The Makings of an Encourager

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Transcript:

How many of you have a ministry? have a ministry. And I’m looking for a show of hands.

You should all have one. A ministry. And I’m going to ask you this, and I’m not looking necessarily for you to answer right now.

It’s more for you to think about if you don’t know what the answer is. What is your ministry? What is your ministry?

I grew up in a church where the pastor said all the time and would ask people this when they wanted to join the church. What’s your small group and what’s your ministry? Now, our church is a size.

What’s your small group? Well, we pretty much can be each other’s small group, and that’s okay. If not, you’ve got Sunday school.

You’ve got the discipleship training class. You pretty well know what your small group is, I’m sure. Most people are involved in some area of the church that way.

But what’s your ministry? And I’m not necessarily talking about your paid full-time ministry. I have a ministry here as the pastor, but I would have a ministry even if I wasn’t the pastor.

but Ken has a ministry. He’s the music minister. What’s your ministry?

It may be a paid position. It may not be. My dad, I think I’ve mentioned this to some of you before, my dad has been in banking since he graduated high school back in the 70s.

And he used to go to Falls Creek as a teenager and really felt like God was calling him into ministry. And he surrendered to ministry at one point, but never could figure out what it was. He knew God wasn’t calling him overseas.

He knew God wasn’t calling him to be a pastor, knew God wasn’t calling him to be a youth pastor. And he said in those days, that’s about all there was, missionary, pastor, youth pastor. He knew God wasn’t calling him into any of those things.

And so he thought, well, maybe I just heard God wrong. And he told me it took him decades to figure out that what he was doing in the business world was ministry. The job he got up and went to every day was ministry.

So what’s your ministry? It might be your job. It might be representing Christ in your family.

It may be that you teach Sunday school here. It may be that you pray, you know, you don’t teach a class or lead a group, but you pray every day for the people of this church. It may be that you encourage people and you send cards.

I knew a lady once who had some health problems and really couldn’t get out and do a whole lot, but boy, she bought cards by the truckload and sent them to people anytime she thought there was a need. So my question to you is, what is your ministry? What are you doing to serve others and reach others in the name of Jesus?

Now, if you don’t have one or don’t think you have one, talk to me. We can fix that. And I’m not talking about putting you to work.

I’m talking about what is God calling you to do? But whatever ministry you are in, if you’ve got one in mind, you think, okay, I teach a Sunday school class or I lead the ladies group or, you know, whatever it is. I go read to school children.

Whatever your ministry is. I was in a meeting this week with Brother Tim Green and heard several people speaking. And one phrase out of this whole training, this whole series of meetings, sort of reached out and slapped me in the face.

And by the way, I’m not sure how much this has to do with the message tonight, but it was too good not to share with you. One thing out of the whole day of meetings just really reached out and slapped me in the face, and that’s when somebody said, this could be your greatest ministry. This could, and he was talking about something specific, but I thought this applies anywhere.

He wasn’t even talking about pastoring, and I thought, I need to keep that in mind, pastoring this church. This could, where you are right now, this could be your greatest ministry. And he said, act that way, and your church will be better for it.

Now, he was talking about a specific ministry among churches, but I thought that applies to me as a pastor. That applies to any role I’ve ever had in ministry, paid or unpaid. That applies to all of us.

where has God put you right now? What group of people has He put you serving? And you could be thinking, it’s human nature to think, well, you know, if I just had a bigger group, if I just had a bigger Sunday school class, if we just had a bigger church, if we just had this, if I could go do that someday, that’ll really be ministry, and we just kind of bide our time until someday.

But the point He made was, where you are right now, this could be your greatest ministry. And it sort of got me to thinking, you know, if we did everything we do for the Lord from the perspective that He could have created us specifically for this time, for this place, for this reason, this could be the whole reason that we exist on His earth, how would it change the way we serve Him, and how would it change the effort that we put into it? And so I just, before we even get into the message, and I may shorten the message tonight because I talk so much about that, I thought that’s too good not to share with you.

That was too important a thought not to share with you. Think about what your ministry is. Whether you’re a pastor in a church, whether you’re playing music for people, whether you’re taking care of a neighbor, whatever your ministry is, whether you think it’s big or whether you think it’s little, whether you think it’s important or not, consider that it may be your greatest ministry.

