Acts 11: Lessons from Barnabas

Hello everyone, I'm Dr.

Steve Holt.

I want to welcome you to the Road Church podcast.

Each week we go into God's Word.

We teach chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

And we are here to build the Kingdom of God revolution through empowering people to change the world.

So we pray this will minister to you at your heart level and change your life.

We're in the book of Acts again.

We left it for a couple weeks.

We had baptism.

We had 28 baptisms last week.

And we had our largest wholehearted dance a few months ago, a couple months ago, we had our largest wholehearted dance that we've ever had for men.

So lots of indicators of God's blessing on this church.

And we will continue to not take an offering.

We will continue to trust God with our finances because we're so committed to that.

So I want you to look, instead of going to Acts 11 first, would you go to Acts 1?

Just go to Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Because Acts 1.8 is the theme of the book of Acts, and I want to remind us of that.

And then we're going to move to Acts 11.

Acts 1.8, this is what Jesus says.

And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and all Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

So what we're seeing in the book of Acts is we're seeing the Holy Spirit come in power upon a group of people.

And when the Holy Spirit comes in power, they become witnesses of the kingdom of God.

Listen, we don't bring the kingdom.

We don't bring the kingdom.

We are witnesses of the kingdom, and as witnesses of the kingdom, we bring the kingdom.

But we are those in Genesis 1, as Jesus gave us his first great commission, which was to take dominion.

So we're taking dominion of our lives.

And as Jesus, in his parting words to his disciples, he wanted to remind us that there's a work that I came to complete through you.

And men and women, that work is not complete yet until the kingdom is preached in every nation, every ethnos, every ethnic group, then the end will come, is what Jesus said in Matthew 24.

And so we're in those last days.

We're in the days of the Gentiles.

We're in the days of the Gentiles where Christianity started with the Jews and then progressed on unto the ends of the earth.

And so what we're doing in the book of Acts is we're seeing this expansion and progression of the gospel.

Now, write this down.

If you haven't written it down before, write it down.

When you live Acts 1.8, you experience Acts 8.1.

When you live Acts 1.8, you will experience Acts 8.1.

There's some good news and bad news in that.

Okay, so let's go to chapter 8, verse 1, Acts 8.1.

This is what the early church is doing.

They're getting filled with the Spirit.

They're being empowered by the Spirit.

And then as they become witnesses, guess what happens?

Satan and demonic powers, working through people, begin to persecute the church.

Look at 8.1.

Now Saul was consenting to his death.

It means the stoning of Stephen.

At that time, a great persecution arose against the church, which was at Jerusalem.

And they were all scattered throughout the regions of, remember, you shall be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria, except the apostles.

So God uses persecution to scatter the church.

He makes us uncomfortable.

And so if you become a witness for Christ at work, if you become a witness for Christ in your family, if you're a witness for Christ with those that you meet, expect persecution.

Expect hardship.

Because as you share, the enemy is not going to just bow down because you're walking with Jesus and just let you take over.

There's going to be pushback.

And so the book of Acts at this point is a moving forward of the kingdom and then a pushing back by the kingdom of darkness.

So there's a kingdom of God revolution that is pushing into darkness, but the darkness is not going to just stay there and just allow us to bring the kingdom of God.

There's always going to be a repulsed, powerful reaction from the enemy.

That's what's happened at the row in the last year and a half.

We've been through a lot because as a church, we have been making huge impacts in different arenas of faith and different arenas, whether it be political or economic, and all these different areas.

Let's not quit.

Let's continue to push with the kingdom because God is with us.

So in Acts chapter 8, the church is scattered, but then in Acts chapter 9, look at chapter 9, on some of you be some of you have a like a study Bible and it'll say the Damascus Road, Saul converted.

Acts 8 · chapter mention Acts 9 · chapter mention

We studied how Saul, the main persecutor, with an edict actually from the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, is going up to the north into a leading city called Damascus, and the Holy Spirit comes down and he has a vision of Jesus, and he's just knocked to the ground.

He's blind for three days.

And then this guy named Ananias, who probably wishes that God would come to anybody but him, he argues with God like God doesn't know.

Lord, don't you know that this man has come here with papers to persecute the church?

Like God's going, oh, I didn't know that.

You know?

And so he goes in and he lays hands on him, the scales come off his eyes, he's baptized, he's filled with the Holy Spirit, and then for three years, he goes off into, we believe, Arabia.

