Being Encouragers

But he is a fill in for our pastor, very capable, and I'd love to hear him speak which means nothing But I think you will too and he's he'll tell you about his ministry but he comes from Sebring and he has a wonderful life story and a testimony and he's at EB, is it EBI? Doing Spanish translations of the Bible and he'll tell you about that and you'll you'll be blessed. Brother John. Alrighty. It is good to be back again.

As I told in the Sunday school hours become quite a tradition for me now. I think we've lived in Florida for six years and I think I've only missed Thanksgiving week one time since we've been here. So, I always enjoy. It's kind of a tradition if we don't, if I'm not here, I feel like it's not time for Thanksgiving or something like that. So, it's always good to do that and I'm glad to be able to help pastor Rick by giving him the opportunity to be able to travel and see his family and so forth.

We grew up. He's he's a little older than I am. Make sure you tell him I said that but he's a little older than I am but we were in the same church growing up and so I've known his brother and his mom and dad and everything for years. So it's kind of a small world. Take your Bibles if you would to Acts 11.

And as Brother Al said, we are with EBI which is Editorial Bautista Independiente which is a Spanish publications ministry of Baptist Midmissions. And so we produce materials, books, Sunday school curriculum, pastor studies, Bible studies, anything that a church or ministry would need in the Spanish language to help them grow and to point people to Christ. And so we publish about 15 to 20 new books a year and ship our books to all the Spanish speaking countries of the world. And we're pretty excited. We just finished, I said it in Sunday school, I didn't just finish but EBI just finished its sixty first year of ministry and we have our books in more than 100 bookstores now in Latin America.

We have 45 distributors that receive our books, ministry partners that help us to get them into all the countries and that's just continual a blessing to be able to to to help people come to know Christ. Now, some of you will know, you may have some of you that have talked to me before the service. I have my wife is Debbie and I have two daughters. Elizabeth is 21 years old and she's a nurse. She just finished nursing school and she's an emergency room nurse there in Sebring.

And then I have a 17 year old daughter, Olivia, she's a junior in high school. I like to tell people that every day is Father's Day when you have two daughters. And so my wife always jokes and she says that she wished she had had a son because that way she could have a child of her own. But anyway, I have two daddy's girls and it's going to be a little tough for me. I'm a minister, a preacher, and so in March of next year, 03/18/2023, my 21 year old is getting married.

And as if that's not hard enough to walk her down the aisle, guess who she asked to do the wedding? She wants dad to do the wedding. And so I'm not sure how well I'll get through that. When I had I kid you not, when I was a young man and we first had our first daughter, when she was a baby, I went to to the first wedding that I went to after she was born and I saw that back door open and that dad with his daughter there and I got misty eyed And that was that was twenty years ago. And so I don't know how I'm going to do on that day.

But anyway, you know that I I have this daughter's getting ready to get married. And I was thinking about as today we're going to look at being encouragers. And I heard this story of this bride and she was really nervous about her wedding day. So this bride, she was scared. She said, I'm not worried about getting married.

It's just everybody's going to be looking at me. I'm going to that back door is going to open and all eyes are going to be on me. And she said, that just really makes me nervous. So this bride was really, really nervous. So she's telling the pastor this and he's trying to think of a way to help.

And so during the rehearsal dinner, he says, you know, I've got a Bible verse that I want to share that will help calm your nerves a little bit. So he says to the best man, you have your phone with you? And the best man said, Yes. Well, pastor didn't know the best man. And the best man was not a churchgoing man, so he didn't really know his Bible.

So he said to the best man, I wanted you to read a verse. Look it up on your phone. He said, I want you to read one John four eighteen. So, one John four eighteen, for those of you that don't know it, it says, There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. So he says to the best man, I want you to read one John four eighteen.

Well, best man didn't realize the difference between one John four eighteen and the Gospel of John four eighteen. So he looked up John, the Gospel of John four eighteen, and it says, For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband, and that spoke you truly. And said, The groom looked over at her and the bride ran out of the rehearsal dinner in tears. So the pastor was trying to be an encourager and he kind of failed miserably. You know, sometimes we think about being encouragers.

Maybe you've known somebody in your life that's been an encouragement to you. They just know the right things to say. They know the way to approach you and let you know that they're praying for you. Maybe you know somebody that knows how to send you a note or a text message or an email at just the right time to be an encourager to you. Well, want us to look at somebody today in scripture that I think is a great example for us and we're going to look at Barnabas.

