What if my neighborhood is actually a mission field?
WATCH
Standalone from February 8, 2025
“It's great to receive encouragement. It's greater to give encouragement.”
Selections from Acts by Paul Mutchler
SUMMARY
This sermon focuses on biblical encouragement through the life of Barnabas, showing that it’s not just a kind gesture but one of the greatest gifts Christians can give and receive. Drawing on his decades of ministry, Pastor Paul Mutchler calls Neighborhood Church to reject being a passive “let them” church and instead actively encourage their roughly 300 surrounding neighbors, recognizing that each believer is uniquely wired by God to see and meet real needs.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
📖 Read Acts 4:32-37
📖 Read Acts 9:26-31
📖 Read Acts 11:19-26
📖 Read Acts 13:1-5
📖 Read Acts 13:13
📖 Read Acts 13:46-52
📖 Read Acts 15:2
📖 Read Acts 15:12
📖 Read Acts 15:36-41
📖 Read 2 Timothy 4:11
📖 Read Colossians 4:10
📖 Read 1 Peter 5:13
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Well, good morning again, church. We've been preaching the last couple of weeks out of Psalm 23, and, like, there's stuff I don't. I feel a lot, but I don't always talk about it. And one of the things is, I realized that for many of you in this room, I could, like, either be your brother or I could be your kid. And I'm, like, aware of how young I am.
I was sitting with a friend this week, and they were like, so you're like, what, 50? Like, late 40s, early 50s? I was like, I'm 36. I think 37. Right.
And so if. If you've been coming to neighborhood church, and you're like, man, I just. Mike really believes this stuff, and he's really locked in, and I just, like. I like how he preaches and things like that. Understand, I am untested.
And the biggest miracle to me about the Christian faith is not that there's young guys who are convinced that it's true. It's that there's old guys who have decades and decades and decades of experience and continue to sing songs like, God, you're good. So I want to introduce to you Pastor Paul Mutchler. Carlos has said that he was Carlos pastor when they were, like, 18. They've stayed in contact.
He was the one who introduced me and Carlos. So it's crazy that, like, Carlos and I live, I don't know, four or five blocks apart. But we never would have met if not for a crazy Zoom call in 2020 where Paul was on it. Like, just kooky stuff that, like, God gets the credit for everything that happens here, and I just am so grateful for him. And so Pastor Paul is gonna be in town.
I asked him if he would share some encouragement to you. So, Paul Mutchler.
Yeah. Thank you.
Okay, good. Thank you. Farmer Carlos.
What a delight to be here.
I don't think of myself as old.
Oh, Kid Nation. Kid Nation. Especially the noisy ones, which was music. Music to my ears this morning. Boy, I've seen some great things this week.
I had a chance to sit in a chapel where Camden was a student, and I had never met him before. But this high school student came up after chapel and greeted Michael and hugged him. And I'm going, that's a Polaroid moment. And then this morning, you can count them. I saw Drum Riley.
I saw Riley smile three times while playing the drums. That's a Polaroid moment. Where are you, Riley? Did I just. Sorry, buddy, but What a thrill.
I've been here enough times to have watched, in particular, him grow and mature. And I'm going 13, pretty good drums already. He's likely be on congas and timpani and bass, drums or whatever by the time we come back again. So I recognize I'm old. Every once in a while, I look in the mirror and I go, oh, that's nice hair.
Nice beard. I refuse to let barbers or stylists, when they cut my hair, you know, they want to bring out that mirror and show you the back of your head. And I say, no, thanks. But then there's sweet moments of being older. To have known Arnold Krigbaum as the dean of Grace College back in the 70s when I was a student in the seminary, and to realize that Arnold in his.
I knew Arnold was the guy that started this church and with 12 other people, all retirees, they had the faith to pray and develop a Bible study that grew into a church. The Faith and the vision to purchased 10 acres of land in 1982 to borrow $80,000 to buy 10, may I say, very strategic acres of land in the middle of. How uniquely you changed your name to neighborhood church. That's good news and bad news. Good news is it really describes you.
The bad news is, do they know it? Okay, so it's thrilled. And then your second pastor was Chuck Davis, who I followed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and have maintained a friendship and a communication with him as he now, at 80 something, has led Caribbean Vision. And we have a pile of Grace Brethren churches in the Bahamas and in Haiti and in Trinidad. And in fact, we spent our last.
