking for them. Nobody's telling them where they are. Like, we're not meeting with you. It's a trap. For some reason, a guy named Barnabas, he steps in and is like, bro, I'll tell you where they're at. Let's go. I'll just take you to them. Now, I don't know what that's like. I don't know if they had a secret hideout that was like, you know what, He-Man Woman Haters Club, and it was a secret place. And Barnabas is like, look, bro, I know where their hideout is. I know the password. Let's just, I'll take you. It's fine. I don't know if when he shows up, if Barnabas is the one knocking on the door and, like, saying the password, like, Jesus saves. I don't know what it is. You know what I'm saying? But for sure, that's what Barnabas does. He's like, look, I'll take you to meet them. I will take you to them right now. We pick up. But he told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. Barnabas uses his own credibility to vouch for Saul. Barnabas doesn't just see potential in Saul. He stakes his reputation on it. Now, the thing is, Barnabas, that's not actually Barnabas' name. Barnabas is a nickname. Barnabas means son of encouragement. And Barnabas was known in the circle of Christians so much for being an encourager that they changed his name. They're like, dude, this is all you do. We're not even going to call you the name we called you as you grew up. We're just going to start calling you Barnabas. And it stuck. It wasn't just in Jerusalem. They called him Barnabas everywhere. Encouragement. Now, let's be honest about encouragement. Let me give you a little bit of a definition of encouragement. It's advocacy. It's risk. It's action. Now, we're going to leave that definition up for a second for us to look at it. For sure, if I had asked you to define encouragement, I would imagine the majority of you would have said... Oh, it's saying something positive to somebody, right? It's speaking some good words in someone's direction. It's an attaboy. It's like, oh, man, you're doing great. Oh, I'm so proud of you. Oh, man, I always knew you could do this. Oh, I've been watching, and you've done so good. And we would think that is encouragement. But we have a different biblical picture of encouragement that's more action-oriented. It's beyond words. That word advocacy, that's a big word. That's loaded. That's loaded. The idea of action and risk and encouragement, that's a whole other picture. What was the result of this advocacy, of this risk, of this action on behalf of the son of encouragement? Let's look at verse 28. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem. Speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. So we go from he can't get an audience with any other Jesus followers, to him getting a meeting with the leaders of the Jesus followers, to him then getting a place to stay and permission to do whatever he wants to in terms of talking to all the people about Jesus. Now for sure, Jerusalem was the first place the church started. So they already had a system of how they were reaching people in Jerusalem. Saul comes in and does it completely different. And they're like, yeah, dude, dude, have your way. Do what you're going to do. You do you. We trust you. He goes from I can't get a meeting to someone advocating for him in a way of encouragement to a place to stay and permission to do his little thing right there in Jerusalem. Encouragement. Encouragement, people, is how God launches people. Think about it. Encouragement is how God launches people. What does Saul do? If Barnabas doesn't step in, what does Saul do? If Barnabas is not like, I'll take you to their leaders, what does Saul do? He for sure doesn't stay there and do what he did. Encouragement. Now, when we read the next verse, it looks like things are going well. It feels a little sunshine and rainbows. Let me read it to you. Acts 9.29. He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews. Now, if you read that all on its own, it might be like, that doesn't seem like sunshine and rainbows to me. It is. Let me tell you why. So Saul was from, bonus points, anybody know where Saul's from? Tarsus. Let's go. Tarsus is not a Hebrew city. It's not a Jewish city. It's a Greek city. So Saul grows up, even though he has all of this Hebrew, this Jewish resume, Hebrew of Hebrews. from the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised. He falls in all the categories, a Pharisee. He's an expert in everything Jew, everything. And he's at the top of their ladder. At the same time, he also grew up in a city that was not historically Jewish at all. It was Greek. Now, let's look at the difference between a Greek city and a Hebrew city or a Jewish city. Their worldview shaped by two different things. For the Jews, the covenant with God. The worldview for the Greeks is philosophy, it's Plato, it's Aristotle, it's the ability to debate and reason. Their daily life centered around the temple and the Torah for the Jews. For the Greeks, it was the marketplace, the theater, the gymnasium. Their language, completely different. Jews grew up speaking Hebrew or Aramaic. The Greeks, they grew up speaking Greek. Their worship, Yahweh and Jehovah. Versus Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite. Their life influence, the Torah and the prophets versus art and drama and athletics and debate about philosophy. Two completely different worlds. Saul grows up in both and he's great at both. So when Saul gets to Jerusalem and they say, you can do your thing. Immediately, he goes and finds people that grew up like him because he's an expert in all things Jewish history, which he's now discovered how they missed the Messiah in their writings. He's gone back and found Jesus in the Torah, and Jewish scholars had missed him completely. He went back and found Jesus in the prophets, and the Jewish scholars had missed him completely. And he takes that, connects the dots with the Jews, but also speaks the language and the life and the culture of Christ. all of the other Greeks that are there that have now become Jews. And so he's like the perfect guy for them. And so when he says he debated Hellenistic Jews, it really means he engaged with them in the way they most like to engage about things that were important in their life. Let's debate about it. Let's have a back and forth. Let's see if we can't figure out together what life is really about. And they fed on it. And so did Saul. So when we read Acts 29, at least the first part, it's sunshine and rainbows. However, I don't know if you noticed, I stopped at the comma. After the comma, it gets a little more serious. Let me read the whole thing to you. He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews, but they tried to kill him. Not again, right? Which is the same thing. What happens? What happens when a guy shows up and disproves all of your logical arguments, and then even some of your illogical arguments with reason and philosophy and all of this history? What happens when you can no longer argue with the guy who keeps proving you wrong? Kill him. That's it. It's like, what else are we going to do with you? Because every time you open your mouth and I open my mouth, I look stupid. And I'm tired of you making me look stupid. And you didn't just make me look stupid, you made my granddaddy look stupid. And his granddaddy look stupid. And now you made all of us look stupid. We like to debate when we can win sometimes, but we keep losing to you. So we'll kill you. So what is the result? You guessed it. Verse 30. When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. What's Tarsus and Saul have in common again? It's his home. They said, bro, go home. Go home. Damascus, they tried to kill you. You came here, the hub of Christianity, right? They didn't call it Christians at the time, but the hub of the way, the hub of Jewish people. You've done made everybody mad here too. Go home. Maybe they can put up with the way. Go home. So they take him to Caesarea and they send him home. We don't hear from Saul for years after that verse, years. Somewhere between six and ten years go by before we hear anything out of Saul again. He gets sent home, and it feels like when we're reading Dr. Luke, the historian's account, it feels like Saul got benched. We gave you a shot. Barnabas spoke up for you. It just created a hornet's nest here in Jerusalem. Go home. So he does. So from there, to pick back up in the story of Saul, we have to jump two chapters in the book of Acts. Now, the two chapters we're jumping, very significant things happen, and some of them will even pull back into the narrative in a few weeks from now, but they don't directly, at least at the moment, have anything to do with Saul, though Saul's going to make it his business pretty soon. So let's pick up where we find him. Again, Acts chapter 11, verse 19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, spreading the word only among the Jews. We're going to stop right there for a second. So now we have picked back up with an old throwback narrative that says, hey, back when, Luke is telling us what the cause of what's about to, he's about to unfold for us. He says, back when Stephen was killed, If you remember, Saul oversaw the execution of Stephen. Stephen was a Christian, argued in front of a bunch of religious leaders, basically spouted his mouth off about Jesus, and they were like, oh, you're dead. And he did not escape. They stoned him right there. That was it. He stopped breathing. He was absolutely dead. And Saul oversaw the whole thing. He stood there and watched it, gave authority for the people to do it. Once that happened, people spread out all over the place, which is why Saul said, I need to go to Damascus in the first place. Because some of the ragamuffins I'm trying to round up here have escaped to another city. They're like, yeah, go get them. And so that's why that whole thing happened. So now Luke is going back and saying, just reminding everybody, this is how all of these followers of Jesus got to these other cities and countries. It's because of the persecution that happened that forced them to run for their lives. So we'll pick up again in verse 19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, spreading the word. only among Jews. They'd go into a place, they'd find a Jewish community, they would tell them, we found the Messiah our people have been looking for for thousands of years. In the Torah, they started showing them, this is where Jesus shows up. Genesis 3.15, it's the first time we see any messianic prophecy. It's beautiful. You want to go read it? Go read it at first glance. It has nothing to do with Jesus. We unpack it, it's like, oh, that has everything to do with Jesus. So they start showing them all these things, only to Jews, right? Verse 20. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. And so most of the guys, when they were spread out because of the persecution, went to other Jewish communities, told them about Jesus, connected the dots from the Hebrew Torah into the modern-day understanding of who Jesus was as the Messiah. Some guys, though, from Cyprus and Cyrene, which also happens to be where Barnabas is from, they decided this is too good to keep to ourselves. Why would we only tell Jewish people? So they started telling all the Greek people that had no connection to Judaism whatsoever, never heard of Yahweh, never heard the name Moses, Abraham who? David and Goliath? Never heard of them. None of that was in any of their mind. They had no Jewish history, no Jewish heritage, no Jewish interest. If anything, the people that they were talking to thought that the Jews were atheists. Most people back then thought Jews were atheists because there was reports that when people had gone into their temple, there was no image of a God there. And so they thought they just prayed to no one. And so when they thought through the lens of Jews and Hebrew heritage, zero interest, zero interest. But these scattered men and women, It's spread out because of persecution. They're like, why would we keep the good news about a savior for the world only? people who had Jewish line and lineage, why would we not share this with everyone? And they did. Luke, the historian records, the result of that is that tons of people were added to the number of those who followed Jesus. Now, the problem with this, right, is things start growing, things start getting bigger. All of a sudden, people are telling non-Jews they have no understanding of the Jewish heritage and of covenant and of Yahweh and Jehovah. The problem is, when this takes place, it creates some trouble. It creates growth that maybe they weren't ready for. Let's look at what happens in Acts 11, the very next verse, 22. News of this reached... the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. That makes sense. Makes sense. I'll tell you why. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. So now the norm, right, the MO, the normal pattern for the... religious leaders back in Jerusalem was that if something new happened, which it did in Acts 8 and 9, something kind of strange started happening away from Jerusalem, they would send trusted leaders to investigate in these other cities. They sent John and Peter, which were two really good friends of Jesus in the earlier chapters. Something took place and like, hey, go check this out. This seems strange. It's not quite what's happening in Jerusalem, but it still has this Jesus name attached to it, go investigate it. Same thing happening here. They start hearing about this church that's given birth to that's not just Jews converting to the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. It's people who are not Jewish at all. They're just straight Greeks going to become followers of Jesus. And so they say, look, the people that are doing this are from your place, Barnabas. You go check it out. Barnabas gets there, and he's like, this is incredible. This is so good. And Luke describes it as, for the second time, this movement takes place, and the result is, Many people are added to the number of Jesus followers. Now, this creates that problem, though. Now they've confirmed this growth is legit. Now they've confirmed that it's taking place. Antioch is pretty strategic. At the time, it was the capital of Syria. And Antioch, in the Roman Empire at the time, was the third largest city in the entire empire. And so it wasn't just like this podunk town where some kind of crazy Jesus movement's happening. It was in like a hub that was enormous for the entire Middle Eastern area. And so when they started looking at this church here, there was a lot of questions that they had for Barnabas and for the other Christians that were there about how do we catch all of them up? Not just the reality that Jesus was the Son of God, died on the cross and resurrected from the dead. But how do we get them to understand the journey of the Jewish people through creating, even the idea of creating a people and the promise of God through generations? How do we catch people up and teach them all of the history and the lineage that's so important to understand to really have a good grasp of just how good Jesus is? How do we teach people and bring them up to speed so they might have a really good knowledge base? about how God has moved not just in their lifetime, but for centuries before their lifetimes even began. How do they do that? And how do they do that more so with people who don't even speak some of the language they speak and their scriptures are written in? None of the Greeks read Hebrew, which is what the Old Testament was written in. There are some Aramaic pieces in the Old Testament as well, in Daniel and Jeremiah and one other book. But mostly it was Hebrew. They're not going to read that. How do you bridge that gap? Or are we comfortable just saying, ah, they'll figure it out, the resurrection, and let's just see how it goes. No, no, they needed someone who could connect the story of Israel to a brand new faith that included not just a singular people. called the Jews, but to the entire world, which for them at the time was the Roman Empire. Barnabas knew this would require someone who understood both the Jewish and Gentile worlds. And so the very next verse says this, then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. This is somewhere between six and 10 years after they sent him home. Barnabas remembers Saul, and he goes and gets him for the Antioch mission. Barnabas knew Saul was incredibly rare, that he was the Jewish scholar of their time. But he also had a Roman passport because he didn't grow up in a Hebrew city. He grew up in Tarsus, a Greek city, which meant he was a Roman citizen, which meant he could go anywhere he wanted to in the entire Roman Empire under protection. of Rome. He also knew that he had a Greek upbringing and he spoke Greek while also being fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic. And not only was he fluent in all three languages, he loved to debate. He loved to chase down the truth. And more than that, he loved to teach people truth. So he wasn't trying to convert Jews to understand Jesus. He was now teaching new Jesus converts all about the history of the Jewish people and the Jewish God. And Saul found his sweet spot. And the church exploded. It's the first time that we begin to see the need for a really big churchy word, Christian theology. The understanding and the idea of what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus, more than, I believe he resurrected from the dead. But what does that mean, and what is that for, and what is sin, and why is sin a thing, and how did it come to be, and why do we struggle with it, and what's the history of it? And how have we tried in the past to break free from it? How have we failed? Where have we succeeded? How did he shape this idea of a morality? All of those things, Saul was an expert at. All of those things, those Greeks were hungry to find the actual answers for. Teach us, tell us. Tell us why it took so many generations to find a savior. Tell us why God's been waiting for... what you keep calling the fullness of time. Tell us how. The thing with Saul is he never had a question he didn't have an answer to. So again, he thrived. Verse 26, when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church. and taught great numbers of people. Here's the cool part. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Now, when we look at this historically, it's not a proud moment. It's not actually a name that anyone who was in that movement would have appreciated. They already had a name for themselves. They were people of the way. or followers of Jesus, or disciples of Jesus. The term Christians becomes a nickname from the people who were not Christians when they talk about the Christians. Christians translates to this in their language, Messiah people. That's the way the community started to see them, as Messiah people. Now, the name, as it turns out, It stuck. In fact, we sit in that name today. Though I'm pretty sure that most people outside of the church, when they think of the term Christian, they probably actually don't think Messiah people. They probably think something a little more negative. But maybe we could change that. by understanding with clarity why we should know this part of the church story. It's simple. It's Barnabas. It's the son of encouragement. It's the realization of what happens when we become encouragers. Because the truth is, encouragement is a life changer. Encouragement is a life changer. Where would Saul be had Barnabas not said, I'll take you to the leaders? Where would Saul be if Barnabas doesn't think, I know a guy that would be perfect for this job. Let me go to his hometown and find him. Where would Saul be? Now, if you're new to Bible study, and this isn't a story that's even remotely familiar to you, you might even be still thinking in this moment, okay, that's cool. So Saul had two people try to, two cities try to kill him, and then he helped a city called Antioch. No, no, Saul did a lot more than that. We're going to talk about that in the next few weeks. We're just getting started. Saul ends up not just changing his life because of Barnabas. Saul doesn't just change the church at Antioch because of Barnabas. Saul ends up changing the world because of Barnabas. So when I say encouragement is a life changer, I really do mean legitimate encouragement can be a life changer. And it might not even be just the life you're encouraging, advocating for, risking for, acting on behalf of. It might not just be their life that you're changing. But every life that that individual then goes to encourage and change themselves starts with one. And in this story, it starts with a guy named Barnabas. But that wasn't actually his real name. That's what he was known for, a life changer, a life launcher, a son of encouragement. And I think everyone would probably say, I want one of those. Like, can I get a Barnabas? Like 1-800-RENT-A-BARN, you know what I'm saying? Can I get anybody? Can I get one of those? Where do I sign up for a Barnabas? I mean, I'm telling you, I know what it's like to have people in my life that step in and advocate, that take action, don't just say nice things to me, but actually step in and take risks. Go back to one of my earliest moments of someone just jumping in, it was my fourth grade teacher. Her name was Miss Aldridge, and I know I've told this story before, but she was a huge part of who I've become because of what she, for some reason, saw in me. I remember, she didn't just say nice things, though. She made action to make sure myself and my brother were okay. It was Christmas time. My dad didn't have anyone to watch. He didn't have enough vacation time, and it was just him. And so she stepped in and was like, hey, I'll take the boys over Christmas break while you work. And so every morning at 6 a.m., my dad dropped us off at my fourth grade teacher's house. She was in her bathrobe and rollers and stuff at the time. And I was like, who are you? You know, every time I saw her at school, she had a string of pearls and a dress on. She was as sweet as lady. She stepped into my life. There's a guy that's here just about every Sunday. I haven't seen him this morning. Usually he sits right back there. His name's John Greer. Johnny was one of the first pastors that ever took time with me. He was a music pastor at a church I grew up in in East Point. And he spent time with me as an 11, 12, 13-year-old. When I first started learning how to play the guitar and was singing a little bit, I mean, to have the minister of music who, honestly, if you've never met Johnny, he knows the hymn book like the back of his hand. We used to play a game on Sunday nights when we would go, because we went to church like every freaking day of the week. It's not like. First we were Sunday night, Sunday morning, Wednesday night, and then every once in a while, Tuesdays or Mondays. So we were there. On Sunday nights, we had this thing where he would lead the hymns, and he had this great piano player. His name was Tim. And he would just open it up, and you could just say any number in the hymnal at all. And there was like 600 hymns in there, any number. And he would just look at Tim. He'd start playing it. He would lead it. He was just incredibly good. So when it came to music, right, and music became a huge part of my life. He was one of the first people to invest in me and to encourage me. When I went to my first church, or I guess it was my second church in Peachtree City, we started, I was at a church in McDonough for a few years. We moved over here, the first church I was spending time in Peachtree City, the very first person to come and talk to me the day, my very first day, was Johnny Greer. To make sure that everything was good and everything was moving and positive, like he was there. And he invested in me for... Six, seven years there. We planted a foundation and we got things going. He showed up and he just said, hey, I want to help. And I was like, all right, Johnny, what you want to do? And he looked at me and he said, anything that doesn't put me in front of people and on the stage. But I was like, Johnny, but you'll be so good. He's like, nah, I want to do that. I want to help you in some other way. And so he loaded in with us for years. at the high school. For sure, the most seasoned guy there, right? If you ask him, he's the most seasoned guy there, pushing carts, doing the best he could to unload as much as he could, as fast as he could, which wasn't fast. Matt, it doesn't just have to be someone that's older than you. About nine years ago, eight and a half, nine years ago, I sat in a room with a bunch of people and was telling them I just felt like God wanted us to do this thing in Noonan. A guy named Brady Lewis, who's our creative arts pastor, sits back there in the back. He's making sure all of you online get to see my gorgeous face. He just panned away for sure. Brady Lewis stood up in front of a bunch of people and said, hey, we want to help, me and Brenton, we want to be a part of it. And I remember saying, Brady, I don't have any style. Like, we're not doing like that. Like, there's no pay, you know? He's like, I don't care. I'm in. I want to help make this happen. There's so many. I mean, so many people, just enormous amount. I mean, there's a huge list. And so I stand in front of you as someone who's been the recipient and still honestly the ongoing recipient of people who continue not to say nice things to me, but to risk and advocate and take action on my behalf in enormous ways. And so I stand in front of you with an abundance of encouragement riches that honestly, I promise you I don't deserve. And so when I hear some of you say, I wish I had an encourager, I don't know a lot about what that's like. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem to be solved. So I've got a theory. I got a theory. The truth is, you can't control your encourager, but you can control your encouragement. Hear me. This is my theory. I bet if every single one of you decided to become an encourager, an advocate, someone who would risk, someone who would take action on behalf of someone else, not simply say nice things in their direction, but again, to advocate, to risk, to take action on behalf of someone else's good. If every single one of you became an encourager, my bet is every single one of you would have an encourager. The reason we lack encouragers in our life is because there's not enough of us being encouragers. So the responsibility doesn't start with what I want someone else to do for me. The responsibility starts with, this is what I ought to be for someone else. And there's no excuse. We can see it. We can read it. It's clear. Encouragement is the way that God launches people. He's telling us right now. You read it with your own eyes on the screen. It's clear as day. Encouragement is life-changing. Who are you encouraging? Or are you using the fact that no one's encouraging you as an excuse for why you don't do it for somebody else? This is what I know and believe. God will bring the people to your life to accomplish what God needs you to accomplish. I guarantee it. But don't block it by saying, I've got prereqs on doing what you want me to do, God, and you need to do this first before I do that. I do what you want me to do. Don't do that. That's stupid. That is dumb. It's foolish. It doesn't make any sense. We can't bargain with God about his desires for us. We can't say it'd be nice if you knew what you were talking about, but you're missing something. We can't say that. If we have the ability to say that and him change his mind, he then loses the definition of being God, which I already knew everything already. So you can't do that. We have a responsibility day in and day out to be the people we're supposed to be, whether someone else shows up for us or not. And I know that's easier for me to say as someone who's had a lot of people show up for me. I know, but don't let that cloud the decision that you have to act on the truth. Be that somebody or someone else. Encouragement isn't passive, it's strategic. It's strategic because it's not going to be random. Encouragement isn't passive, it's decisive. And it's decisive because others probably will hesitate. Others might have their own reservations. Encouragement isn't passive because it's active. It's more than simple words. It's action. Maybe you would pray this week a very simple prayer, five words and a comma. God, make me an encourager. God, would you make me, and if you do that... The truth is, you will be a part of someone else's God, make me prayer. That you will show up at just the right time, and they won't actually see you as an encouragement. They will see you as an answer to prayer. And I'm not sure it gets any better than that. So church, this week. Everybody, be an encouragement, not with your words, but with your actions. Advocate, risk, act.