It may be what God puts you here for. It may be the most important thing you ever do in your life. Treat it like that and see what God can do in it.

All right, we’re going to be in Acts chapter 11 tonight. Acts chapter 11. I did mark Acts chapter 11, and then I moved it to Galatians, because that’s where we’re going to start in discipleship training next week, or next time.

Acts chapter 11. This morning, if your quarterly or if your Sunday school materials followed the same as what was in our class, you read a little bit about Barnabas. Part of the lesson this morning was about Barnabas.

And it got me to thinking today about Barnabas and the ministry that he is most known for. We talked this morning about him selling property and giving that money to the church. And we talked about that in contrast to Ananias and Sapphira, who sold property and gave it to the church, but lied and tried to make it seem like they gave the full amount of the property.

Barnabas, we know a few things about him from the Bible. But the thing he’s really known for is being an encouragement, being a supporter. He was a helper to the Apostle Paul.

When he went out on his travels, his earliest missionary journeys were with Barnabas. Now, they eventually had a falling out. They were not enemies by any means, but they eventually realized we would be better working separately, and Paul teamed up with Silas.

But for a number of years, Barnabas really was a help and a support for the Apostle Paul. When Paul was first saved, when Paul first trusted Christ and left Damascus because he was lowered over the city walls in a basket to save his life and went to Jerusalem, the leaders of the church at Jerusalem were scared to death of him. Rightfully so.

I mean, the man was a terrorist. He hated Christians. So they were afraid to meet with him until Barnabas stepped in and said, you know, maybe we ought to listen to this guy. Maybe he’s telling the truth and got them to, he encouraged them to listen to Paul.

He encouraged Paul in his preaching in the beginning of his ministry. One thing that we read today in Acts chapter 4 talks about his, Joseph is his first name, but we know him as Barnabas. That was his surname, and it means son of consolation.

And so I’m guessing it probably wasn’t a family name. It was probably a nickname that was given to him because of his disposition, because of his character, the way we see him operating throughout the book of Acts. We know some things about Barnabas, but the thing that seems to stick out and differentiate, seems to point to him as being unique from so many others, is that he really had the ministry of being an encourager.

And folks, that is a ministry. No, you’ll never get a title from it. You probably won’t get paid for it.

But it is a needed ministry. Because is this world not just a depressing place sometimes? Does this world not just beat you down as soon as look at you?

And especially as a Christian, you live in a hostile world. I mean, we like to surround ourselves with creature comforts and think everything’s wonderful, this is home. This is not home.

We are trudging through hostile territory. And sometimes we forget that until the world smacks us around a little bit. And then we remember just how tough it can be to be a Christian.

And I don’t mean a Christian in name only. I mean a dedicated, faithful Christian. It can be difficult.

And sometimes we need encouragement, and we need to encourage each other. Because one of the great things about being together as members of a church is that we’re probably not all going to be at rock bottom at the same point, at the same time. We’re probably not all going to be as low as we can go at the same time.

Whenever some of us are low and in need of encouragement, there should be somebody there to step in and encourage us. Sort of like with my wife and me. We don’t both get.

. . You know how sometimes when you’re dealing with parenting decisions or money or something else that’s stressful, one of you will just sort of flip out and.

. . We don’t do that at the same time, thank God, because it wouldn’t work.

And so when one of us gets down and depressed or starts flipping out about the stress, The other one is there to encourage and pull the other one back to reality, and we trade off. Same thing in a church. We’re there to encourage each other and help each other.

Encouragement really is a ministry. It’s a needed ministry. Barnabas, his name meant son of consolation.

He was an encourager. And we’re going to look at Acts chapter 11, starting in verse 19, see a few things that he did to be an encouragement and what we can learn from it as we try to encourage others as we’re supposed to do. It says in verse 19, Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phinus and Cyprus and Antioch, preaching the word to none but the Jews only.

And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. So, as the believers were scattered out of Jerusalem to begin with, that really was part of God’s plan. He told them, go to the uttermost parts of the world and share the gospel.

And they said, no thanks, we’ll stay here, put at Jerusalem, where we’re, you know, strength in numbers and we’re comfortable. We’ll just stay here. And God said, I’m going to get you out of, I mean, this is not a direct quote from Scripture, but we can read between the lines and see how God worked in history.