Yeah, we owned a home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a retirement home. We owned it for many years before we retired, and then we lived there for six years in retirement and couldn't go to any Grace Brethren church around because there were five of them, but they all spoke Creole and I'm not into foreign languages, So I ended up being the best Brethren Southern Baptist you could imagine. So I had a delightful time there. But it's been fun to see the yoke and the partnership in ministry with your pastor and with Carlos. I've been impressed with Ryan, and truthfully, I'm really impressed.
First time I was here, you didn't need all these chairs. Okay, so God's doing a great thing in the midst of you, but the opportunity is awesome. I did walk through the place. I wanted to see the fancy door going into the children's wing last week. And then today I did a walk through and I Went, Yeah, same as last week.
That nursery library has empty crib.
Well, good. Who's going to.
Somebody, somebody. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. That's because a church that doesn't have babies is going to end up like my church in Fort Lauderdale. Grace Fernando Church.
It used to be. It used to be. And you have a delightful thing going for you with all these kids that are making noise and stuff during the first part of the service, and yet you're making impressions and you're setting attitudes. And another good Polaroid moment this morning was watching Patrick. Oh, 9:30am 20 people praying for you and for the service today and for the neighborhood during that.
I kind of peaked once because I heard a little ruckus over here in the back, and then I saw Patrick has the evil eye, and he did a really good job with whatever caught his attention and was distracting at the moment. But that's music. You do know that. Yeah. Amen.
Okay. All right. So I. I wanted to share one of the passions. I couldn't even call it a burden of my life because it's a passion. I have strived to be a fulfillment of this message and have encouraged churches wherever I've gone to follow in the pattern of encouragement.
You have flyers. Right. You have outlines. I might follow that. But encouragement is, my thesis, is it's the greatest gift because you can give it and you can receive it.
And the reason, I think the writer of Hebrews says, don't forsake the assembling together of yourselves, as is a habit of some, but come together and encourage one another, stir up one another to love and good deeds. Well, imagine this. So this group of people, uniquely all sat on this same time, the same side of the church, and they decided they were going to encourage somebody today. Well, the good news is, uniquely, maybe this side of the auditorium, everybody came in here going, I feel like second cousin to Eeyore, I need some encouragement. Well, that's a great thing.
But often those that need encouragement just go and become bedside Baptists, and they stay away. But they are the group that needs the encouragement the most. Now add a complication to that. So they stay away. So the only people in the auditorium today are all of them.
And they are so frustrated and they're exasperating one another because they're going to say, I want to encourage you. No, I want to encourage you. No, I want to encourage you. No, I want to encourage you. They got nobody to encourage because everybody that was discouraged stayed away.
The body of Christ is so unique in that he knows, he knows, he knows. Who needs a word? Who needs a hug, a pat on the shoulder, occasionally a kick in the seat of the pants? Because the word encouragement means to strengthen or to instill courage or to stimulate or to spur, like in the Hebrews passage. And I grew up on a dairy farm, and we had beef cattle as well.
And so regularly we would ship cattle by way of a truck to Market. And, you know, their whole life has been in the barns and in the pastures. This truck and this chute is something new and strange. And quite a few of them would balk. And the truck driver said, I got this.
You know, you're whacking with cane or you're pushing with a tube of four. He says, I got this. And he comes out with a long cylindrical tube that contains eight D batteries in it and it has two prongs on the other end of it. And he comes out and he just gently, or not, otherwise he goes on the back. On the back flank of that cow.
Next thing you know, in the truck. That's encouraged, that.
That's encourage.
So when I think Barnabas was the author of the Book of Hebrews, you had the scripture reading from 9:27 or up through 26, I think. And the writer there talks about in chapter 10, verse 14, he says, by one sacrifice, He, Jesus Christ, has made perfect forever those who are being made holy, you and me, I did not attain holiness. He described me as holy, separate unto God. And then he says down in verse 19, says, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, I don't need an intermediary. Neither do you.
You go direct to Jesus by a new and living way opened up for us through the curtain that is his. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith. Having a heart sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold unswervingly to the hope that we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider, think about, decide how we can spur on one another toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.
But let us encourage, spur, kick in the seat of pants if necessary, one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching. Because there is a time, a window, an opportunity for us. But there is a celebration coming, and we want to be ready for it. So I reflected on Those that had the gift or chose the discipline, spurring me on to love and good deeds. Sociology or social studies.
And history teacher in high school. His name was Dilly. And he called me from my freshman year through my senior year, Theophilus. And didn't tell me why or who he was. And I kept saying, why do you call me Theophilus?