Into Arabia, probably, as I shared back then when we were talking about it, he probably gets a download from God about all the things where he was missing the mark in understanding the gospel.

So then he comes back, he goes to Jerusalem, he tries to associate with the early apostles, if you remember, but they still remember him from three years back as a persecutor.

And this is important.

There's this guy whose name, his given name was Joseph, but he became known as Barnabas.

Barnabas, whose name is changed to mean son of encouragement, comes along, believes in Saul, brings him to Peter and the apostles, and they become a part of the team.

Now, then Saul, if you remember the story, he shipped, he goes over to Caesarea, he ships off back to Tarsus, which is his hometown, and for listen, where we are now, ten years.

So ten years have passed since all that happened, and now we're coming to something that's happening in a city called Antioch.

Antioch.

So we're gonna see a shift.

This is important.

There's a shift happening historically from the church being in Jerusalem to now the church being in Antioch.

Antioch is north up into Syria along the border with Turkey today.

42 AD is when that became the first, one of the first major Christian communities outside of Jerusalem.

And it's geographically significant, listen, because it's ethnically different.

There's going to be an ethnic shift in the church.

The church at the beginning, first 10 years, Jewish, a Jewish sect.

But as the Jews continue to reject Christ and reject him as the chosen Messiah of Yahweh, Gentiles are getting saved.

And so that's why in Acts chapter 10, go to Acts chapter 10, we have this encounter between Peter and a centurion, a Roman centurion, a non-Jew, a Gentile.

Acts 10 · chapter mention Acts 10 · chapter mention

And just for you that don't know, a Gentile is a non-Jew, not ethnically Jewish.

He's a Roman centurion.

And so he has a vision.

Peter has a vision, and we're going to recount it in Acts chapter 11.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

And it's going to just explode upon the church missiologically.

Now they wouldn't know that term, and you may not even know that term, but missiologically thinking means the work of mission, missiological.

It's the idea of the mission of God going forth.

And so God is about to break barriers, break new ground.

Now, why is that important?

Because Christianity is the only faith in the world that breaks barriers.

Ethnically, racially, culturally.

So if you became a Muslim, if you embraced Islam, you start dressing as one who is in Islam.

You have to wear certain clothes, you have to eat certain food.

You take on the culture of Islam.

Same with Buddhism, same with Shintoism, same with Taoism.

Only in Christianity.

Only in being a follower of Jesus do we honor culture.

When I went to Japan, I started acting like a Japanese.

A little bit.

But I mean, I ate their food.

I found myself bowing at everything that was said.

I became more and more like Japanese as the years went by.

Why?

Because I didn't want the barrier of being an American to get in the way of the barrier of the cross.

The only barrier we want, church, is the cross.

Let the cross be the barrier.

Let the life, death, and resurrection of Christ be the barrier.

Not how you dress.

Not what kind of food you eat.

I know that's hard for you because I eat grits.

And uh crawdads.

Not so much on the crawdads part, but in the South, we are Southern Christians.

In Colorado, we're Colorado Christians.

When we're in India, we become Indian Christians.

We let the barriers of culture go down so that we can allow the gospel to go forward.

No other faith does that.

So now look at Acts 11 because in Acts 11 we see this really played out in a powerful way as the shift is now moving from Jerusalem to the city of Antioch.

And by the way, Antioch, until the war started with Israel about two decades ago, with Israel attacking and them attacking and everybody attacking each other, 30% of Antioch was still Christian.

And so since that time, 6.5 million Christians have been displaced out of Antioch because of all the wars that have been going on.

So look at verse 1.

Now the apostles and brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.

This is a big paradigm shift.

And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with him, saying, You went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them.

So the Jews, listen, the Jew, the Orthodox Jews are still this way, but the Jews at that time were very ethnocentric.

So it was Jew, us, Gentile, them, us and them, and you did not talk to a Gentile, you did not let a Gentile even come close to your clothing.

So at that time a Jew, and this would have been Saul before he got saved, would take their robes that they wore and they would wrap them super tight, and when they walk down the road, they kind of walk like this, because they didn't want any kind of a Gentile to even touch them because they were unclean.

So that's the perspective.

So even though they've become Christian, even though they're followers of Jesus, still that ethnocentrism still guides their life.

And we do it too.

I mean, I grew up in the South.

And so if you know the history of slavery, you know that in the 17th century, slavery came to America.