Now, if you are new with us and you're immediately thinking this is crowded, you are accurate. This is crowded. We put like 30 chairs that had not previously been in here in the room this past week.

Adam and Brady and that crew, they like worked on it. And so what started as, I think we seat 402 in here. I think we seat around 450 or so now. Now I will tell you this, some of you are sitting in really terrible seats, but they are seats, like you are sitting, that's positive. That was good.

Some of you cannot see the screen. Some of you can see half of one screen. Some of you can see half of the thing.

And it just is what it is. I don't know if y'all have noticed, we are doing something out back that should solve this problem, at least for a year or two. And it's just right out back.

And so it's right out there, and it's coming along. Electricians are about to be in there this week with some lifts, just going to town, baby. You know what I'm saying? That's right. That's right.

If you haven't noticed, there's brick. We've got brick up on the other side. So all your friends who keep trashing us on Facebook about how it looks like a warehouse, tell them there's brick out there.

Okay. Now, if you look close enough, if you look close enough, it is very different brick and all the bricks are kind of different, but we're saving money because we're painting it black. Go figure. How about that? If they ask why they paint it black, tell them to come see me.

I'd love to have a conversation with them. I doubt they want to actually talk to me though. They'd rather just complain.

Sorry, we're broadcasting live, so maybe you're watching right now. So I said it with a smile. Let me catch you up in like 90 seconds where we are. Now, I know I say 90 seconds a lot, and usually it ends up being like nine minutes.

I don't have the ability to do nine minutes of 90-second catch-up today. Legit 90 seconds. I'm looking at a clock.

I will have this done maybe in three minutes, not quite 90 seconds. We're getting there, okay? Just give me a second. Okay, here we go.

Not just one second. You'll get what I'm saying. Saul, Saul was breeding, breeding, breathing out murderous threats towards people of the way. That's the way it was described.

That's what the Bible describes this guy named Saul. And he's breathing out murderous threats towards people of the way. Saul was a Pharisee.

He was a religious leader. He wasn't just any religious leader. He was like the leader of leaders, incredibly smart. His resume is enormous. Everything that he puts on is like puts him at the top of the Jewish people.

the guy. And he has made it his one life's mission to make sure that Judaism is protected from this abomination that they are beginning to know as Christianity. They didn't quite call it Christianity yet, but that was the summation of like, this is, this is no good.

They're infiltrating Judaism and they're ruining it. They're wrecking it. And we will put a stop to it. It starts by Saul overseeing an execution of a Christian named Stephen.

He's like, we'll kill him and I'll arrest everyone else and we will kill all of you too. Saul goes to religious leaders in Jerusalem and says, hey, I don't want to just do this here in Jerusalem. I want to take this show on the road and go to neighboring cities.

They give him permission. He gets letters. His first stop is a place called Damascus. On the way to Damascus, he has this enormous light hit him so hard, didn't literally touch him, but it hits him so hard in the eyes, he falls off his donkey. And when he gets on the ground, he looks and he cannot see anything, but he hears a voice.

And he swears for the rest of his life that he hears the voice of Jesus. And then Jesus asks him, why are you persecuting me? And he says, Brian, I don't even know who you are. Who are you? And he says, I'm Jesus.

Why are you persecuting me? For three days, Saul is blinded. He prays. That's what we know from a historian named Luke.

And he says, hey, he prayed for three days. And eventually, this guy named Ananias, a Jesus follower, goes and finds Saul. And this house praying, blinded, he prays and lays hands on him.

And the historian says something like scales falls off of Saul's eyes and he can see. And from there he says, hey, I believe in Jesus. I know I was killing and arresting people for believing in him. I was wrong. I believe in him.

He was baptized right there in Damascus. And then we get to a place where he goes to Arabia. He doesn't give us any details of what he's doing in Arabia. We don't have, in fact, it's a very short little sentence in a further, a future writing that he tells us he goes to Arabia. There's, nobody else knows what in the world he was doing there.

He was there for about a year or so, is what we do know. And when he comes back, he goes back to Damascus and he begins to preach and teach about Jesus. And it's going great.

Like he is letting people have it. Now people are confused, like, wait, wait a second. Wasn't this the guy that was here to arrest all the people that believe what he is now saying is true? Yes. Things have changed.