And God basically said, I’m going to get you out of Jerusalem one way or the other. You’re either going to go voluntarily or I’m going to scatter you. Same thing, just like the Tower of Babel.

God said, go populate the earth. They said, no, we’ll stay here. So he scattered them.

Well, God scattered the church at Jerusalem through persecution. And so some of them went as far away as Cyprus and what’s now Syria and Turkey, but they were preaching only to the Jews. They were trying to convert only the Jews.

And then it says, and then a little later on, some of these people were from Cyprus and Cyrene, and when they came to these areas, they started preaching to the Greeks also. And that word Greeks doesn’t necessarily mean only people from Greece. A lot of times it can be used for anybody who’s a non-Jew.

Like when the Bible says there’s neither male nor female, there’s neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, for you’re all one in Christ Jesus. It’s basically dividing the world between Jew and Gentile, and Greek is a euphemism for all the Gentiles. So it took a while before they even started presenting the gospel to the Gentiles, to the non-Jews.

It says, And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord. Fancy how that happened. You know, there was this idea that they’re supposed to preach salvation to the ends of the world, to all, the book of Mark says, preach the gospel to every creature, to everyone, not just the Jews.

And yet there was some hesitation, oh no, we don’t want to deal with the Gentiles, with the barbarians. And yet they began to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and lo and behold, God gets a hold of some Gentiles, and they begin to turn to the Lord. And that’s something only God could have orchestrated.

Then the tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem, and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch. Now when the church at Jerusalem realizes that some of their members have been scattered, and their church has been scattered, and where they’re going, they’re starting to preach the gospel, and they’re preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, they said, wait a minute, we need to go check this out. We need to go make sure that this is all on the up and up.

We need to make sure that they’re not messing up the message, that they’re not. . .

We just need to make sure that this really is legitimate, what’s going on. And so they send Barnabas, and they said, We want you to go to Antioch, and we want you to scope things out in Antioch. Who, when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.

And this sort of makes me think of, you know, at various times, you know, church plants will be started. and I’ve seen some in Chicago and some in Memphis, and they don’t look like our traditional Baptist church, and they don’t look necessarily like something I would be comfortable in, even at my relatively young age, because I’ve grown up in more traditional Baptist churches. I mean, they might meet in a theater, and they might have loud, pounding music, and they might have flashing lights, and they might have a preacher who wears a Hawaiian shirt, And, you know, those things are fine, I guess.

That’s not really my comfort zone, but, you know, they’re preaching the gospel. And sometimes we as traditional Baptists will look at that and say, I’m not sure about that. But I’ve known people who’ve gone on mission trips and have worked with those people and have checked the churches out, some of the ones I’m thinking of specifically, and have come back and said they are rock solid in what they’re teaching, and good things are happening there, and God is saving people, And the gospel is being proclaimed.

And I look at that and I think, you know, it doesn’t look like my church, but thank God he’s saving people. Thank God the gospel is being preached. And so I kind of look at the church at Jerusalem and think they might have been cranky old Baptists like me.

That church up at Antioch, it doesn’t function quite like we do. And so they sent Barnabas, and Barnabas just ate it up. He said, hey, the gospel is being preached here, and people are being saved.

They’re being radically transformed. And he got excited about it because he saw the grace of God. He saw this isn’t just the Gentiles coming into our church and changing things.

He said God’s grace is evident. God’s grace has offered forgiveness. It’s changing people’s lives.

It’s setting them on fire with a passion for God. And he was glad. And he exhorted them all.

He encouraged them. That word exhort, we don’t use that anymore very much. But it means to encourage and it means to instruct.

and there are all these different flavors of meaning that go with the word exhort. But basically to come in and say, you’re doing a great job. Let me give you some tips on how you can do even better.

And so he came in and he encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. The basis of his encouragement, what everything that he encouraged them to do centered around, was you need to hold fast to God. Don’t waver.

Don’t go after this Christianity thing half-heartedly. you need to cleave unto the Lord. You need to grab on and not let go.

For he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, and much people was added unto the Lord. Now, I don’t understand why the grammar is structured that way in 17th century English. Much people was added to the Lord.