And even though the Puritans and the Prims had presented a vision from the very beginning of a light on a hill, still slavery came in.

And it was a real problem with the Puritans and the Pilgrims, because they fundamentally disagreed with the idea of slavery, but finances and materialism took over and slavery came in.

And then we have the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.

And yet, you know, for another almost 100 years, we continue to have slavery.

So from the beginning of our country until the Civil War, that's something like 150 years, we enslaved 13% of our population.

So at the Civil War, 13% or 3 million people were enslaved in America.

What's that?

How can we have these declarations be people who claim to love God's word and still have slavery?

Because we're ethnocentric.

We are.

And everybody's, every, every nation struggles with it.

And so what we do, listen, church, we baptize our prejudice and call it Christian.

And so we're always battling that.

Hello?

All right?

So we've got to grow through that.

So one of the great discipleship lessons that Saul has to learn, Paul has to learn, Barnabas had to learn, Peter had to learn, and the early church had to learn is that some things in our culture are not godly.

Some things from your family background are not godly, even though you grew up in the church.

And so we're growing, we're learning, and so that's the struggle.

So they're challenging Peter, saying, What?

You went and ate, you went into the house of an uncircumcised person.

Now Peter's gonna explain.

And this is this is basically the explanation of chapter 10.

But Peter explained it to them in order from the beginning, saying, and by the way, so Peter agrees with them.

Like he remember last time we talked about Acts?

He didn't want to do this.

He argues with God too.

And I remember when dad, when my dad was so involved in the civil rights movement in the South, and we got death threats pretty regularly against my dad.

I answered the phone a few times where people called him an inn lover and all kinds of stuff like that.

But he stood his ground because he said, This is Christian.

This is right.

All men are created equal.

And so he stood his ground.

But he grew up in the Jim Crow South, too.

You hear what I'm saying?

So all of us go through paradigm shifts.

So that's what's happening with Peter.

Verse 5.

I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, an object descending like a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners, and it came to me.

When I observed it intently and considered, I saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.

And I heard a voice saying to me, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

But I said, Not so, Lord.

See?

There's his Jewish background coming through.

Not so, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has at any time entered my mouth.

But the voice answered me again from heaven.

What God has cleansed you must not call common.

In other words, everything created by God is blessed by God.

Now this was done three times, and all were drawn up again into heaven.

So see, it took three times.

It always takes, seems like it always takes three times with Peter.

At that very moment, three men, three times, three men, stood before the house where I was, having been sent to me from Caesarea.

Then the Spirit told me to go with them, doubting nothing.

Remember we talked about that last time?

Doubting nothing, and yet he doubts the whole thing from the very beginning.

Moreover, these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered the man's house.

That's Cornelius.

And he told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house, who said to him, Send men to Joppa and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved.

And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning.

Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

If therefore God gave them the same gift as he gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?

So that's his argument.

So he says, first of all, he says, I had a vision.

It was a vision that God gave me where he challenged my ethnocentric thinking about eating unclean food.

I didn't want to do it.

I argue with God, but he came, he told me three times this.

Then he speaks to me that I'm supposed to eat.

So he has a vision, he hears a voice, and then three men show up at his house.

So he has a witness of the spirit, witness of vision, witness of the spirit, then a witness of people that come, and then what does he say?

He said, The Holy Spirit fell upon them, and I remembered the scripture that said they shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

So the word vision, voice, witness of people, and then the witness of the word of God to him.

So that's his argument.

And sometimes, men and women, that's what it takes.

Sometimes that's what it takes in our lives to break that old paradigm.

So this morning, as you look at your own life, do you have some unbiblical views of people?

Because of your background.

You probably do.

I probably still do too, and I'm not even aware of it.

But we grow.

No condemnation, just grow.

Don't you want to grow up before you grow old?

Or maybe for some of us, you want to grow up while you're growing old.

So that's the argument.

So this is God, men and women, this is a huge paradigm shift for the church.

This is going to launch them into Judea, Samaria, and the remotest parts of the earth.

It's because it's because this happened that we're here today in America, this year, being confronted with the Word of God in our lives because a group of men and women believed this stuff, followed God, and the Spirit took people all over the globe.

Liz and I were watching Chariots of Fire again.

Anybody remember Chariots of Fire?

I think that was 1982.

Um I used to listen to that Bangela soundtrack forever.