They get so frustrated with him because he's brilliant, because he continues to prove. wrong all of the jews there that say hey we're waiting for a messiah a savior a christ we're waiting for that guy and uh this jesus this these jesus followers keep talking about is not him we cannot have a crucified messiah we can't have a crucified savior that makes no sense our savior will be political he'll be a king he will overthrow the roman government that's what we're waiting on well he uses their own scriptures to prove that he's right and they're wrong And since he knows a lot more about their scriptures than they do, they get so frustrated, they decide, we're just going to kill you. And so his followers, or not his followers, his friends decide the only way to get him out of the city is to lower him in the middle of the night out of basket down the outside city wall. He does and he escapes.

And that's where we pick up in Acts chapter 9, verse 26. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him. not believing that he was really a disciple. So this is getting better. So he almost gets killed in Damascus. We're talking about Jesus.

They lower him in a basket over the wall in the middle of the night. And he decides, shoot, I'll go to Jerusalem where all the really good Jesus followers are. And when he shows up, he's like, hey, I want to meet with the Jesus followers in the city.

And everybody's like, I ain't. No, sir. No, sir. Because they were thinking smart.

If I was Saul, this brilliant statistician, this strategist, and I wanted to arrest and kill all of the followers of the way of Jesus, what would I do? I would figure out a way to get them all in one place. And I would get them.

You know what I'm saying? That's what I would do. And so they were like, we are not that stupid. We are not getting together with you. It's not going to happen.

Zero chance. It didn't matter what they had maybe heard about Damascus and how maybe he was run off because people wanted to kill him. They didn't care.

We are not that dumb. It's not going to happen. Zero chance.

Now, I do want to clarify, when it says he tried to join the disciples, that simply means Jesus' followers. They decided to trap, no chance. Here's the deal. Let's take it out of the biblical narrative. Let's go into our own lives just for a second, and I think this is true.

People often remember your damage before they recognize your redemption. So if you're the person in your family or in your community that used to wreak havoc in people's lives, and you've decided, hey. Jesus has changed my life, and all of a sudden you try to reinsert yourself, it makes sense why people might be like, I don't know if this is right.

I don't know if this is genuine. I'm not sure I can trust this change in you. I'm not sure that I can believe exactly what you say has happened has happened.

After all, last time we saw you, you were lying about something else. Why would you not lie about this? I get it.

It creates some tension. It creates a little bit of stress that we have to manage. Like, if you're the person who's had the transformation happen in their life, what should we do?

How do we prove to someone that change is genuine? How do we get them to see us differently? That's so hard. I'm not sure there's a really simple answer, but I will tell you this.

I will tell you this. If you and I are that person that walks into our family or our community and we have changed because of Jesus, we have to set good expectations for ourselves first. Not for other people.

We've got to realize that we have caused damage. We have made it difficult for people to trust us sometimes. We have created memories that are not just going to float away and disappear.

We have to remember, I'm going to have to do hard work. I cannot expect them just to snap their fingers and think that I'm fine. And that starts with me. It starts with me.

As the person that's been transformed, that starts with me, and I can't put that expectation or responsibility on anybody else. It starts with me. That being said, if you're a Jesus follower on the receiving end of someone who's been transformed in your community or in your family, shouldn't we be the first people to be able to sniff that out? Shouldn't we be the first people that says, hey, I would like to investigate.

I would like to look into, is that a legitimate change? I actually might even be a person that would look at this with a lens that is hopeful it actually is true. Should we not be leading our family and our community to figure out, hey, is this a good change?

Or should we be the ones who are the skeptics on the front end? Should we be leading the charge, assuming the worst? This is dangerous because you might get burned.

Who do you want to be? Do you want to be the person that hoped too much or that was too skeptical? Do you want to be the person who somehow saw the best in someone or just always assumed the worst?

What kind of people do we want to be? Is our reputation of being right, does that matter more than taking a chance and possibly being wrong about their transformation? It creates a tension that exists between both sets and individuals.

A realization that if I'm the offender, I cannot expect you to get on board with it, and I got to earn your trust all over again from zero. At the same time, attention for a Jesus follower that says, maybe we would lead the way in seeing redemption for what it is, or at least hoping redemption is what it is. So let's get back into it. We go to the very next verse, Acts chapter 9, verse 27. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. So remember, Paul's looking for them.

Nobody's telling them where they are. Like, we're not meeting with you. It's a trap.

For some reason, a guy named Barnabas, he steps in and is like, bro, I'll tell you where they're at. Let's go. I'll just take you to them.

Now, I don't know what that's like. I don't know if they had a secret hideout that was like, you know what, He-Man Woman Haters Club, and it was a secret place. And Barnabas is like, look, bro, I know where their hideout is. I know the password.

Let's just, I'll take you. It's fine. I don't know if when he shows up, if Barnabas is the one knocking on the door and, like, saying the password, like, Jesus saves. I don't know what it is. You know what I'm saying?

But for sure, that's what Barnabas does. He's like, look, I'll take you to meet them. I will take you to them right now.

We pick up. But he told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. Barnabas uses his own credibility to vouch for Saul.

Barnabas doesn't just see potential in Saul. He stakes his reputation on it. Now, the thing is, Barnabas, that's not actually Barnabas' name.

Barnabas is a nickname. Barnabas means son of encouragement. And Barnabas was known in the circle of Christians so much for being an encourager that they changed his name.

They're like, dude, this is all you do. We're not even going to call you the name we called you as you grew up. We're just going to start calling you Barnabas. And it stuck.

It wasn't just in Jerusalem. They called him Barnabas everywhere. Encouragement. Now, let's be honest about encouragement.

Let me give you a little bit of a definition of encouragement. It's advocacy. It's risk. It's action. Now, we're going to leave that definition up for a second for us to look at it.

For sure, if I had asked you to define encouragement, I would imagine the majority of you would have said... Oh, it's saying something positive to somebody, right? It's speaking some good words in someone's direction. It's an attaboy.

It's like, oh, man, you're doing great. Oh, I'm so proud of you. Oh, man, I always knew you could do this. Oh, I've been watching, and you've done so good.

And we would think that is encouragement. But we have a different biblical picture of encouragement that's more action-oriented. It's beyond words. That word advocacy, that's a big word. That's loaded.

That's loaded. The idea of action and risk and encouragement, that's a whole other picture. What was the result of this advocacy, of this risk, of this action on behalf of the son of encouragement? Let's look at verse 28. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem. Speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.

So we go from he can't get an audience with any other Jesus followers, to him getting a meeting with the leaders of the Jesus followers, to him then getting a place to stay and permission to do whatever he wants to in terms of talking to all the people about Jesus. Now for sure, Jerusalem was the first place the church started. So they already had a system of how they were reaching people in Jerusalem.

Saul comes in and does it completely different. And they're like, yeah, dude, dude, have your way. Do what you're going to do.

You do you. We trust you. He goes from I can't get a meeting to someone advocating for him in a way of encouragement to a place to stay and permission to do his little thing right there in Jerusalem.

