The sermon by Paul Carrington focuses on Barnabas, a key figure in the early Christian church depicted in Acts chapter 11. Although there are no recorded words of Barnabas, his actions speak volumes about his dedication to God and the church. Barnabas, known as the 'Son of Encouragement,' played a significant role in the spread of Christianity, especially through his work in Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians. Despite the initial Jewish-centric nature of the early church, Barnabas embraced the Gentiles, encouraging them to remain steadfast in their faith. His actions, such as selling his land for the church and supporting Saul (Paul) when others doubted him, exemplify his large-heartedness and dedication. Barnabas' efforts were instrumental in spreading the Gospel beyond Jewish communities, fulfilling the Great Commission. His partnership with Saul led to significant missionary work, and his mentorship of John Mark demonstrated his belief in restoration and encouragement. The sermon encourages believers to follow Barnabas' example by being sources of encouragement and asking others about their relationship with God, thereby becoming 'means of grace' in their communities.

Well, I'd ask if you could please open up your Bibles to the 11th chapter of the Book of Acts, Acts chapter 11. And we're going to continue in our series on keeping the heart. And we're going to be talking about a man by the name of Barnabas here this afternoon. Barnabas is one of the most prominent men in the first half of the book of Acts. But what's amazing is that we don't even have a single word recorded from what this man said.

There's not a quote, there's not an epistle or anything like that, but he's a man who really did keep his heart with God and worthy of studying. And so from the first time we meet him, we see some amazing things which we'll get into here. But he was a man who both loved the church as well as the mission of the church's master, Jesus Christ. And he wasn't there when the Lord uttered his parting words there in Acts chapter 1, but he heard about them and he took them to heart when Jesus said, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." And so today we're going to be talking about a man who knew both the burden and the privilege of following his master. And I'm going to read in verse 19 of chapter 11 of Acts down to 26.

Here's the word of the Lord. Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene who, when they came had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists preaching the Lord Jesus, and the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.

For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people, and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

Well, let's pray. Oh Lord, we do come before you here this afternoon, and Lord, we seek your face. We ask you, Lord, to glean what we can from your word, that you would speak to us, that you would encourage us, oh Lord, that we would take your word, Father, and hide it in our hearts. We've heard much today and we pray that we would be profited as we depart a little bit later on, Lord, that you would change our lives and draw us nearer to yourself. Lord, I pray for help and ask you to help me to communicate your word here.

It's so good, Lord, so good to have Bibles in our hands, Lord, and we just honor you, we glorify you in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Well, our text today really, really highlights one of the most exciting times in the days of the early church. If you think about it, for millennia, thousands of years, the Gentiles, they'd been chasing after meaning and purpose.

They'd climbed the highest mountain that human reasoning and philosophy could attain, and still they come up utterly bankrupt. And that's where we find ourselves, right here in Antioch. And even the church right up until this point was almost 100%. It was basically 100% Jewish. Jerusalem had already been filled with the message of the gospel and of course we all know what happened that this dialed up the persecution so that men had to flee out of Jerusalem, go to different parts and places of the Roman Empire.

And you know we saw Peter and John, they were both arrested. Stephen was stoned to death. And in the previous chapter, the whole chapter really of Chapter 10 is dedicated to this whole experience of Peter and meeting this man by the name of Cornelius. And then of course chapter 11 begins with him recounting this experience to the Jews who were basically in disbelief. How could you go into the house of a man who's uncircumcised and preach the gospel?

They were baffled by this. In a sense you had Romans 2 meeting Romans 1, if you want to look at it like that. But here we see God taking it upon himself to really go further, to roll back the thick darkness that had shrouded the Gentiles for all of these years. And in verse 20, we see this, that some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who when they had come to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus. And so here are these men, they come, they were scattered, and you can imagine just a couple of them took it upon themselves.

We know that no Gentiles have heard the gospel. Why don't we go and talk? It wasn't an organized thing necessarily. It wasn't a dictate coming from the church in Jerusalem, but just a handful of men decided to preach the gospel to Hellenists, to Greeks. That's what that means.

And so Barnabas still lives back in the church in Jerusalem. And if you know anything about Barnabas, we meet him in chapter 4. He was a man who he had a great ministry right from the very beginning. And what's awesome about this man here is that some men's names are given to them at birth, and then they grow into them. You see that all the way through the Old Testament.

But here was a man who was given a name in accordance with his character. In fact, it's the most prominent feature or overriding attribute of his character. And you can read about it in chapter four, where it says, and Josies, or Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles, which is translated, son of encouragement, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the Apostles feet. And so the first time we meet him, what is he doing? He's donating his family's estate to his new family.

He's this large-hearted man. You can see him with his assets. He's willing to give them away, but as we'll see he's even more importantly he's large-hearted not just with his assets but with with people. It's just the overflow of this man's heart. And we don't know a lot about how he was converted for sure, but it's likely that he might have been converted on the day of Pentecost, when the 3, 000 were brought into the church.

And perhaps he went back to Cyprus, he sold all his stuff, and then he moved to Jerusalem where he took up residence, and then he became an active member in that church, and of course a leader in that church. And you can remember even when we spoke last week of, or last time when I spoke of Onesiphorus and the cost of being a Christian in those days. He's living in a time where it was personally expensive to be a Christian. It was hazardous to your health even. But here you have a man in the midst of all the difficulty that the early church was going through, that is, he's called a son of encouragement.

What a title to have, to be called the son of encouragement. And you know if you're going to be attacked or arrested or put in a in a gulag, this is one of those brothers that you want there with you. In fact, the name Son of Encouragement, it actually comes from the Greek word Paraklesis, and if that rings a bell, Paraklete, or Heavenly Advocate, which is the name of the Holy Spirit, It means someone who's given to consolation, to exhortation, to comfort. Our English word is somebody who heartens others. It's somebody who makes strong other people.

You could look at Barnabas and you could call him, you could look at him as a tower of strength. That's kind of the way that he conducted himself in the early church. And if you were sick or if you were dejected, if you were on hard times, maybe you're new to the church or you're an outsider to the church, you would like this man. He was a man who took time and I think we have a few brothers and even sisters like that here in this church. Well, when we first meet him, he's giving money, but the next time we meet him, in Acts chapter 9, he's giving testimony.

Not of himself, but he's speaking about someone else. In fact, he's actually putting his reputation on the line for a man by the name of Saul. And everyone knows that the ninth chapter of Acts is the accounting of how Saul got converted on the road to Damascus. He started preaching there, and of course, You know, he ends up being persecuted. They let him down the wall in a basket at night time so he can escape for his life.

He gets back to Jerusalem. And of course, when he gets to Jerusalem, he's justifiably held in suspicion by all of the believers there. I mean, the last time they saw him, he was chasing down Christians, and now he's coming back. Maybe he's pretending to be one of us now to somehow entangle us again. And so imagine the difficulty of Saul.

Here he is being ostracized on the one side by the Jews, of course, and on the other side by these Christians who don't want anything to do with him. But in chapter 9, this man emerges again and it says this, but Barnabas took and brought him to the apostles and he declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. So he was with them at Jerusalem, coming in and going out. And there's a great lesson here if you think about it. We often hear about the means of grace and we talk about them often in this church, you know, things like Bible reading and prayer meeting and communion and all these things, but Have you ever thought of yourself as actually being a means of grace in the hands of God?

Have you thought of, I'm a means of grace for my brothers or for my sisters? And here he was acting in such a way for this future apostle. And so one of the things that we can think about as we're members in this church, maybe you're married and you could be a man of encouragement to your wife or vice versa, a woman of encouragement to your husband, or you could be that to your parents. Imagine a child being an encouragement to their parents or vice versa, a parent, instead of frustrating our children as we're warned against in Ephesians 6 to be a great encourager and all this spirit running through and coursing through the church, what a thing that would be. Well, in verse 21, it says this, And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

And you can imagine, if you will, the devil had done his best to stamp out what Christ had begun there in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2, but in doing so, all he had done was cause, if you will, if you think of it being a fire, he stamps on the fire to try to put it out, and all that happens is these sparks go into different parts and places of the Roman Empire, and then here they are. They spark up and cause their own fires. You put yourself in his position as the devil. What a thing it is that everything you do, God uses to advance his own cause. You try to put the Lord Jesus to death, and three days later, he rises again.

You redouble your efforts, you start to persecute, attack the people of God, and all it does is it causes the gospel to spread throughout the pagan Roman Empire. And so the devil is after the church to attack it, to undermine it, and so on and so forth. Matthew Henry when he comments on this, he actually takes Psalm 76 and he quotes verse 10, surely the wrath of man shall praise you. There's nothing that the devil can ultimately do to destroy the work of God. And so what happens, one of those sparks, it actually ignites here in the third largest city in the Roman Empire, this city in Antioch, after Rome and Alexandria.