Um, but it was really impactful in my life because I wanted to be a missionary.

I longed to be a missionary back then, and I was at the University of Maryland working there.

And um just watching it and then seeing Eric Little make the choice that he made in the Olympics, and it's all true, true story, and then go to China.

And he died in a Japanese internment camp just a few weeks before the end of the war.

Very similar to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was secure, very secure at the Union Seminary in New York, went back to Germany, was part of a plot to kill Hitler, and then he was in prison, and just a few weeks before that particular concentration camp was freed, he was hung there by Hitler.

So God calls us to take the gospel sometimes into really difficult situations that make us super uncomfortable.

And so that's what Peter's doing, that's what the church is having to grapple with.

Look at verse 18.

When they heard these things, they became silent.

But they glorified God, saying, Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.

This is hard, this is difficult, but there's an agreement about that.

Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and now we have this new city, Antioch.

Antioch will be a huge part of the development of Christianity from this point on.

We believe this is around 42 AD.

Preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.

So even though this had happened, this new work, this new mysiological breakthrough, most of the church did not embrace it yet.

But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists.

Underline or circle Hellenist.

Because if you remember, in Acts chapter 6 and 7, with the stoning of Stephen, they talked about the temple of the Hellenist.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

Those were Jews who spoke Greek.

Different here.

What they're saying here, Hellenists, in this case in Antioch, are Greeks that are Greeks that are worshiping as Jews.

So they're not of Jewish extraction.

So here's another test.

Preaching the Lord Jesus.

Speaking to the Hellenists.

So there's this breakthrough.

Most are preaching still to just Jews, but here, those that are coming from Cyprus and Cyrene are preaching to Hellenistic Jews and Hellenistic people.

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

So it's like revival's happening.

This move of the Spirit is flowing to the Gentiles and the Jews.

The news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas.

Barnabas.

So circle Barnabas, if you would.

He's really, he's really key here.

Barnabas goes as far as Antioch.

They send him to Antioch.

So remember, Peter is sent up to see what's happening with the Gentiles.

Now they're sending Barnabas, who's becoming kind of like a quasi-apostle at that time, up to Antioch.

And when he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them.

Remember his name?

His name means son of encouragement.

And all that with the purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.

So I want to just do some lessons from Barnabas.

If you want to jot these down.

Lessons from Barnabas, the necessity and power of encouraging people.

Anyone need encouragement these days?

Anyone need some encouraging people in your life?

Sometimes we call them bloodstained allies, but encouraging people are huge.

And here's what it says about Barnabas.

It says that he's he kind of he came to encourage them.

And remember, turn in your Bibles with you to Acts 4.

Go back to Acts 4.

Keep your finger in Acts 11, but go to Acts 4.

And you see a first glimpse of this guy named Barnabas, verse 36.

Look at Acts 4, 36.

Acts 4, 36.

And Joseph or Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles, so they gave him this name, which translated means son of encouragement, a Levite of the country of Cyprus.

Having land, he sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

So tradition tells us that he never lived in Cyprus again.

He became apostolic with the church.

And so here's my first point encouraging people find ways to help out.

This church is full of encouraging people.

You guys are amazing.

You're always trying to figure out ways to help.

And I have this whole group of people that come early on Sunday morning and they're just looking around for ways to help.

Now, the first thing they do is they help themselves to the coffee and the donuts.

And that's why they're there.

But encouraging people find ways to help out.

In his case, they needed finances.

So he had, he must have been kind of a wealthy guy.

He sold land, gave it to the church.

Now, go back to Acts 11.

He is coming to encourage them with the purpose, the purpose of heart that is now moving the kingdom of God further in the northern part of what we call the city of Antioch.

Number two, encouraging people tell you to not give up.

That means a lot to me.

So many of you told me to not give up.

So encouraging people find ways to help out.

Encouraging people tell you to not give up.

Look at verse 24.

For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.

And a great many people were added to the Lord.

So thirdly, encouraging people are filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.

They have the Holy Spirit and they have faith when we need it the most.

Matter of fact, I would say this church, it's really hard to be an encouraging person without the Holy Spirit and faith.

So if you say, I'm not that kind, Steve, I'm not really an encouraging person, and I would say, get filled with the Holy Spirit and you'll become one.

Walk by faith and you'll become one.

Everybody in this room can walk in encouragement to others.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control as the fruit of the Spirit is all about encouragement.