He says, oh, I just do. And I said, well, what's Theophilus? He says, you'll figure it out. And he, without telling me to read my Bible, was encouraging me to read my Bible. And finally I stumbled upon the writings of Luke that he wrote to his dear friend Theophilus, who was a lover of wisdom.
So already this guy Dele was spurring me on towards a characteristic. Then another teacher in high school, voag teacher and the junior class drama sponsor. His name was Neff, and I was in the play. Not that it's the one and only play I'd ever been in my life, but it was called Melissa, My Western miss. And I had the part of a judge.
And that's where I really discovered my either terminal laziness or actual inability to memorize things and made it all the way to the Friday afternoon student assembly where we give a little snippet. And it was from Act 3, where I had a prominent role as the judge. I murdered my lines. And it was so obvious to the student body, they started laughing. It got so bad that I took my gavel and I pounded it on the table.
I said, you're all out of order. Brought the house down. Everybody loved it. They came back for the play. Neff, voag teacher, he had a stutter when he got excited.
And Neff met me coming off the platform and without any witnesses, so he didn't get hauled to court. But he lifted me up. He was shorter than me, but he lifted me up by my shirt, up and against the wall and said, much, Lord, you do that and I'll kill you. Which led me to an altar call. Experience.
Dear God, help me get through this play tonight. I did. I did. I had the script on the Judges panel in front of me while I was going through. Okay, I had gum in lines.
He was spurring me on to love and good deeds. And then probably the most impactful teacher had was Mr. Kininger. He was my band teacher. He started me on French horn when I was 10 years old. He taught me private lessons on the French horn.
He himself had been a horn player in an army band. And he was tough, he was good, and he made me into Maybe not tough, but pretty good. And that French horn served me until just six years ago when I finally saw it sold. It played in marching bands, community bands, an army band on Fort Eustis, Virginia, where off hours, I met the young lady that now has assisted me in 54 years of ministry. And then there was my pastor.
Growing up, he had been an athlete, a football player at some college in Chicago. And he, on graduation Sunday, gave me a Bible, a New Testament gift, and then said, hey, I'd like you to hang around after church and see me. And I said, okay. So I'm hanging around. It's just us again, no witnesses.
And he says, and it was a formerly eub, now United Methodist Church. And he says, you know, we don't. We don't normally see visions or have dreams, Biblical dreams. I said, yeah. He said, but I had a dream.
And I said, oh, what's that? He said, I dreamt you went into the ministry. Should I tell him what I really said? Okay. So I said, well, you can go someplace.
And took my new Bible and walked out. Well, as you can tell, God in his sense of humor and Arnold Detenhofer and his patience. We had a dear fellowship and years of ministry together. And then I was honored to preach his funeral service. These were all encouragers in my life.
And the list can go on and on. Carlos and I were talking about the difference between a father who expected good grades and a father who rewarded good grades. My dad paid us a quarter. This will confirm how old I am. He paid us a quarter for every A we got on our grade card.
Nothing for a B. And we paid him a quarter for every C we got on the grade card. That's encouragement, that's stimulation. Hope your wheels are starting to turn because they were turning for a guy named Joseph. And In Acts, chapter four, we run into this Joseph character.
And in verses 32 through 37, dynamic start of this. Of this New Testament church. Kind of like, I'm assuming the dynamic start of Ocala was back in 82. All the believers, verse 32, were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.
Back in the 70s, I was in the Jesus movement, and so many of us tried what we thought was communal living based upon this, and it was a good idea. But we didn't have the spirit of God moving in us, telling us to share everything we had with great power. The apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And cool much grace was with them all there were no needy persons among them. Think about that.
For from time to time those who owned lands or houses, sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet. And it was distributed to anyone as he had need. That would be dynamic. Now Joseph, who was a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles feet. Barnabas was a giver.
And I'm not reading scripture here to say somebody here needs to sell their property and give it to the church. No, I'm saying the characteristic of encouragement was that Barnabas was a giver. He had obviously some resources. He had the movement of the spirit of God in his life. He saw a need and he met it.
Back in Fort Lauderdale we had the adventure of taking a a little preschool and expanding it to an inner city kindergarten through eighth grade Christian school. And when I went there in 1980, there were like 35 people, median age 68 or 70.
And God so graciously just blew our attendance up. And they affirmed the vision for expanding the Christian school. But we were inner city and we were broke. We were so broke that I took an outside job for a couple of years and we would have toilet paper days for the Christian school. How can you save money on toilet paper?