It's an utterly pagan city. And a lot of the cities in those days, they were built on either the coast or they were built on the banks of rivers for obvious reasons, for commerce and so on. Rome had the Tiber River running through it and Antioch had a river called Orontes running through it. And when the Roman senator, Juvenal, he wanted to describe the decadence of Rome. This is what he said.

So Rome is decadent, we all know this. But look what he says. He says, the Orontes has flowed into the Tiber, meaning this is the headwaters of corruption here. Rome is just the offshoot flooding Rome with its wickedness. So this is the environment now that we're going to find ourselves in.

Well, Cornelius we saw, as I said earlier, he was saved in the previous chapter, but now what's happening is that the floodgates are opening on their hinges in this godless place, and so by droves the Gentiles are now being brought into the kingdom of God. It says here that a great number believed and turned to the Lord. In verse 22, it says, then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. And so here's a man, he was a Cypriot, he was born in Cyprus, he spoke Greek, and he had already proven himself to be a faithful man there in the church in Jerusalem. But we really get a measure of the man, who he really was, his character in the next verse, in verse 23.

Look at what it says about this man, that when he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord. He had this unshakable confidence that God was at work here. And what I love about this verse, it says that he saw the grace of God. What does the grace of God actually look like? Well, this man, he had heard about it secondhand because he had just come from Jerusalem, so he had heard Peter's testimony about what had happened with Cornelius, but you could imagine the overflow of his heart when he saw dozens of Cornelius's here coming to see the Lord, coming to know the Lord.

And this would have been mind bending for a Jew in his day. Like we don't really appreciate how difficult this was. You can read the previous chapter and you get a sense of it, but it was so hard and this man was a Levite, right? He wasn't just a Jew, but a Levite. But Barnabas wasn't a narrow hearted man at all.

It's true, he was a Levite by birth, but by rebirth, he was the son of encouragement. And so you can imagine, here he is in Antioch, this nursery of all these newborn babes coming straight out of paganism. Imagine the mess that that causes in the church of brand new believers trying to decipher and understand what it is but he spends all of his time encouraging them and it actually it says it made him glad this is the thing the heart that he had and like the angels in heaven he rejoiced to see it because he knew what it meant. And any of us that have come to know Christ, all of us by birth are Gentiles as we as we heard here this morning, and the wonder of the gospel, what Christ has done, may it never become something that just gets old, something that's kind of in the past, but may it always be in the forefront. You know, Ephesians chapter 2 says it so well when the apostle wants those people in Ephesus to remember where they came from, And it's always good to recall that.

He says this, he says, therefore, remember that you, once gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands, that at that time, looking back, you were without Christ. What a way to be, to be without Christ. Being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, just like we saw in our communion, but God, he says, but now In Christ Jesus, you who are once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. What an amazing gospel that we have.

And so here he is fulfilling his namesake as the son of encouragement. It actually says here that he encouraged them. And you can imagine this man every time he mounted the pulpit, his messages were full of the scriptures. Don't draw back. Never blush to own your faith.

It's going to be hard to live as a Christian in a pagan culture but whole to Christ. You could imagine time after time, you've started well but keep running the race. Here are the things that are going to trip you up along the way. His whole desire was for these men and for these women's welfare. And what a spirit he had.

Don't miss this, because if you go beneath the tip of the iceberg and go and look at the mass below, he was a man that was really unique among the Jews, among his fellow Jewish believers, even at that time. That's why he has this name, the Son of Encouragement. He was glad to see sinners come to know Christ, Gentiles come to know Christ, but he was also a man who knew both the burden and the privilege of preaching Christ. He was a true ambassador for his Lord. In verse 24, look what happens here.

It says, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and a faith, and a great many people were added to the Lord. So we see this first wave of people come in to know the Lord in Antioch, but as this man preached the Word of God, encouraged them as he just basically preached Christ more and more people. And this was his ultimate goal that men and women, strangers who are far off, would be brought near. That was his overriding purpose to bring as many unsaved as possible to faith in his Savior. And how do we account for this?

Well, it tells us right here, it says, because he was full of the Holy Spirit, and he was a man that actually believed, and I say actually believed, that the gospel was the power of God unto salvation. It wasn't theoretical, but he had accounted it worthy because he himself had tasted it, and he had come to know the Lord in such an amazing way. And, you know, I've never been one for methods of evangelism. There's no, like, you know, follow this method or follow that method. But there is a question that I've been asking people maybe the last six months, and I've seen just a wonderful interaction with this particular question.

And sometimes I'm sharing this with you because sometimes we're so uncertain as to how to enter into a gospel conversation or we get through a gospel conversation, maybe a couple questions in and somebody throws up a roadblock, you know, do you go to church? Oh yes, you know, I go to church. I remember speaking to one guy outside of Walmart and kind of caught him off guard, you know, do you go to church? And I think he was lying. I asked him which one and he said a Pentecostal Presbyterian church.

That was only good muster. I still remember this guy. But sometimes we can get stumbled, right? Are you a Christian? Yes, I'm a Christian.

Or, you know, do you read the Bible? All these things we can ask. But, you know, there's a time back in the 1700s, and an amazing revival was taking place in Wales. You know, there's this man by the name of Daniel Rowland, and he says, when I first started preaching, he says, I would climb up the mountain and look down into the valley and he says, there was not a house in which the name of Christ was named. He says, but after years of preaching Christ, years and years.

He says, I look down from the same mountain and there's not a house in which Christ is not worshiped. God had done an amazing work through this man. He was one of the most effective. He didn't preach in English, he actually preached in Welsh, and he stayed in the same church for 48 years. Imagine, preaching over and over.

He wasn't one of those traveling evangelists. Well, one day he did travel and he went to London to meet a man by the name of George Whitefield. Some of you may know that name. And he goes and he meets George Whitfield. And George Whitfield asked this man a question he would never forget.

They shook hands and exchanged greetings, and while they were still holding hands, Whitfield looked at him warmly, and he asked him, do you know whether your sins are forgiven thee? Here's a man leading the greatest revival in Welsh history and Whitefield's asking him this question. He says, I would never forget that question to the day I die. And I'm sharing that question with you because it's such an effective thing. It's a question that gets past a lot of the religiosity, especially here in the South.

Do you know whether your sins are forgiven? I was talking to a man the other day, a stranger, and we somehow got into the conversation talking about the things of God and just going back and forth. And you know, I asked this man this question. I asked, do you know whether your sins have been forgiven? And this man just burst into tears, into racking sobs, and he basically confessed his sins, and he had this problem with anger and hatred and all these, and he just went on and on.

But I'm sharing this question, It doesn't originate with me, but it's a question that we could ask perhaps to enhance and to be a strength in evangelism, to have a heart for people whose sins haven't been forgiven. Because that question, what does it do? It really encapsulates all you have to know about a person, doesn't it? It tells you where they stand with God. Have your sins been forgiven?

Have you been reconciled? Is there any question more important for a man or woman to be able to answer. I think that's probably why George Whitfield asked this great evangelist this question. It doesn't matter. Forget all the success you've had.

What about you? Where do you stand with God? And perhaps there's somebody here You've been dodging and darting. You've been engaged in religious conversations. Maybe you sing every Sunday, but that's not the question.

Do you know? Whether your sins have been forgiven That's really the only question that matters at the end of the day. Have you been reconciled to God the Father through Jesus Christ, our Savior? Well, like Whitefield, Barnabas, he was saved by sheer grace and it was a gift bestowed upon him and his great ambition, his only ambition, was that other people would know it as far and wide as possible. He never blushed to own his religion.

He was a man, but he loved his Savior. No matter the weather, whether it was fair or foul, whether it was in season or out of season, he would go among these pagan streets and markets and he would go and preach the gospel. But he wasn't alone in verse 25 and 26. Probably one of the most impactful, important decisions in the history of the world was made. Look at this.

Here he is probably exhausted from changing all these diapers of so-called of these brand-new baby Christians and it says here in verse 25, then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So here he is. He would have, of course, been sending regular updates back to his home church in Jerusalem. But instead of going south to Jerusalem, he travels north 86 miles.

And that word for to seek, he looked for Paul. It wasn't just a haphazard thing. It was hard to find him. And he actually ended up finding him. And it says, so it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people, and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

Can anyone bring a clean thing out of an unclean, out of this city that even Rome blushed to own in its empire, is now the place where they are first called Christians in Antioch. This decadent, filthy, pagan Antioch carries this honor. And I love how McLaren, he talks about this whole thing of them first becoming Christians. Look what he says. He says, it was given at first this name by the inhabitants of the Syrian city of Antioch to a new sort of people because they didn't call themselves Christians.

Notice they were called Christians. This new sort of people that had sprung up amongst them and whom they could not quite make out. They would not fit into any of their categories and so they had to invent a new name for them. It is never used in the New Testament by Christians about themselves. It occurs here in this text.

It occurs in Agrippa's half contemptuous exclamation to Paul. You seem to think it is a very small matter to make me, me a king, a Christian, one of those despised people, and it occurs once more where the Apostle Peter is specifying the charges brought against them. If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God on this behalf. That sounds like the beginning of the process which has gone on ever since, which the nickname flung by the sarcastic men of Antioch had been turned into the designation by which all over the world the followers of Jesus Christ had been proud to call themselves. And even up until this day we call ourselves Christians.

Well as a result of the faithful teaching of Barnabas, Saul, and others, another city, not just Jerusalem, but now another city was filled or being filled with this doctrine of Jesus Christ. And so he was a good man. He's full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. But there's one more thing I just want to share with us about this man. If you go to Acts 13, I won't actually go there now, but if you want to get an even deeper understanding of this man, a portrait of him really wouldn't be complete without considering what happened after Paul and Barnabas, now he's Saul, but Barnabas and Saul had come back from their humanitarian trip to Jerusalem, taking all those funds to help the saints there that were stricken by the famine.

And of course, we know what happens in Acts chapter 13, the first real kind of missionary movement is begun, where instead of it being accidental with these sparks flying by persecution into different parts, now there's an actual movement of the spirit to say separate for me Barnabas and Saul for the work that I've called them to. And they go out and they preach the Word of God. They first go to Cyprus and spread the Word there, and then they go north into Turkey, and they start preaching there. And all these things take effect. And what happens as they go through these different lands is they also take a young man by the name of Mark.

And some of us will know or remember the account that Mark partway through he deserted the mission. But God wasn't done with the deserter, and neither was Barnabas. What's one of the most beautiful things to think about? You know, Paul the apostle, he didn't have a lot of tolerance for men that drew back. He was on this track and you had to keep up with him.

But in Acts chapter 15, you know, it comes to their minds, Paul and Barnabas, let's go again and see how these churches are doing. And they sound like a great idea and Barnabas says sure let's take Mark and Paul says no we're not taking that guy you remember what he did the last time and it says that there was in the King James no small disputation between Paul and Barnabas in other words something big happened and Paul goes off with Silas and Barnabas goes to Cyprus again with Mark. And you might you might miss this here but we don't know quite what happened because the rest of Acts now follows the ministry of Paul But the son of encouragement had a massive impact on this deserter, Mark. You know, failure and restoration is one of the great themes of Scripture. You find it all the way through.

Peter himself is a great example of that. And over the time, you could imagine as they're sailing in ships and walking dusty roads and being persecuted and all of that, that Mark was discipled by this man over the years. And perhaps it was on their travels that he compiled that first gospel. Many people say Mark was the first gospel that was actually written, and Mark took it upon himself to pen that gospel. But we don't know.

But in Paul's final chapter, so decades later from that blowup, that no small disputation, when he's writing those final few words as he's there in that Roman prison, he says this, only Luke is with me. Get Mark. Remember Mark the deserter, get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me in ministry." Had it been up to Paul, Mark would have been left back, but Barnabas took it upon himself to disciple this man over those many years. How did Mark get to the point where he was now useful? It was simply because of this constant pouring out of this man, this large-hearted man by the name of Barnabas, a man who knew both the burden and the privilege of preaching Christ.

And so just a couple things just to keep in mind as we consider men like this in keeping the heart with all diligence. Because out of the heart flow the issues of life. That you could be a means of great encouragement. As I said, we have brothers, I know brothers who have been great encouragements to me. I know we have sisters that are like that.

But to let that be the overflow, even in our homes, where maybe you say a nice thing, an encouraging thing to your spouse, or a child could say that to their parents, or vice versa, but to put something like this into practice, encouragement, we all stand in need of encouragement, don't we? I know I do, but we can take an example like this, a man who kept his heart and do the same thing. And I would just challenge you this week even to consider asking someone that question in the course, Maybe not the opening words you say to somebody, but in the course of a conversation, ask somebody. We've heard what we've heard today in Romans one, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And to get engaged in a conversation, and as it leads, ask someone that question and see what the Lord would do.

Do you know whether your sins have been forgiven? Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for this portrait of this man. Lord, in as much as he follows Christ, we want to follow his example. Lord, we thank you for preserving your word for us, Father.

We pray that you would be our strength and help and that we, in turn, Father, would have the same spirit of being able to encourage others with the same help and comfort that we've been given. Oh Lord we pray that you would set our hearts aflame in this church to to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to those that are languishing around us oh Lord and to to go out with great strength and confidence that you will save as you see fit. Help us, Lord, as we depart from this place. Guide us, open up our mouths wide to preach your word to the Gentiles around us. Thank you for giving us grace in your Son, Lord.

We just thank you, we praise you, We honor your great name. Amen. Amen. Well, we're dismissed. God bless you.