That's all those that are under the rubric of encouragement.

And then look at verse 25.

Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek out Saul.

This is incredible.

To seek out Saul.

You remember back?

Remember back in Acts 9?

It's Barnabas that goes to Saul and introduces him to Peter.

Nobody else believes.

Nobody else believes this guy Saul is really saved until Barnabas comes along.

But look what he says.

He says, he goes to seek Saul in Tarsus.

Now listen, everybody look at me.

This is the way I envision it.

You got a guy praying in Tarsus, waiting on God for ten years.

The Lord spoke to him, I'm going to use you mightily to go to the Gentiles.

Ten years, nothing happens.

Then along comes this guy named Barnabas, and he walks into Antioch and he sees what's going on.

He sees that the Hellenists are getting saved.

Gentiles are getting saved.

Jews are getting saved.

Because there was that guy a decade ago named Saul.

And I think I remember he was from Tarsus.

It's not that far from here.

I'm going to go find him.

So encouraging people are always mentoring others.

And so what's interesting is he's going to bring him in, and we're going to see in just a second that Barnabas' name comes first with Saul.

And as the years go by, it's going to switch.

And Saul, who's going to become Paul, is going to become the leader.

And Barnabas is cool with that because he's mentoring him to what God has for his life.

He's not jealous.

And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

That word in the Greek is Christianos.

It's the same word for Caesarianos.

Caesarianos, Caesareanos was slave of Caesar.

Christianos means a slave of Christ.

Are you a slave of Christ?

If you're not, you should.

Become a slave of Christ.

It's the best master you'll ever have.

Oh, and by the way, all of us have a master.

Who's your master?

I had a coach once who said, Who's your mama?

So who's your master?

I think Jesus is a good master.

So become a Christian.

You should become a Christian.

You should become a Christian.

It was a derogatory term back then.

Oh, they're just slaves of that criminal named Jesus.

But they embraced it.

It's only used three times in the Bible.

But they embraced it.

And in those days, prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch.

Then one of them, named Agabas, stood up, showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all of the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar.

So a prophet, by virtue of the very definition, is one who forthells or foretells.

He's foretelling.

He's foretelling of something, and we know historically that this was accurate.

When I'm teaching the word, I'm putting on the mantle of teacher and prophet.

When you teach in that series that you guys are doing with women, you'll be a prophetess.

You'll be speaking prophetically.

That's forth telling truth.

Then the disciples each, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.

This they also did and sent it to the elders by the hands of, look, look at the order, Barnabas and Saul.

So Barnabas is a leader, Saul is his follower.

We're going to see in the chapters ahead that's going to switch.

Because truly Barnabas is a son of encouragement.

And he's mentoring right now Saul, who's going to become Paul, who will write 13 books of the New Testament and be one of the greatest missionaries of all time because of a guy named Barnabas.

How many of you have heard of a guy named Charles Limberg?

Anybody heard of Charles Limberg?

So Charles Limberg flew across the Atlantic Ocean in his plane called the Spirit of St.

Louis, famous for the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean in the Spirit of St.

Louis.

Little plane, really small plane.

But how many of you heard of Claude?

So Claude was his mechanic.

So without Claude, Charles Lindbergh couldn't have flown across the Atlantic.

How many have heard of a guy named Martin Luther, the great reformer?

How many have heard of Melanchthon?

So Melanchthon was his assistant, and he's the one who helped him translate the New Testament into German.

He was right there beside him.

So without Melanchthon, there'd be no Luther.

Without Claude, there'd be no Limbert.

You may have heard of a guy named Charles Finney.

Charles Finney was one of the great revivalists of the 19th century, but you may not have heard of Father Nash.

So Daniel Nash, Father Nash, would go ahead of him and would pray up that community before Charles Finney came.

And when Father Nash died, Charles Finney retired because he knew he couldn't do it without Father Nash.

And so it is in your life.

We need people in our lives who encourage us.

We can't be who God meant us to be without encouraging people in our life.

Why not be that person?

Why not be that person to someone else?

And if you're older, do it for a younger person.

Come alongside, go out to coffee, maybe do a community group, but love on them and believe in them.

We all need people to believe in us.

That's the spirit of Barnabas.

That's what we want at the Road.

Thank you for listening to the Road Church Podcast.

We pray today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

For more information about the Road Church and to find more content like this, go to theroad.org.

That's theroad.org.