Barnabas and he is called the son of encouragement. So, let's look and see what we can learn about him this morning. Now, I just told the the folks in Sunday school, the the ones of you that were here, I love the book of Acts and I I have this bad habit that I keep going back to it. I love to teach and preach out of it. I teach a young adults class in our church in Sebring and we're going through the book of Acts right now and so, here I am once again looking at Acts.

But it's a really amazing book because it talks about the birth of the church. It talks about the history of the church. We looked this morning already at some of those promises that we see there. Christ was ascending back to heaven. And he told his followers, You don't need to be worried because I'm going to send a Comforter.

I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And they might not have understood what that was, but then on the day of Pentecost, what happened? The Holy Spirit came and it says that he came like a mighty rushing wind or like with tongues of fire. We can't even picture or understand exactly. I don't exactly understand what that means.

But the Holy Spirit came with great power and great influence. And so here's this great adventure novel, so to speak, the book of Acts. There's miracles taking place. All these people are being reached. 3,000 people come to know the Lord.

They join the church in one day. Shortly after that, there's 5,000 people in the church. It's growing. I told my class when I was teaching it, said, that's what I call the first megachurch in the world. 3,000 people joined the church at one time.

So the Gospel is being preached, the great power of the Holy Spirit is taking place, lives are being impacted. All these great things are going on. And so in this setting of this great church growth, this obvious power of the Holy Spirit, all miraculous things going on, we are going to see today a rather ordinary man, just kind of simple, this ordinary man that's going to do great things for God. Now, I never thought about this until I began to work at EBI. Much to my shame, this thought never crossed my mind.

But we have a lot of children's Sunday school material. And I was talking to our director one time and he was saying one of the things that we try to do with our children's Sunday school material is make it Christ centered and not to make the Bible characters the heroes. And I never thought about that. But in a way, a lot of times in Scripture or Scripture based Sunday School material, like what I had as a kid growing up, we learned about all these heroes of the faith, heroes in the Bible, and there's nothing wrong with that. So we would talk about Daniel and the lions did.

And he does this great amazing thing and he's in there with the lions. And who's the hero? Daniel. Or we talk about Noah and the ark and he faithfully built the ark and he did these great things. And the stories go on and on and on.

We have all these heroes of the faith, the Apostle Paul and how he was thrown into prison and how he did these great things for God. And my director was saying, All of that's good, but we want to make sure that we're not just teaching kids morals. We want to show them it's not about those men, it's about Christ. And because of what Christ did in their lives, they were able to do those great things. And so we're not here today to worship Barnabas.

We're not here I don't even really want us to say, I want to leave to be more like Barnabas. I want us to leave today to be more like Christ. And we can do that and we can follow the example of Barnabas and learn some interesting things. Why do I point him out though? Because he was an ordinary man that did great things through the power of Christ.

So let's spend a few minutes. Let's look at his life. Let's see some attributes that we can learn. So if you're not there, turn to Acts chapter 11. Acts chapter 11 and I'm going to start reading in verse 19.

Acts eleven nineteen. It says, 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. I'm going stop there just a second. Remember we said in Sunday school this morning that strategically, I believe, God used the stoning of Stephen to take the Gospel to the world. Here the Romans had this big network of roads.

It would be like our interstate highway system today that you can go from one city to the next really easily. Well they had a road system like that for the Romans. And what happens? Stephen was murdered. He was stoned.

And so everybody was scared about that. They didn't persecuted. So what did they do? They all left. They went back to their home countries where they had been there for the feast of weeks.

Now in verse 20, But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who when they had come to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists, which by the way, Hellenists, we don't use that term as much today, but Hellenists were simply Greeks, people of Greek culture, people that were either a mixture or they were Greek and Jews. Today, we would call them Gentiles probably. So here they were. They spoke to the Hellenists preaching the Lord Jesus. Verse 21, And the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

Then news of these came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas. So here's our main character we're going see today. Sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. And 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. Now that's a pretty ordinary story. It's an interesting story.

But let's look at a couple of things that stood out to me. The first thing that stood out to me was Barnabas had a favorable standing with the people. Barnabas had a favorable standing. So what does that mean? He had a good testimony.