Have every kid bring a roll of toilet paper from home and you put it in a shelf and that's your supplies. In the midst of all that, I got a call from Howard and Adeline Zook, both with the Lord today. She was an ornery person. He was the plaster person for a really good company that she was the brains for. And she was a former Mennonite who had gotten kicked out of her church because she refused to wear a head covering and fought over whether it was foot washing or feet washing and just an ornery old bird.
But this ornery old bird on my first visit showed me. In fact I visited her in her bedroom. She had brittle bones. She would wake up in the morning and stretch and she'd break toes. Just terrible, terrible, painful.
And before the days of gooseneck lamps and all that stuff, Howard had fixed up cardboard and aluminum foil shield around a lamp that she could when she woke up with pain during the night, not bother him. But she'd be able to turn that light on and turn to the back of her book where she had two pages of single spaced prayer people prayer requests. And I could see the history of the pastors that she had grown under and my Name was last on that list. So those kind of people that. Her being that ornery and that godly and, you know.
So she calls and I came running. Linda was with me the day that we visited. She called during this extreme hardship time and said, I need you to come see me. Yes, ma', am. I go visit.
Why am I here? She says, I'm here to give you this. And she gave me a check for $10,000. Fort Lauderdale Grace brethren Church and Christian School, Adelaide, how do you. What?
And she says, well, I. She was pushing 90 at this time. And she says, well, I had this set aside for a facelift. While I'm trying to process that, Howard is sitting on the edge of the bed with me. And he reaches over and he just loved this woman.
He reaches over, he says, oh, sweetheart, you don't need a facelift. And as fast as he did that, she reached over and slapped his hand and said, wait, you old fool, you don't have your glasses on.
That's magic. Seeing how the spirit of God moves. You don't think. I walked away encouraged. And I'm not talking about the money.
Holy, holy cow. That was. That was a great, great moment. Well, when I in the. I had the privilege of growing up in a solid Christian family, a cultural family, a church going family.
I got all of Jesus when I was 7 years old through vacation Bible school. Well, fast forward through a great Christian childhood in a church that was only about this deep theologically. And then normal teenager. So here I am at Fort Eustis, Virginia. I'm 21, and I'm in a revival meeting in a Southern Baptist church where Jesus got all of me.
And what a delightful ride there. And when that happened, my first exposure to Southern Baptist Church, it was in the days where no good Methodist ever went to church on Sunday night unless it was during Lent. That was. So I'm driving around on a Sunday night off post, and I'm looking for. I'm looking for a church.
I'm just looking. I'm 20, 21 in the army, and I see a church fire lit up and I can tell there's some cars in the parking lot. That must be one of them Pentecostal churches where they handle snakes and beat tambourines and stuff. I'm going for the show, I kid you not. And I walked in to a sanctuary that was full front to back, side to side, and had 40 people, including 20.
I counted them single women in the choir loft. And the preacher preached something I had passed in catechism, but he preached that Jesus was coming again.
Now I'm sitting there. 71. Some of you will know, coming out of the Vietnam War era, angry, bitter, I had not an engagement, but almost that broke up all the pieces. Before I went to boot camp, where I had just quit smoking as a college student. And I found out they.
They smoke for 10 minutes and work for 50. And I caught in a moment, I'm not happy. And I am there in my cultural garb of army buzzed head. Love beads, brown tank top, and one of my wife's favorite, the orange short, hot pants of the day and sandals. You got the picture of what I looked like, kind of like what the apostle Paul looked like to the apostles, to the disciples.
And my body language was amazing. Oh, I had my sunglasses on. I left them on for the whole church service and had my arms crossed the whole time. Now what somebody that was determined to be an encourager figured out, but what nobody else knew in that church was my heart was on fire.
I am going. I cannot believe this. I've studied a lot of economics. I'm a Numbers counter. Square footage and people and good songs and young people and, wow, he's coming back.
But as soon as the church service was over, I got up and walked out. And before I got to the door, I got tackled by a five foot four lady, both directions. And I'm going. And I look and Shirley Walker has got her arm around me. And I said, hi, y', all, this is Virginia.
Hi, y'. All. Y' all from the army? What gave it away? Yeah, well.
Well, how would you like to come to my home tonight after church and meet my two daughters and have chocolate cake? I was angry at women at that particular time. Sharp daughters. But the cake got me there. Then she and her husband discipled me over the next weeks, where I was posted there.
Meals, concerts, teaching, always this Christian radio program. Pat Robertson, somebody playing on the radio. They discipled me, they encouraged me, did my laundry. She asked a couple times, are you sure you don't like my daughter? You know, so encouragement takes many very.