Encouragement. Encouragement, people, is how God launches people. Think about it. Encouragement is how God launches people.

What does Saul do? If Barnabas doesn't step in, what does Saul do? If Barnabas is not like, I'll take you to their leaders, what does Saul do?

He for sure doesn't stay there and do what he did. Encouragement. Now, when we read the next verse, it looks like things are going well. It feels a little sunshine and rainbows. Let me read it to you.

Acts 9.29. He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews. Now, if you read that all on its own, it might be like, that doesn't seem like sunshine and rainbows to me. It is.

Let me tell you why. So Saul was from, bonus points, anybody know where Saul's from? Tarsus. Let's go.

Tarsus is not a Hebrew city. It's not a Jewish city. It's a Greek city. So Saul grows up, even though he has all of this Hebrew, this Jewish resume, Hebrew of Hebrews.

from the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised. He falls in all the categories, a Pharisee. He's an expert in everything Jew, everything.

And he's at the top of their ladder. At the same time, he also grew up in a city that was not historically Jewish at all. It was Greek.

Now, let's look at the difference between a Greek city and a Hebrew city or a Jewish city. Their worldview shaped by two different things. For the Jews, the covenant with God.

The worldview for the Greeks is philosophy, it's Plato, it's Aristotle, it's the ability to debate and reason. Their daily life centered around the temple and the Torah for the Jews. For the Greeks, it was the marketplace, the theater, the gymnasium.

Their language, completely different. Jews grew up speaking Hebrew or Aramaic. The Greeks, they grew up speaking Greek.

Their worship, Yahweh and Jehovah. Versus Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite. Their life influence, the Torah and the prophets versus art and drama and athletics and debate about philosophy. Two completely different worlds.

Saul grows up in both and he's great at both. So when Saul gets to Jerusalem and they say, you can do your thing. Immediately, he goes and finds people that grew up like him because he's an expert in all things Jewish history, which he's now discovered how they missed the Messiah in their writings. He's gone back and found Jesus in the Torah, and Jewish scholars had missed him completely.

He went back and found Jesus in the prophets, and the Jewish scholars had missed him completely. And he takes that, connects the dots with the Jews, but also speaks the language and the life and the culture of Christ. all of the other Greeks that are there that have now become Jews.

And so he's like the perfect guy for them. And so when he says he debated Hellenistic Jews, it really means he engaged with them in the way they most like to engage about things that were important in their life. Let's debate about it. Let's have a back and forth. Let's see if we can't figure out together what life is really about.

And they fed on it. And so did Saul. So when we read Acts 29, at least the first part, it's sunshine and rainbows. However, I don't know if you noticed, I stopped at the comma. After the comma, it gets a little more serious.

Let me read the whole thing to you. He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews, but they tried to kill him. Not again, right?

Which is the same thing. What happens? What happens when a guy shows up and disproves all of your logical arguments, and then even some of your illogical arguments with reason and philosophy and all of this history?

What happens when you can no longer argue with the guy who keeps proving you wrong? Kill him. That's it.

It's like, what else are we going to do with you? Because every time you open your mouth and I open my mouth, I look stupid. And I'm tired of you making me look stupid. And you didn't just make me look stupid, you made my granddaddy look stupid. And his granddaddy look stupid.

And now you made all of us look stupid. We like to debate when we can win sometimes, but we keep losing to you. So we'll kill you. So what is the result?

You guessed it. Verse 30. When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. What's Tarsus and Saul have in common again? It's his home.

They said, bro, go home. Go home. Damascus, they tried to kill you.

You came here, the hub of Christianity, right? They didn't call it Christians at the time, but the hub of the way, the hub of Jewish people. You've done made everybody mad here too.

Go home. Maybe they can put up with the way. Go home. So they take him to Caesarea and they send him home. We don't hear from Saul for years after that verse, years.

Somewhere between six and ten years go by before we hear anything out of Saul again. He gets sent home, and it feels like when we're reading Dr. Luke, the historian's account, it feels like Saul got benched. We gave you a shot. Barnabas spoke up for you. It just created a hornet's nest here in Jerusalem.

Go home. So he does. So from there, to pick back up in the story of Saul, we have to jump two chapters in the book of Acts.

Now, the two chapters we're jumping, very significant things happen, and some of them will even pull back into the narrative in a few weeks from now, but they don't directly, at least at the moment, have anything to do with Saul, though Saul's going to make it his business pretty soon. So let's pick up where we find him. Again, Acts chapter 11, verse 19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, spreading the word only among the Jews. We're going to stop right there for a second. So now we have picked back up with an old throwback narrative that says, hey, back when, Luke is telling us what the cause of what's about to, he's about to unfold for us.

He says, back when Stephen was killed, If you remember, Saul oversaw the execution of Stephen. Stephen was a Christian, argued in front of a bunch of religious leaders, basically spouted his mouth off about Jesus, and they were like, oh, you're dead. And he did not escape.

They stoned him right there. That was it. He stopped breathing. He was absolutely dead.

And Saul oversaw the whole thing. He stood there and watched it, gave authority for the people to do it. Once that happened, people spread out all over the place, which is why Saul said, I need to go to Damascus in the first place.

Because some of the ragamuffins I'm trying to round up here have escaped to another city. They're like, yeah, go get them. And so that's why that whole thing happened.

So now Luke is going back and saying, just reminding everybody, this is how all of these followers of Jesus got to these other cities and countries. It's because of the persecution that happened that forced them to run for their lives. So we'll pick up again in verse 19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, spreading the word. only among Jews. They'd go into a place, they'd find a Jewish community, they would tell them, we found the Messiah our people have been looking for for thousands of years.

In the Torah, they started showing them, this is where Jesus shows up. Genesis 3.15, it's the first time we see any messianic prophecy. It's beautiful. You want to go read it?

Go read it at first glance. It has nothing to do with Jesus. We unpack it, it's like, oh, that has everything to do with Jesus. So they start showing them all these things, only to Jews, right? Verse 20. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.

The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. And so most of the guys, when they were spread out because of the persecution, went to other Jewish communities, told them about Jesus, connected the dots from the Hebrew Torah into the modern-day understanding of who Jesus was as the Messiah. Some guys, though, from Cyprus and Cyrene, which also happens to be where Barnabas is from, they decided this is too good to keep to ourselves. Why would we only tell Jewish people? So they started telling all the Greek people that had no connection to Judaism whatsoever, never heard of Yahweh, never heard the name Moses, Abraham who?

David and Goliath? Never heard of them. None of that was in any of their mind. They had no Jewish history, no Jewish heritage, no Jewish interest.

If anything, the people that they were talking to thought that the Jews were atheists. Most people back then thought Jews were atheists because there was reports that when people had gone into their temple, there was no image of a God there. And so they thought they just prayed to no one. And so when they thought through the lens of Jews and Hebrew heritage, zero interest, zero interest.

But these scattered men and women, It's spread out because of persecution. They're like, why would we keep the good news about a savior for the world only? people who had Jewish line and lineage, why would we not share this with everyone? And they did.

Luke, the historian records, the result of that is that tons of people were added to the number of those who followed Jesus. Now, the problem with this, right, is things start growing, things start getting bigger. All of a sudden, people are telling non-Jews they have no understanding of the Jewish heritage and of covenant and of Yahweh and Jehovah. The problem is, when this takes place, it creates some trouble.

It creates growth that maybe they weren't ready for. Let's look at what happens in Acts 11, the very next verse, 22. News of this reached... the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

That makes sense. Makes sense. I'll tell you why.

When he arrived and saw the grace of God, what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. So now the norm, right, the MO, the normal pattern for the...

religious leaders back in Jerusalem was that if something new happened, which it did in Acts 8 and 9, something kind of strange started happening away from Jerusalem, they would send trusted leaders to investigate in these other cities. They sent John and Peter, which were two really good friends of Jesus in the earlier chapters. Something took place and like, hey, go check this out.

This seems strange. It's not quite what's happening in Jerusalem, but it still has this Jesus name attached to it, go investigate it. Same thing happening here. They start hearing about this church that's given birth to that's not just Jews converting to the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. It's people who are not Jewish at all.

They're just straight Greeks going to become followers of Jesus. And so they say, look, the people that are doing this are from your place, Barnabas. You go check it out. Barnabas gets there, and he's like, this is incredible.

This is so good. And Luke describes it as, for the second time, this movement takes place, and the result is, Many people are added to the number of Jesus followers. Now, this creates that problem, though.

Now they've confirmed this growth is legit. Now they've confirmed that it's taking place. Antioch is pretty strategic.

At the time, it was the capital of Syria. And Antioch, in the Roman Empire at the time, was the third largest city in the entire empire. And so it wasn't just like this podunk town where some kind of crazy Jesus movement's happening.

It was in like a hub that was enormous for the entire Middle Eastern area. And so when they started looking at this church here, there was a lot of questions that they had for Barnabas and for the other Christians that were there about how do we catch all of them up? Not just the reality that Jesus was the Son of God, died on the cross and resurrected from the dead.

But how do we get them to understand the journey of the Jewish people through creating, even the idea of creating a people and the promise of God through generations? How do we catch people up and teach them all of the history and the lineage that's so important to understand to really have a good grasp of just how good Jesus is? How do we teach people and bring them up to speed so they might have a really good knowledge base? about how God has moved not just in their lifetime, but for centuries before their lifetimes even began. How do they do that?

And how do they do that more so with people who don't even speak some of the language they speak and their scriptures are written in? None of the Greeks read Hebrew, which is what the Old Testament was written in. There are some Aramaic pieces in the Old Testament as well, in Daniel and Jeremiah and one other book. But mostly it was Hebrew. They're not going to read that.

How do you bridge that gap? Or are we comfortable just saying, ah, they'll figure it out, the resurrection, and let's just see how it goes. No, no, they needed someone who could connect the story of Israel to a brand new faith that included not just a singular people. called the Jews, but to the entire world, which for them at the time was the Roman Empire. Barnabas knew this would require someone who understood both the Jewish and Gentile worlds.

And so the very next verse says this, then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. This is somewhere between six and 10 years after they sent him home. Barnabas remembers Saul, and he goes and gets him for the Antioch mission. Barnabas knew Saul was incredibly rare, that he was the Jewish scholar of their time. But he also had a Roman passport because he didn't grow up in a Hebrew city.

He grew up in Tarsus, a Greek city, which meant he was a Roman citizen, which meant he could go anywhere he wanted to in the entire Roman Empire under protection. of Rome. He also knew that he had a Greek upbringing and he spoke Greek while also being fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic.

And not only was he fluent in all three languages, he loved to debate. He loved to chase down the truth. And more than that, he loved to teach people truth. So he wasn't trying to convert Jews to understand Jesus. He was now teaching new Jesus converts all about the history of the Jewish people and the Jewish God.

And Saul found his sweet spot. And the church exploded. It's the first time that we begin to see the need for a really big churchy word, Christian theology.

The understanding and the idea of what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus, more than, I believe he resurrected from the dead. But what does that mean, and what is that for, and what is sin, and why is sin a thing, and how did it come to be, and why do we struggle with it, and what's the history of it? And how have we tried in the past to break free from it?

How have we failed? Where have we succeeded? How did he shape this idea of a morality? All of those things, Saul was an expert at. All of those things, those Greeks were hungry to find the actual answers for.

Teach us, tell us. Tell us why it took so many generations to find a savior. Tell us why God's been waiting for...

what you keep calling the fullness of time. Tell us how. The thing with Saul is he never had a question he didn't have an answer to.

So again, he thrived. Verse 26, when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church.

and taught great numbers of people. Here's the cool part. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Now, when we look at this historically, it's not a proud moment. It's not actually a name that anyone who was in that movement would have appreciated.

They already had a name for themselves. They were people of the way. or followers of Jesus, or disciples of Jesus.

The term Christians becomes a nickname from the people who were not Christians when they talk about the Christians. Christians translates to this in their language, Messiah people. That's the way the community started to see them, as Messiah people. Now, the name, as it turns out, It stuck.

In fact, we sit in that name today. Though I'm pretty sure that most people outside of the church, when they think of the term Christian, they probably actually don't think Messiah people. They probably think something a little more negative. But maybe we could change that.

by understanding with clarity why we should know this part of the church story. It's simple. It's Barnabas.

It's the son of encouragement. It's the realization of what happens when we become encouragers. Because the truth is, encouragement is a life changer. Encouragement is a life changer. Where would Saul be had Barnabas not said, I'll take you to the leaders?

Where would Saul be if Barnabas doesn't think, I know a guy that would be perfect for this job. Let me go to his hometown and find him. Where would Saul be?

Now, if you're new to Bible study, and this isn't a story that's even remotely familiar to you, you might even be still thinking in this moment, okay, that's cool. So Saul had two people try to, two cities try to kill him, and then he helped a city called Antioch. No, no, Saul did a lot more than that.

We're going to talk about that in the next few weeks. We're just getting started. Saul ends up not just changing his life because of Barnabas. Saul doesn't just change the church at Antioch because of Barnabas.

Saul ends up changing the world because of Barnabas. So when I say encouragement is a life changer, I really do mean legitimate encouragement can be a life changer. And it might not even be just the life you're encouraging, advocating for, risking for, acting on behalf of.