He had a good reputation. He was a nice guy. Look at verse 24, it says there, that first little phrase, For he was a good man. Wouldn't you like somebody to describe that be a description of you? Somebody to describe you that way?

That John Poe, he's a good man. He's a good guy. He's a good neighbor. That's the kind of testimony that Barnabas had. Another way of saying that, that good testimony, a good reputation, you know people like that.

You say, Hey, they're a good neighbor. They're good neighbors. They're good people that live beside me or work with me. It's important that the things that we say match up with the way we live. Do you know if you were to go out into the world today and talk to unsaved people and you were to say to them, Why don't you like church?

Why don't you try going to church? You know what almost the majority every time will say? They'll say, Because Christians are hypocrites. Do you know that? That's what the world thinks we are.

And my girls used to have this little song, if I could still remember it, it said something like, Hippo critters, hippo critters. They say one thing and then do the opposite er. Well, that's the idea there. We say one thing and we tell people, You shouldn't live that way. The Bible says you shouldn't do this.

And then what do we do? We're driving down the road and we cut them off in traffic. Oops. What would Jesus do? Would Jesus cut them off in traffic?

Probably not, But we have this attitude that we're holy and perfect and we say one thing, but we don't necessarily live it all the while in the world. I use the example of driving. That's one reason you can ask my wife Debbie if she was here. I've gotten much better. When I was a young man, I used to be a little bit of a reckless driver.

I had a lead foot. Somehow I managed to go, I'm 49 years old. I've gone forty nine years ticket and I got that my first month of driver's license. But I've calmed down quite a bit over the years. Debbie says it was living in Peru and driving in big city traffic that calmed me.

Now it probably did. But that's why I don't have a Christian symbol on the back of my car. I don't have a honk if you love Jesus bumper sticker because if I fall into my sin nature, see I got to tell you, if I'm driving down the interstate, I'm going down Interstate 95, traveling along, minding my own business, going five over the speed limit, you know, doing okay, not holding anybody up, What happens? Some car comes right up behind you and they start flashing their lights and they get right on your bumper. I think it's like maybe men have this little red light that should start flashing on the back of our head.

That means it annoys us. And what happens? My sin nature kicks in and I automatically want to do everything I can to annoy that car. I don't know why. It just kicks in.

That's my desire. That's why road rage happens, I'm sure. So I try most of the time to just get over and let them go. But I have to admit, sometimes when they cut back over, then I have this great desire to jump back in the fast lane, pass them back, and then cut them back off the same way they just did me. None of you men would ever do that, right?

All right, so the idea though, I don't want to honk if you love Jesus bumper sticker on my car if I'm cutting people off in traffic because it's probably not a good testimony. I've heard the same thing about Christians. They go to a restaurant, take they a big group of Christians and they leave a track from their church on the table and they leave a dollar tip. Oh, that's not a very good testimony. The waitress is not going to be real interested in the things of the Lord.

She's going to If that's how those Christians are You see, that's the difference between a hypocrite and a genuine person. We want to make sure that what we say is consistent with the world around us. We want to have a good testimony. We want to have a good favorable standing with people. That's the kind of person that Barnabas was.

Now, we don't have time to look at it all. I told you I love the book of Acts. But all through the book of Acts, we can see some things that Barnabas did to show the kind of good person he was. Back in Acts chapter four, he sold piece of his own property and gave the money to the ministry so that it could be used for the new growing church. So he was generous and his words matched his actions there.

In Acts chapter nine, he accepted Saul after Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus. A lot of people didn't really believe Saul. They thought he was there as a troublemaker. And he gave him a chance. He vouched for him.

In Acts chapter 11, he was willing to go out to this newly started community to reach them with the gospel message. Over and over and over again, he found favor with the people. And we can see there how is he described? He was a good man. If we want to be like Barnabas, just a common man, men and women that can do great things for God, we can do that by putting Christ first in our life and just being good, consistent people.

You realize that your testimony is a very, very powerful thing. When I was a young man, as a child, we had a man in our church that came to know the Lord. His name was Billy. And Billy was known in our community. He had worked at the General Electric plant for years.

He was a supervisor. And a lot of people in my church worked for GE and so he was their supervisor. Well, was known for being a very hateful, terrible boss. Nobody liked this Billy. They said he was grouchy, he was rude, he'd bite your head off, he was constantly doing cruel things, he's making people stay late for work, he was trying to get them to work without overtime and all this stuff.

Very, very hateful man. Nobody liked him. If he tried to say something new, he was cussing people out. Well, his wife and his daughter were wonderful Christians, wonderful Christian ladies. They prayed for him for decades, for years and years and years.

They had a friend day at church. He came and heard a very very powerful message and in tears weeping, he came forward and said, This is what's been my problem my whole life. And he got saved. Well, this grouchy, hateful man that nobody wanted to work with returned to work. And some of the people from church said, We could not believe it.

People were talking about it in the plant. They said, Billy is like a new person. Seen We have the change in someone's life. You see, then his testimony became very very powerful. Some other people that he invited to church in the coming years came to know the Lord because they saw the change in His life.

And so that's a very, very powerful thing. So we all know testimonies like that. We've all seen it from time to time, that amazing change that can happen in the life of somebody that gets to know the Lord. And sometimes we think to ourselves, Pastor Rick, he's the one that needs to be out sharing the gospel. He's the one that needs to bring people to the Lord.

Or we say, Ah, the missionaries. That's why we support missionaries, so they can go out. Ah, we see a TV preacher or an evangelist or somebody in there, a really, really polished speaker, we say, Ah, that's the way people get saved. But you know many times, if not most of the time, people come to know the Lord from the testimony, the example that they see from their friends that know the Lord. It's a very very powerful thing.

So we need to be people of integrity. We need to be consistent. We need to have a testimony that helps us to have a favorable standing with people. And people are more apt to listen to someone who is real with them, somebody that's real in their Christian walk, somebody that practices what they preach. They're going to follow.

They're going to respect that despite somebody as opposed to somebody that's hypocrite. Barnabas was a good man. Now, the second thing I see about Barnabas was he was filled with the Spirit. Barnabas was filled with the Spirit. Look at verse 24.

It says there again, For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, to be effective, to be successful in our ministry, we have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, I have to admit that I said it this morning in Sunday school, that's a very comforting thing to me because I don't have to rely on my own personal abilities or strengths or talents or anything to accomplish things for the Lord. It's the Holy Spirit that comes along with us.

That's why in Acts chapter one and verse eight it says, After that the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall receive power and then you go and you take the gospel to these places. So you see that great promise we have there? It's not in our own strength. Now, if I was to go around this room in a group this size, no doubt there's some of you that would call yourselves introverts. You would say, Oh, I'm a quiet person.

There's no way I'm going to go talk to people. And you know what? I understand that. Have a daughter. It's so funny in our house.

My 21 year old is the most extroverted person that you'll ever know. My 17 year old is the most introverted person you would ever know. They're polar opposites. They look exactly the same but they have two totally different personalities. And it's interesting.

Some of you in a group this size, I guarantee you, there's some of you that would say, Oh, I'm shy. I can't do that. But you know what? We don't have to depend on our abilities, our personality, our strengths. It's the Holy Spirit that does the work.

And so, here I am a missionary. I have churches that support me. I have churches that help us to do our ministry so that we can do the things that we do. But I often don't feel equipped. I found myself in circumstances where I think I am not equipped to do this.

One of the things I respect the most, I love people that do apologetics, prove the gospel or they stand up for their beliefs like in a debate. And I would find that so intimidating to stand there and somebody says, Well, if you're a Christian then defend this. How do you believe this? And I know some of those answers, but boy, on the spur of the moment that makes me nervous, you know, and I'm thinking, I can't do that. We don't often feel equipped.

We'll think we can't do this. I don't have the personality. I don't have the gift. I don't have the talent. I don't know how to answer the questions the way that but that's okay because we should strive to do our best.

We do everything we can. Second Timothy two fifteen encourages us, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So we need to be prepared, do the best we can, but ultimately the Holy Spirit is going to do the work. Now, I told you this earlier, Acts chapter one verse eight, you don't have to turn there, but it says, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. There's great power in the Holy Spirit.

We need to keep that in mind. Now, what does that mean? I think when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you're naturally going to be more sensitive to what people's needs are. You're going to be more sensitive to the people around you. Try this sometime.

If you want to see how it works, pray and say, Lord, help me to find somebody to witness to this week. Help me to find somebody to share my faith with. Help me to find somebody that I can invite to church. If we genuinely pray that, you watch. The Lord will open up opportunities for you.

You know why I think that is? I think it's because we've changed our mindset like we saw this morning in Sunday School. We're starting to look for people all around us that have needs and we have the answer, Christ. So we need to be sensitive to that. Now, there's a lot of controversy in the world about what it means to be Spirit filled.

There's different churches that have false teaching on the Holy Spirit. They have false teaching about spiritual gifts. So I want to be careful here. What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, first, it's not some mystical, magical experience that's going to happen.

There's churches out there. I'm sure you've seen it on TV where the people are foaming at the mouth or they're rolling around on the floor and they're doing these crazy things. Being Spirit filled, do you know what that is? It's being Spirit controlled or being yielded to the Spirit. If you come to a traffic circle, in Sebring they're building a lot of new traffic circles in different neighborhoods.

So you come to a traffic circle, you don't have to stop. What do you do? If there's nothing coming, you yield. You yield to the cars that are coming around. Well, humans, especially men, we don't like to yield to people very much.

But when we're spirit filled, that means we yield to the Holy Spirit. So like, you know what's going to happen? You pray that prayer, Lord, help me to see somebody that I can witness to this week. Then at work, somebody starts talking to you and says, Man, I've got this problem. I wish I knew what to do with this.

That's when we have the option to say, You know what? I'm going to yield to the Holy Spirit. I'm going to go ahead and say to I'm going to go ahead and talk to this person about spiritual things. Or we could yield to our own. We could choose our own path.

You know what? I'm too shy. I'm too backwards. That's awkward. I don't want to talk to him about the Lord.

And then we ignore the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the Holy Spirit means we're going to yield. We're going to follow after what he wants. Our attitudes, our thoughts, our words, our deeds are going to be spirit filled. Now, you don't have to turn there, but in Ephesians five eighteen, Paul encourages us to be filled with the Spirit.

If you look up the original Greek word there, it literally means to be being, It's kind of a weird construction grammatically. To be being filled with the Spirit. In other words, the idea is that it's continual. We are continually filled by the Spirit, by moment by moment control of the Spirit in our lives. It's something that we do over and over again by yielding to Him and accepting His leading in our life.

Hebrews eleven:six tells us, But without faith it is impossible to please God for he that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. So those two things, faith and yielding to the Holy Spirit go hand in hand in a Christian walk. So we've seen two things already. Barnabas had favorable standing. He had a good testimony.

We've seen that he was filled by the Holy Spirit. He yielded to what the Spirit said. Now, the third thing I want us to see was Barnabas was a friendly servant. Barnabas was a friendly servant. Now, let's jump back up to verse 23.

It says, 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. Now, verse 24 really shows us really shows us who Barnabas was. He was this good man that was filled by the Holy Spirit. But verse 23 shows us what he did. He was faithful in his practice, in his service for God.

He was active. He wasn't just a spectator. Y'all remember that old hymn that's standing on the promises? I heard this old preacher one time and he said, Some of you are content sitting on the premises instead of standing on the promises. That made me want to laugh, but you see a lot of times at church, we want to just be spectators.

We come and we say, Hey, I'm a participant in church. I buy my ticket. I come sit in the pew. It's just like sitting in a stadium. But really, God wants us on the playing field.

He wants us active in ministry. And that's what Barnabas was. He was an active participant, not just a spectator of ministry. So as you study Barnabas, you're going to find out something interesting about him. Now, that's not a name we hear anymore, Barnabas.

Interestingly enough, I have a new great nephew and my nephew named his son Barney. They just named him that. I don't know how they picked that name. But anyway, his name is Barney, but I don't really know anybody named Barnabas, to be honest with you. Barnabas was called, his original name was Joseph the Levite.

So if you look at some other parts of Acts, you're going to see Joseph the Levite. That is Barnabas. Barnabas was actually his nickname. Barnabas literally means son of encouragement. How would you like to have your name be son of encouragement?

Or today they just say, that's Betty the Encourager. That's Mary the Encourager. That's John the Encourager. That's what his nickname was, son of Encouragement. And I believe that was another key to his effectiveness.

He was constantly edifying people. He was positive on people's lives. Instead of discouraging people, instead of being a drag on people around him, instead of being a gossip or a busybody or holier than thou, he was an encourager to other people. He exhorted people. He lifted people up.

Now, what does it mean to encourage people? How can we do that? Well, first, he urged these believers to be steadfast believers. Now, steadfast, it says there in verse 23, Encourage them all with purpose of heart that they should continue with the Lord. Today, on the way over from Sebring, it's about two hours from my house to here.