It sounds wrong to my ear. But the bottom line is he went in and he encouraged them where God was already doing an incredible work. He encouraged them to stand strong.

He encouraged them to hold fast in spite of opposition. And God continued to move, and the church grew, and the kingdom grew as people were saved. Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to seek Saul.

And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. He went and found Saul, the apostle Paul, and brought him back and said, you need to see what’s going on at Antioch as well. You need to be a part of this.

And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught much people, and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. Now, just a few things that I’m going to share with you real briefly, and then we’ll get out of here. Some things that this can teach us, that Barnabas can teach us about what it means to really encourage somebody as a ministry, as a way of life.

First of all, Barnabas recognized God’s work in others and was glad for it. Sometimes we like to look at what God is doing in somebody else’s life and what somebody else is doing for the Lord. And I don’t know if you have this problem or if it’s just me, but being the cranky old Baptist preacher that I am, I like to look at what somebody else is doing and say, well, I wouldn’t do it quite like that.

I like to criticize a little bit, even if I don’t verbalize it. I like to, in my mind, you know, there was something I said when I was teaching English, which was that I carried a red pen in my mind. And I was constantly correcting things as I was hearing it.

And sometimes I carry that red pen with me into ministry, and I look at what some other church is doing, what some other preacher is doing. I wouldn’t do it like that. Check it off with the red pen in my mind.

They’re doing it wrong. You know what? God was at work.

And I’m not talking about, oh, we just, you know, whatever works, and whatever people want to do, and we don’t care what they’re teaching, and we don’t care what they’re doing. I’m talking about stuff that’s faithful to God’s Word in their teaching and in their practice. look at it and say, it’s not exactly what I would do, but hey, God is at work here.

God is at work in your life, and I’m glad for that. And sometimes I think in order to encourage other people, I’ve got to get over my critical spirit. Now, none of y’all are cursed with that, are you?

No, y’all don’t do that. Y’all are better than that. There’s also sometimes I think a little bit of jealousy.

Look at what God’s doing in their life. Look at what God’s doing in their church, in their Sunday school class. I wish he was doing that for me.

I wish I had 400 people here this morning. Well, I really do, but I’m not going to sit and bash somebody else because they had 400. I didn’t.

I think that’s human nature sometimes. Barnabas didn’t criticize them. He wasn’t jealous that, hey, God’s moving in their midst and look at what just happened to us at Jerusalem.

Barnabas recognized that God was at work in their lives and in the midst of them in their church, and he was glad for it. For us to encourage other people, we’ve got to get over sometimes our critical spirit and our jealousy of why are good things happening in their work with God and not in mine. And we ignore the fact that God’s always at work in our lives.

We aren’t seeing the results we want to see. We’ve got to get past the critical spirit and the jealousy and look for where God is at work and be glad for what God is doing in the lives of our brothers and sisters. here in this church, outside this church, wherever we see God at work.

And take, for example, a new believer. Sometimes it can be hard for us to accept a new believer because they may still be a little rougher on the edges. And I’ve seen this where people in church have said, well, he ought to act like this.

Well, yeah, he ought to, but God’s working on him. He’s working. We’re working together.

But do you see where he was just three months ago and where he is now? and praise God that God has already begun to soften his heart and change him from the inside out. And yeah, he’s not perfect.

Neither are you and neither am I. But we need to look for where God is at work in other people’s lives and rejoice in it and rejoice in it with them and encourage them. Because sometimes we don’t see it when God is at work in our own lives.

Sometimes other people can see it. And we need to encourage them to, hey, keep it up. God is doing something incredible in you.

God is doing something incredible in your church, in your Sunday school class, in your own personal life. We need to look for where God is at work and rejoice with each other in that and be glad in it. So Barnabas recognized God’s work in others in the church in Antioch and he was glad for it.

Second of all, Barnabas comforted and rallied his fellow believers. It says he exhorted them all. You know, it sounds like everything was great here.

The gospel was going forward. People were being saved. But that is not without challenges.

For a church to grow that fast, and for everybody to be scattered. Now, think about this. A lot of the people who were doing the spreading of the gospel themselves were running for their lives.

And wherever they happened to land, they shared the gospel. And yeah, they’ve shared the gospel, but they’re still in danger of their lives. And now all these new converts are in danger of their lives as well.