It might not just be their life that you're changing. But every life that that individual then goes to encourage and change themselves starts with one. And in this story, it starts with a guy named Barnabas. But that wasn't actually his real name.

That's what he was known for, a life changer, a life launcher, a son of encouragement. And I think everyone would probably say, I want one of those. Like, can I get a Barnabas? Like 1-800-RENT-A-BARN, you know what I'm saying?

Can I get anybody? Can I get one of those? Where do I sign up for a Barnabas? I mean, I'm telling you, I know what it's like to have people in my life that step in and advocate, that take action, don't just say nice things to me, but actually step in and take risks.

Go back to one of my earliest moments of someone just jumping in, it was my fourth grade teacher. Her name was Miss Aldridge, and I know I've told this story before, but she was a huge part of who I've become because of what she, for some reason, saw in me. I remember, she didn't just say nice things, though. She made action to make sure myself and my brother were okay. It was Christmas time.

My dad didn't have anyone to watch. He didn't have enough vacation time, and it was just him. And so she stepped in and was like, hey, I'll take the boys over Christmas break while you work.

And so every morning at 6 a.m., my dad dropped us off at my fourth grade teacher's house. She was in her bathrobe and rollers and stuff at the time. And I was like, who are you?

You know, every time I saw her at school, she had a string of pearls and a dress on. She was as sweet as lady. She stepped into my life. There's a guy that's here just about every Sunday.

I haven't seen him this morning. Usually he sits right back there. His name's John Greer. Johnny was one of the first pastors that ever took time with me. He was a music pastor at a church I grew up in in East Point.

And he spent time with me as an 11, 12, 13-year-old. When I first started learning how to play the guitar and was singing a little bit, I mean, to have the minister of music who, honestly, if you've never met Johnny, he knows the hymn book like the back of his hand. We used to play a game on Sunday nights when we would go, because we went to church like every freaking day of the week.

It's not like. First we were Sunday night, Sunday morning, Wednesday night, and then every once in a while, Tuesdays or Mondays. So we were there. On Sunday nights, we had this thing where he would lead the hymns, and he had this great piano player.

His name was Tim. And he would just open it up, and you could just say any number in the hymnal at all. And there was like 600 hymns in there, any number. And he would just look at Tim.

He'd start playing it. He would lead it. He was just incredibly good. So when it came to music, right, and music became a huge part of my life. He was one of the first people to invest in me and to encourage me.

When I went to my first church, or I guess it was my second church in Peachtree City, we started, I was at a church in McDonough for a few years. We moved over here, the first church I was spending time in Peachtree City, the very first person to come and talk to me the day, my very first day, was Johnny Greer. To make sure that everything was good and everything was moving and positive, like he was there.

And he invested in me for... Six, seven years there. We planted a foundation and we got things going.

He showed up and he just said, hey, I want to help. And I was like, all right, Johnny, what you want to do? And he looked at me and he said, anything that doesn't put me in front of people and on the stage. But I was like, Johnny, but you'll be so good.

He's like, nah, I want to do that. I want to help you in some other way. And so he loaded in with us for years.

at the high school. For sure, the most seasoned guy there, right? If you ask him, he's the most seasoned guy there, pushing carts, doing the best he could to unload as much as he could, as fast as he could, which wasn't fast. Matt, it doesn't just have to be someone that's older than you. About nine years ago, eight and a half, nine years ago, I sat in a room with a bunch of people and was telling them I just felt like God wanted us to do this thing in Noonan.

A guy named Brady Lewis, who's our creative arts pastor, sits back there in the back. He's making sure all of you online get to see my gorgeous face. He just panned away for sure. Brady Lewis stood up in front of a bunch of people and said, hey, we want to help, me and Brenton, we want to be a part of it. And I remember saying, Brady, I don't have any style.

Like, we're not doing like that. Like, there's no pay, you know? He's like, I don't care.

I'm in. I want to help make this happen. There's so many. I mean, so many people, just enormous amount. I mean, there's a huge list.

And so I stand in front of you as someone who's been the recipient and still honestly the ongoing recipient of people who continue not to say nice things to me, but to risk and advocate and take action on my behalf in enormous ways. And so I stand in front of you with an abundance of encouragement riches that honestly, I promise you I don't deserve. And so when I hear some of you say, I wish I had an encourager, I don't know a lot about what that's like.

But that doesn't mean it's not a problem to be solved. So I've got a theory. I got a theory. The truth is, you can't control your encourager, but you can control your encouragement. Hear me.

This is my theory. I bet if every single one of you decided to become an encourager, an advocate, someone who would risk, someone who would take action on behalf of someone else, not simply say nice things in their direction, but again, to advocate, to risk, to take action on behalf of someone else's good. If every single one of you became an encourager, my bet is every single one of you would have an encourager. The reason we lack encouragers in our life is because there's not enough of us being encouragers. So the responsibility doesn't start with what I want someone else to do for me.

The responsibility starts with, this is what I ought to be for someone else. And there's no excuse. We can see it. We can read it. It's clear.

Encouragement is the way that God launches people. He's telling us right now. You read it with your own eyes on the screen. It's clear as day.

Encouragement is life-changing. Who are you encouraging? Or are you using the fact that no one's encouraging you as an excuse for why you don't do it for somebody else? This is what I know and believe. God will bring the people to your life to accomplish what God needs you to accomplish.

I guarantee it. But don't block it by saying, I've got prereqs on doing what you want me to do, God, and you need to do this first before I do that. I do what you want me to do.

Don't do that. That's stupid. That is dumb.

It's foolish. It doesn't make any sense. We can't bargain with God about his desires for us.

We can't say it'd be nice if you knew what you were talking about, but you're missing something. We can't say that. If we have the ability to say that and him change his mind, he then loses the definition of being God, which I already knew everything already. So you can't do that. We have a responsibility day in and day out to be the people we're supposed to be, whether someone else shows up for us or not.

And I know that's easier for me to say as someone who's had a lot of people show up for me. I know, but don't let that cloud the decision that you have to act on the truth. Be that somebody or someone else. Encouragement isn't passive, it's strategic. It's strategic because it's not going to be random.

Encouragement isn't passive, it's decisive. And it's decisive because others probably will hesitate. Others might have their own reservations.

Encouragement isn't passive because it's active. It's more than simple words. It's action. Maybe you would pray this week a very simple prayer, five words and a comma. God, make me an encourager.

God, would you make me, and if you do that... The truth is, you will be a part of someone else's God, make me prayer. That you will show up at just the right time, and they won't actually see you as an encouragement. They will see you as an answer to prayer.

And I'm not sure it gets any better than that. So church, this week. Everybody, be an encouragement, not with your words, but with your actions. Advocate, risk, act.

Transcript for:Power of Encouragement

Transcript for:
Power of Encouragement