In fact, would you believe that she was part of the conspiracy group that put Linda and me together on a youth weekend retreat washing dishes.
Now that's a great first date, kids. Okay. And by the way, church is your best, not the only, but it's the best place to find a godly woman, so that was for free. But. So if you look at Acts, chapter nine, you'll see what happened to the apostle Paul in verse 26 through 31.
And Saul had gotten saved had an experience with Jesus on the road. And so when he comes to Jerusalem, now he's totally jazzed. Now he's one of the most educated lawyers and scribes and high placed Jews in the whole country. And he was so zealous. He'd been persecuting Christians before he met Jesus.
Now he's met Jesus and verse 26, when he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him. Trojan horse. Trojan horse or back in the 70s, Jane Fonda, she couldn't be saved. Chuck Colson, he couldn't be saved and they were afraid of him.
You ever sit in church and look at some stranger and have fearful thoughts? They didn't believe he was really a disciple, but Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord. The Lord had spoken to him, how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.
He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they tried to kill him. When the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. So here comes what is appropriately feared as a very possible trojan horse.
And 12 guys said.
That would have been very appropriate and fair in that society. You know what? When somebody walks in here, stumbles in halfway through a church service and he's glassy eyed and he has a long black trench coat, it's reasonable to go.
But Barnabas characterized so much by encouragement. The apostles nicknamed him Barney and changed him from Joseph to Barney Abbas, son of encouragement. Barnabas took hold of him, said, hey, let's go down to the Starbucks, get a coffee, tell me your story. Really you were. And he heard his testimony and spirit was confirming.
And so then he knew what he had to do. First he encouraged Saul and then he had to go encourage the disciples. He said, guys, he's for real. I'm vouching for him. Kind of like a quarterback to a running back.
Handoff. That's encouragement. So he was not just a giver, but he was a gripper. They took him and brought him. He took him, he brought him and he told them, trying to stay with my notes.
It's your only hope of getting out on time.
So let me tell you about Agrippa that I knew way before I started reading my Bible. Her name was Rose Weisenauer. Now Rose never married, so she's a little old maid, wore very Dowdy clothes. Dowdy means so old that anyhow. And she had thick glasses and she had a lisp and she stood this tall, which to a first, second, third grader coming up the stairs at Gracie UB Church.
You come up one flight of stairs, you turn the corner and there's another six or seven steps ahead of you. And you're in your small world of 6, 7, 8 years old. And this lady is standing there and she says, oh, Paul, I am so glad to see you. Jesus loves you. Well, I got a seminary degree.
I supposedly should know Greek and Hebrew. But the greatest theologian I ever met was Rose Eisenhower.
Somebody right now is theologing, theologizing your children.
I hope they're doing it because Jesus loves you and so do I.
She was a gripper as well. Well, this Walker family that discipled me, they were proof of Barnabas being a grower. If you look in Acts, chapter 11, I don't know. Is this stuff showing? Yeah.
Okay. Acts, chapter 11, verses 19 through 26. So you know the Great Commission, Jesus said, go therefore make disciples. Baptizing, teaching them, baptizing them, namely the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Three dips.
And the word for go was not command. Now that ruins a lot of preachers. Good messages.
It was an assumption. The word translated correctly means in your going, while you're mowing your lawn and neighbor Bob leans over the fence to talk to you while you're at the hardware store, while you're in a restaurant, while you're at work, in your going, make disciples lead people to Jesus. Well, they were growers in my life. Like I say, I grew up an inch thick and a mile wide and they depthened my life. So the Jerusalem.
So it's not uncommon that a church gets comfortable.
They might have 10 acres in the middle of a neighborhood and have comfortable seating and air conditioning and feel pretty good about the attendance. And they go, ah. Somebody described a church as a let them church to me recently. And they in their comfort, they basically sit back and go, yeah, Jesus command is Matthew 28, let them do that. And Jerusalem Christians were sitting in Jerusalem and not doing anything about Judea, Samaria and the outermost parts of the world.
So God lets Saul show up and persecution to the point that it drove them out.
We're roaming around Florida right now. Last month we spent a couple weeks in a delightful place with four families. Three of them were permanent. We were the tourists. And I met the neighbor.
And persecution drove his fourth generation Christian family out Pakistan. And his wife had left Estonia under persecution that was just within the last 30 years. And I said, well, ha. Pakistan, Estonia. And he was working in Dubai and she was on a church mission trip.
Dubai. And they met. Great couple. Amazing what they're doing. And they were driven out.