Because the people around them, the culture, the government, the Jews, the Romans, It didn’t matter that people didn’t want this Christianity in their neighborhoods. And so they were in danger. But Barnabas came in and he exhorted them.

And I told you, there are all these meanings that make the word exhort very powerful. What he did, it was an encouragement. It was a teaching.

It was a training. It was a pep talk. He did all of these things for the believers there at Antioch.

And he encouraged them. And sometimes, as believers, we need somebody to come alongside of us and comfort us and give us a pat on the back, give us a hug when we need it, and to say, keep going. Sometimes we, you know what, not only sometimes do we need that, sometimes the person next to you in the pew might need that as well.

And it’s our job to take care, to encourage, exhort, to rally them and comfort them. Just a step beyond this, Barnabas spurred believers on to follow Christ wholeheartedly. When he exhorted them, it was for the idea that with purpose of heart, they would cleave unto the Lord.

He said, okay, this is not just a pep talk, but I want to see you and I want to invest in you to the point where you grow to serve the Lord wholeheartedly. Where your entire life is oriented around the Lord and His work. And that’s part of our role together.

You know, as we sort of start to drift off and do our own thing, it’s easy to lose sight of what our mission really is as we trudge through this hostile territory. That when we come together and we serve together, we remind each other just what we really are doing here. You know, when you build a fire and you’ve got the fire going and you start separating those logs apart from each other.

And it’s not too long before the fire dies out. But you can take an ember that’s starting to die out and you can put it with the other logs and soon it’ll catch fire. The same goes for us.

We’re here to come together and encourage each other and say, you know what we’re here for. You know what we’re here to do. And to encourage one another, not just so we can feel better, but so that we serve Christ wholeheartedly.

And then finally tonight, Barnabas encouraged by pointing non-believers to Christ by his example. It says in verse 24, he was a good man, he was full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, and much people was added to the Lord. People looked at him and they just knew.

By the way he lived, by the way he spoke, by the way he carried himself, they knew that this was a man who loved the Lord. This was not some televangelist. I know they didn’t have that back then. But, you know, we would look at people today and say, okay, is he real or is he a snake oil salesman?

Sometimes I get questioned about that. Not about me, that sounds bad. Sometimes I get questioned.

Sometimes people will say, hey, I heard this guy on TV. Is he good or is he not? Sometimes there’s some question.

Is this guy the real deal? People looked at Barnabas and they just knew by the way he lived. By the way he interacted with others, they knew that he was.

They knew that they could tell there was something different about him. He was full of the Holy Ghost. He was full of faith. And in part, at least because of this, much people was added unto the Lord.

Many people were saved. They were added to the church. They were added to the kingdom.

Now, were they saved and added to the kingdom because of Barnabas? Maybe. I mean, we know that God drilled.

God added them to the church. God saved them. Barnabas didn’t do any of that.

But there’s no question God used in some of their cases, Barnabas’ example, to get people’s attention. That they would look at him and say, there’s something different about him. And that his life, the way he lived, that the scriptures would speak so highly of him, the way he lived gave him an opportunity to encourage people and point them to Jesus Christ. And if we’ll encourage people, all of this has been up to now about encouraging one another in the church.

But folks, we don’t have to just encourage other Christians. we can be an encourager in the spiritual lives of others around us. And we can encourage them and love them in the right direction.

That our example points them toward Jesus or away from Jesus. And it should be the first one. It should be that we love them and encourage them toward Jesus.

You know, when some of these things were going on a few years ago, the churches were burning Korans and protesting various things. And, you know, I’m not a fan of Islamic teaching. If I were, I wouldn’t be up here.

But something was said that really put it all in perspective for me. I heard a pastor say that everything we do will either drive people toward the cross of Christ or away from it. And I’m not saying that we compromise with all the other religions of the world, but stuff like that, you know, I think drove a lot of people further from the cross of Christ just because they were mad at the messengers.

We have the opportunity to live our lives. we have the responsibility that comes with being able to live our lives in such a way that we either drive people closer to the cross or further away. And Barnabas, through his encouragement, was somebody who pointed people close.

We have the same opportunity if we will use our lives and each day that we’re given as an opportunity and to love other people and to point us.

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