And you know where the hurricane Ian came through, there was a lot of evidence still of the effects of the hurricane. There's a lot of these big old oak trees that were turned over. And I can see parts of the Peace River. The Peace River is still really high and there's still a lot of area that's like standing in water. And I saw some of these big oak trees and I saw some oak trees that were literally falling over into the river.

And it made me think about that word steadfast. I knew I was going to say this this morning. And just like a tree with a big bunch of roots that's in the ground, that's kind of the idea that we are planted, we are firm in what we believe, we are steadfast, we are not going to move. Maybe not the best example because some of the trees blew over, sorry. But that should be how our life is.

We should be like one of those great oaks that stands there unmoving. That's the kind of person that Barnabas encouraged the fellow Christians to be. Paul was the same way. In one Corinthians fifteen fifty eight Paul said, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Each of us should be steadfast, unmovable Christians, not swaying, not turning side to side.

Scripture also describes doctrine or people that sway like a boat. They turn to and fro in the sea. They one day believe this and one day they believe that. Now we need to study God's Word and know what we believe and be unmovable in that. So Barnabas was an encourager because he encouraged them to be steadfast.

And then Barnabas helped them to look at Jesus and to live in fellowship with them. Verse 23 again, it encourages them all with purpose of heart that they should continue with the Lord. In the King James version of the Bible, uses the word cleave, that they should cleave to the Lord. If you look up that in the dictionary, this is going to sound like I'm making this up. If you look it up in a Greek word study book, that word cleave there literally means to stick to like glue.

So think about that for just a minute. In our relationship with God, in our relationship with Him, we should stick to Him like glue. My dad, years ago, cut his finger open really bad at work. Somehow he got ahold of super glue and he didn't want to go get He needed stitches. What did he do?

He literally put super glue on the job, on the workplace. Put super glue and he held it together for just a second And it actually sealed up the wound. Well years later, now I find out if you go to the ER, they actually have wound glue and they glue people's wounds together. I said, dad, you should have invented that. You did that thirty years ago.

We'd be rich now. What do you know? Well anyway, it's a wonder he didn't poison himself by putting it in there, some kind of super glue. But that stuff is super sticky. Do you all remember the commercials where they used to take the guy and he'd put it on the hat and he'd stick it up and hanging from a beam with his hat with the super glue or whatever.

And so you know they have this gorilla glue and gorilla tape and stuff. Well, that's that idea there that our fellowship with the Lord, we should stick to Him like glue. That sounds made up but that's what the Greek word literally means there. And so in other words, Barnabas wanted them to be in close fellowship to the Lord. What about us?

Are we encouragers? Are we lifting people up? Are we edifying people to do that? Debbie and I had this lady that we knew in our church in North Carolina when we were first married. And the first time we met her, this lady was over the top nice.

I mean she was so kind and she just beamed all the time. She was so sweet. She was telling us a story years ago in Sunday school and she said, I didn't mean to but I pulled out in front of a car in traffic. She talked like that. I pulled over in front of a car in traffic and I know they were very upset with me.

And then she said, so I pulled up beside them at the light and they stuck their middle finger up at me and I felt so bad. She's telling this story and she goes, I rolled down my window and I said, I love you. So wonder they didn't shoot the lady. But anyway, this lady was just one of these people that was so nice and she was always complimenting people. She was always being sweet to people.

She was always being nice. So we were leaving church one Sunday and Debbie said, You know, I used to not like her. I thought she was a phony. And she goes, Now, after knowing her for months, she goes, She really is that nice. Isn't that a good description of somebody?

She really is that nice. That's how we should be. Barnabas was like that. He was an encourager. He was lifting people up.

When's the last time that we checked on another brother or sister in Christ? Made a conscious effort just to encourage them, to lift them up, to exhort them, to encourage them of what they're doing for the Lord. That's the kind of thing that Barnabas did. That's why I've called him the friendly servant. Now, there's one final thing that I want us to see.

So we've seen he had favorable standing. He had a good testimony. He was filled by the Spirit. He was always doing what the Lord wanted. He was a friendly servant encouraging other.