They were persecuted. Well, maybe God wanted them to come and start work in North Port Florida as they're considering with the Bible study they're in. Nothing new under the sun. Verse 19, chapter 11. Now, those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen the first martyr, they traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch.
Telling the message only to Jews. It's because Jesus came as a Jew to Jews. God's children chosen some of them. However, men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks, also telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them.
A great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
Cool. Well, they sent him on. News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem. They sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.
He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. And a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great Numbers of people. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.
Oh my, there is so much there, so much there. They sent Barnabas to teach this first group of people that were called Little Christs in Antioch. And the unique thing was there were Jews and Gentiles. And when he and I imagine what happened, he got exhausted and said, I need another teacher. Maybe step it up and better teacher.
He goes back and he brings Paul back to teach. And then the two of them team taught for a year. Wow, that'd be like Billy Graham and his son Franklin Graham spending a year teaching, teaching, teaching.
But it took persecution to get them teachable. Just saying he was a grower.
Barnabas was a giver, saw a need, met it. He was a gripper, saw a person, brought them along. He was a grower. The last thing is he was also a groaner. In Acts chapter 13 we have this record, a horrible, horrible passage with powerful lessons.
Acts 13:1 5. In the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, called Niger, Lucius Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, that's when he does his thing. The Holy Spirit said, set apart from me, Barnabas and Saul. He always takes the best first for the work to which I have called them.
So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them all off. Now the two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia, sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. That's where the New Testament church always started. We give first shot to God's chosen people.
John was with them as their helper. Now if you look down in verse 13, you see that from Paphos Paul and his companions sailed to Perga and Pamphylia where John left them to return to Jerusalem. Don't know why, don't know how old he was. But he left them homesick, family problems, not tough enough to travel, I don't know. But he left them.
Then in 46 verses 46 through 52 gets worse. Then Paul and Sarnabus answered in a controversial doctrinal meeting. We had to speak the word of God to you first, Jews, since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life. Satire. We now turn to the Gentiles, for this is what the Lord has commanded us.
I made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. So when all the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord. And all who were appointed as eternal life believed for the first time in these peoples, in these Gentiles living history. They were no longer called dogs by the chosen.
They still were by the chosen who refused to believe. But now they're considered brothers and sisters. The word of the Lord spread throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the God fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. Boy, it's just tough if you got money and power to have your boat rocked.
Those poor, wealthy, high placed people were fertile targets of the adversary. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their region. So Paul and Barnabas shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. So there's still some great magic going on.
And the life of Paul and Bartima continues in chapter 15, verse 2.
They were facing legalistic, unregenerate Jews that kept following him around and trying to get them into trouble. And this brought. And they would say, unless you're circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So they weren't just feel good, namby pamby guys out on the field.
They could deliver sharp truth. In verse 12, they are speaking to a whole assembly. They became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up saying, brothers, listen to me. And then he keeps going.
Now in verse 36 of chapter 15, sometime later, Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preach the word of God, the word of the Lord and see how they're doing. He had a total of three missionary trips and Barnabas was with him on, I think it was the first two. But he says it's time to go back and review our work, see how they're doing. I've been going through Thessalonians here lately with a group of people and the book of first Thessalonians is probably one of the earliest New Testament letters ever written. They want to go back to Thessalonia, to Philippi, you know, let's go back.
And Paul wanted. Oh, and the. Let's see, I gotta stay with the text. Oh yeah, this is the tough part. Barnabas wanted to take John, remember him?
He went out on the first journey and bagged out. He wanted to take John, also called Mark with them. But Paul did not think it wise to take him because he had deserted him. And Pamphylion had not continued with them in the work.
Barnabas, the encourager, the guy that spotted Saul, that brought him in, a tender heart he sees. And he said, let's take John with us on this review. Paul was kind of a lawyer and he was used to beating up and killing Christians prior to coming to Christ. So he's just kind of a I just tell like it is guy. He said, no, no, no.
He bailed out on us. I do not know why, but no. Once and done, they had such a sharp disagreement, not just a disagreement sharp, that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.
He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. Oh, how sad. What a team. Broken up. Well, I give you the end of the story.
Because God is a God of the second chance. And when Paul was writing later, his second letter to Timothy, chapter four, verse 11, he's dying, he's winding down his days, he's in jail. And he writes to Timothy and he says, get Mark, bring him to me, for he is useful to me.
Then when he was doing a wrap up of his letter to the Colossians in 4:10, he says, greetings, or he's starting. He said, greetings, and people that are with me greet you. Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. Well, cousin of Barnabas. Didn't know that about him.
That helps understand. But he's with Paul. Well, so if you do some other homework, you would find out that in, in the Gospel of Mark, when they come to take Jesus in the garden, there's a young man watching it all who has only on a linen cloak. And the disciples grabbed him. In all the chaos, you know, Peter's cutting off ears and Jesus is healing the ear.
And in all the chaos they go, hey, look at that kid standing on the peripheral of the group. They grab ahold of him, he slips out of his cloak and runs stark, raven naked out of the garden. I think that was John, Mark, second chance. Second chance. God, second chance.
Do you know that Paul was among the group that held the cloaks when the Jews stoned Stephen to death?
Is anybody too bad to be saved? No, but somebody's got to act on that, don't they? So glad to see you.
And then Peter, when he's writing his letter, chapter 5, verse 13, he says, greetings from and my son Mark. Now he wasn't his biological son, he was his spiritual son. So my thesis is encouragement is a great thing to receive, but it's a greater thing to give. Am I. I don't care.
So what? So what? Well, you're the neighborhood church.
Do you know that you have about.
About at least a minimum? Because we counted them coming into church today. Didn't we have a minimum of 100 modular families surrounding the neighborhood church, and that the neighborhood next to them, which is still your neighborhood, has at least 50 to 60 traditional family homes? And if we think that on the average these places are going to have at least two people in them. So how easy did God make evangelism for you?
He surrounded you with 300 people at least, plus co workers, plus families, plus friends.
Wow.
So encouragement. Who does it?
This is question and answer time. Who does encouragement? Okay, a little pathetic there. Who does encouragement? Okay.
Who needs encouragement? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So. So what's the best opportunity for encouragement.
Well, deaths, births, sickness, graduations, times where in our busy lives people are more available to spiritual things. A shindig. I mean, I really have been following you guys for years, and your shindig is a great initiating point to visiting those 300 people. Hey, I want to invite you to our shindig. It's food and fun and fellowship and music and farmer Carlos and his bib overalls, you know, or after the shindig, you had a signup and within.
Within five days, you show up. Thanks for coming to the shindig. Here's a pen from the neighborhood church, door to door. When do you do it? Now.
When my kids were kids, they had now and then candies. Well, when do you do encouragement? Now. Now and later. Ah, I don't buy that.
When do you do encouragement? Now and always. And where should you do encouragement? Where you are.
You make it out to be some spiritual activity that you have to get dressed up for or go join a bowling league or whatever. You won't do it. But if you realize I'm here, I'm on divine appointment, there's a reason why. Well, last night we were out to dinner and I didn't see it. We weren't facing the right way.
But Carlos and Stephanie, I could tell they were just touched by something. And they observed that there was a single lady at the restaurant eating by herself and that both the server and the food deliverer person talked with her, knelt down and talked to her face and face. Something was going on. She needed and was receiving encouragement. And they took time out of there.
The more you hustle, the more you make lifestyle to stop. They had a divine appointment.
How you do it well, uniquely you.
Answer this question. Why can you say duh? Say that? Why should you be an encourager? Duh.
It's obvious. It's obvious the world needs us sitting on top of 10 acres in the middle of the neighborhood. So, Carlos, come up. I want you to share one thing with me as I wrap. But, you know, here's an example.
I don't know what the attendance is here today, but there's got to be at least 50 different wired sons and daughters of God wired uniquely. You see things that the other person in the pew doesn't see. You sense things the other person doesn't see. Don't be a Let them. Don't be a.
Let George do it. You know, sit back. And recently, you know, I was. When I drove up to the driveway today, I went, what's with the orange cones? Well, Somebody saw a massive pothole and somebody recruited a guy with a truck and a younger guy with muscles, and they went with his credit card to hardware store, bought 15 bags of cold patch asphalt, and now you only have.
They should have bought 20.
Now you only have 80% of a pothole that you're all driving around coming in. Because somebody saw that. I said, and somebody says, I am somebody. I can do that.
That's encouragement, following the spirit of the Lord. Here's some of the best encouragement that I've heard about recently. Tell us, because I'm saying, how did a good Puerto Rican boy like you, raised in the armpit of the Midwest, how did you ever come to know Christ and tell us how that happened?
Well, many years ago, short version, because I've taken a lot of time here. 13 years old, Orlando, Florida. Rolling gate that my dad made. A man came and decided he was going to be brave enough to open that gate up and just come walking up our driveway. My dad's a very stern, loud guy when you do stuff he doesn't like.