And finally, number four, he had fruitful service. Look at verse 24, And a great many people were added to the Lord. I said this morning in Sunday school, kind of as a joke, well it was a joke, I said, Let's tell Pastor Rick that we saw in the book of Acts where 3,000 people were added to the church in one day. And so we come back and we say, That missionary came while pastor was on vacation for Thanksgiving and 3,000 people joined Missouri Avenue Baptist Church in one week. Woo, wouldn't that be great?

Well, the Lord doesn't necessarily work the same these days, but God is still at work. And we can see here that there was much fruit. Many people were added to the Lord. John fifteen:eight says, By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples. See, Jesus wanted His followers to bear fruit.

Now, as I drove over here this morning, I saw the perfect example of what we should be experiencing. As you know, Central Florida is filled with groves. Now I have to admit, when I first moved to Florida six years ago, I didn't really know to call them groves. I made the mistake talking to some men that were farmers at our church at Sebring and I said, How big is your orchard? And they looked at me like, Orchard?

We don't have orchard. That's a grove. They said, Don't call it an orchard. People know you're not from Florida. So anyway, I know to call it a grove now.

And I drove through all kinds of acres and acres of groves on the way over here. Some of them are absolutely beautiful and well kept. Some of them are vibrant and I can tell they're going to produce a lot of fruit. But even in my short time in Florida over the past six years, I've seen more and more groves fall into disorder. I know there's some blights and there's some infections or diseases or something that are killing a lot of the plants.

I know that I read in Highlands County alone where we destroyed $50,000,000 worth of the citrus crop, half the crop they said for the year. And so here it's just a hard industry to be in. But when I think about that, I think about how at one point all those groves were producing tons and tons of fruit made for orange juice all over the world. People think about Florida, the Sunshine State, they think about fruit. And that's a dying industry in many areas.

A lot of places they don't have it anymore. Let's think about that and compare it to churches. You know, sadly, I visit a lot of churches. A lot of churches are kind of like a dying Grove. And it's not that they didn't do great things, that there weren't great things that took place there, But we've become content and we've become happy with the way things are and we've let our grove fall into disrepair.

And it's happening at churches all across the nation. I don't even know where this statistic comes from, but I've read it a number of times that about 7,000 churches a year are closing in The United States. And it's a big problem. Our population is growing. There's more and more people.

Why are there less churches? And I think it's because we're not living like Barnabas. And what's happening? We're seeing churches close. Churches are being torn down and they're putting stores on them.

They're building neighborhoods there. We've let our grove fall into disrepair. Are we like a dying grove? Are we fruit bearing Christians? If we live like Barnabas, we're going to have fruitful service.

And what does fruitful service look like for us as a Christian? We're going to be bringing people to church. We're going to be bringing people to a relationship with Christ. We're going to let people see the purpose of our life is to help them to have life in Christ. And so how do we produce fruit?

We just share, like I said this morning in Sunday school, we share our story over and over and over again. We tell what Christ did in our life. We invite people to church. We talk to people about their spiritual needs. We share with people what we're studying in our own Bible study.

And it helps us to have the right exposure to God's Word. How do we do it? We study our Bible. Be faithful to church. We serve the Lord whenever we can.

We fellowship with other people. We minister to God and to others. We spend time in prayer. Barnabas had a fruitful life because he cultivated it just like a farmer cultivates his grove. He cultivated and he cultivated those around him.

My friends, churches everywhere need an encourager. Churches everywhere need a Barnabas. May we have a favorable standing with the people in our lives as Christians that they'll look and say, Hey, we have a good testimony. May we be filled with the Holy Spirit, yielding to God, yielding to the Holy Spirit in every aspect of our life. May we be friendly servants, people that are willing to help edify and build up others.

If we do that, we'll certainly have fruitful service for the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for again the book of Acts that we've been able to look at today to just see an example in the life of Barnabas, the son of encouragement. Father, help each of us, no matter our personality, no matter our skills, no matter where we are in life, to just look at ourselves and to see how we can be an encouragement to those around us.

Father, no doubt pastor Rick would love to have a church filled with encouragers, people that are going out and sharing their story with their community so that the church can grow. Father, want to thank you for the faithfulness of everybody that's here today. Lord, I know it's rainy, it's a little cool here today, There's all kinds of things coming up for the holiday week. Thank you that these folks took time out of their busy schedule to be here. Father, we ask that you will just help us to be Barnabas this week as we go about our daily lives.

We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright. So, I'm going to tell