And he comes unglued from the backyard cussing this man out, literally, get off my property. Who do you blinkity blank think you are? And the guy's run, almost running out, trying to get out and close the gate, okay? And so he leaves, comes back the next week, same guy standing at the gate, he learned his lesson, standing at the gate, just looking around. And my dad sees him and he comes out of the backyard, what is wrong with you?
You know? And. And he says, what do you want? Who are you? He said, my name's Pastor Rosario.
I have a little church. And I was just wanting to see if maybe you and your family wanted to come. Man, will you just get the Blankety Blank off my property and leave me alone. He shoes them off again. The next week, he's standing there at the fence the same way, just watching.
And my dad comes walking to the gate, he says, what do I got to do to get rid of you? Can you just leave me alone? He said, all I want is one thing. I want you to bring your family to my church one time, just one time. And my dad said, I will cut you a deal right now if you promise you will leave me alone and never come to my gate again.
I'll bring my family this Sunday, one time to your church, but you got to promise not to come back. Okay? Happy little guy. He leaves. We went into the church, was eight of us, six kids.
And my mom and dad took up the back seat and we came every Sunday after that. Yeah.
So 44 years ago, somebody was an obnoxious visitor in his neighborhood.
That's not a rarity. We had a shindig at our church in Fort Lauderdale and we produced flyers inviting people to a Thanksgiving Day service. And the promise was it'd be one hour between the cooking and the eatin state. Revolutionary type of a thought. And I'm going, well, I told the people we've got to take these flyers to their neighbors.
So one day after work, I'm going out door to door, and I went to one door, and it was Jealousy. Windows, door cracks open and the lady says, what the do you want? I said, well, hi, my name is Paul Munchler. I'm from Grace Brethren Church, and we're having a shindig and I wanted to invite you. No, thanks.
Something, something.
So the next time we had some kind of a shindig, an event.
Hi, I'm here to invite you to this shindig. And she says. She says, look, my mother is deaf and blind and so is my dog that craps all over the floor in my house. Moved down here when my husband retired from the New York City Fire Department and he died in the first year. You take your paper and put it someplace, something.
So the next shindig, and on that one. And she says, through the Jealousy window, she says, I've been reading about you guys. You started with a bunch of German immigrants in Pennsylvania, didn't you? Gotcha.
And two more visits through the Jealousy. And then a visit where she invited me in. I give her a tract. Life's greatest question. I said, I'd like you to read this.
I'm not here to. To beat up on you anything or spiritually. But I said, I knew you're hurting. I want you to read this. And it's clear Plan of salvation.
And she calls me and she said, I did it. I said, what'd you do? That thing. What thing? That thing you gave me the book about.
What thing is that, friend? Well, I prayed that prayer. What prayer was that? I prayed to ask Jesus into my life. But I'm not going to go to your church.
I said, didn't ask you to praise the Lord. Would you like a couple ladies from our church to come to your home and have a Bible study? Now, you don't think they were committed? She was right. That house stunk.
Plus, I found out later she was a hydrophobe. So she contributed to that as well. They don't like water. And she proved it. Well, these two Ladies had came and read the Bible with her.
And she said, but I'm not coming to your church. They said, well, ask you to. I'm preaching one Sunday, and I see in this window out there, and I see Fran walk by. Fran, I'm so glad to see you here today. Yeah, well, I'm not getting baptized.
She feared water. Well, the day came where she had grown to the point where, trembling and shaking with fear, she went into the Baptistery tank. And it wasn't a Baptist tank, it was a Brethren tank. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Long story short, she lived another couple of years.
Saw her mother die, her dog die. We cleaned up the house a little bit. She gave the equivalent of a one million dollar gift to our Christian school. When she died, you'd have never known it. She was sitting on a gold mine in Wilton Manors.
And that ministry has been impacted because somebody was either too stubborn or too stupid to not keep going back. Carlos, you're enjoying some major ministry because somebody was stubborn enough to keep going back. You don't have to go far. 300 houses.
Let's pray. And I think you have a tradition of I'll pray, and then I'll invite you to join me in prayer as well. Okay. Father, I thank you so much for your love for us. Ah, just amazing.
You call us, you equip us, you sent your Son to die for us. Lord, thank you for him, for his shed blood on the cross of Calvary, the name by which we are saved. And then you empower us with your spirit. And we feel things and we sense things, and we do things that are beyond us. Because of your work in our life, we thank you so much.
We know it's not a formula, but it's a pattern of prayer that we join with disciples over the ages. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen
