Text: Acts 9:26–28
Topic: How God uses people to encourage greatness in others

• Illustration: Ortberg shares two illustrations—cars and gas grills—to show how we all need times of refueling.

• Everybody you know has a fuel tank, and it's in their inner being, in their spirit.
• You can read their gauge by looking them in the eye, noticing there slumped shoulders, or observing their gait.
• There are some people who fill your tank, breathing life into you and reminding you of how good God is.
  • Illustration: Gregory of Nyssa offers a metaphor to describe such people: "At horse races, the spectators intent on victory shout to their favorites in the contest. From the balcony they incite the rider to keener effort, urging the horses on while leaning forward and flailing the air with their outstretched hand instead of a whip."
• There are other people in your life who stick a hose in your tank, take a deep breath, and start siphoning the fuel out.
• These are basement people who drain the life out of you.
• Each of us can be basement people for other folks, but we're called to be balcony people. 
• Encouragement, correctly understood, is the language of the New Testament (used over 100 times).
• One of the great characters in the Bible—perhaps the patron saint of balcony people—is the guy we're going to look at today: Barnabas.
• We're going to look at him and dream about what you and I can be.

• We meet Barnabas for the first time in Acts 4 (under the name "Joseph").
• Joseph was a Levite, but he wasn't allowed to serve as an assistant to the priests, because he had been born in Cyprus, making him a Hellenist (an Israelite born overseas).
• We'd expect Joseph to be kind of sour about this, but he's a balcony guy.
• He becomes a part of the New Testament community, and when he sees a need, he responds.
• Joseph is the first recorded donor in this new community.
• He sold some property he had and put the money at the apostles' feet.
• There is an encouragement that comes when somebody gives.
• When you start giving, you never know what's going to happen, because you're putting yourself in the flow of a reality that's much bigger than you.
• Joseph freely gives, and his spirit is infectious.
• The disciples rename Joseph "Barnabas" (which means "son of encouragement").
• Barnabas encourages the community, the community encourages him, and it spirals upward like that.

• After all of this, Barnabas disappears.
• The next time we see him is in Acts 9, alongside a man named Saul.
• After Saul's conversion experience, he went to Jerusalem.
• He tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him.
• The disciples decided to send Barnabas to Saul to better understand the situation.
• Balcony people give you this wonderful gift: they believe you can change with God's help.
• Balcony people do not let who you were yesterday limit who you might be today—or who you might become tomorrow.
• Barnabas was willing to take a risk on Saul, and he eventually commended him to the other disciples.
• If Saul had not had Barnabas, his acceptance into the Jesus community would have never happened.
• This one balcony person gave him the wonderful gift of starting over, and "then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace."
• After all of this, Barnabas disappears until another critical moment in the history of the church.
• In Acts 11, the disciples are unsure as to what to think about Gentiles coming to the Lord (the Jesus movement has taken root in Antioch, a city outside of Israel).
• This is a hinge point in world history; up until this point, the good news about Jesus had spread nearly exclusively among Jewish people.
• Religious communities are not always great about change, so everything hinges on who Jerusalem is going to send to check this out.
• They send Barnabas, and "when he arrived and saw evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts."

• Antioch is where the Bible first says that God opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
• It wasn't long before Barnabas realized he was going to need somebody to help him deal with this new opportunity.
• As he reflects on his needs, he remembers Saul.
• Saul soon became Paul (changing the Jewish version of name to a Gentile version).
• Paul would become the great missionary to the Gentiles and the rest of the world, and all of this happened because of Barnabas.
• Balcony people can see things in others that no one else can see.
• As Paul and Barnabas begin to do ministry together, Barnabas's name is listed first.
• In the ancient world, the order of names tells you who's in charge, who's the boss, who carries the prestige of the mission.
• By Acts 14 the order of names switches, and Paul is listed first.
• From a human standpoint, this is terrible, because it seems Barnabas has done a bad job of career management.
• Barnabas could have been jealous over Paul's status; instead, he rejoiced in it.
• His joy was in recognizing and developing greatness in somebody else, because he's a balcony person.
• Jesus had said that in God's kingdom the last really are first, and the people who are the servants of all are really greatest.
• Barnabas is a kingdom kind of guy.

• Paul and Barnabas would often travel with other folks to develop their ministries.
• One of the young men they reached out to was named John Mark (or Mark, the one who wrote one of the Gospels).
• Mark travels with them for a time, but Luke soon writes about how John Mark deserted them.
• Paul wants to move along without Mark, but Barnabas wants to give him a second chance; they part ways over the matter. 
• It's interesting that the Bible doesn't say that one was wrong or the other was right.
• Sometimes it is up to us to decide, and that's part of what God wants for us, because then we grow.
• But notice what Paul writes to Timothy in what was perhaps the last letter he ever wrote: "Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is helpful in my ministry."
• Old Barnabas saw something in Mark that turned out to be right all along.
• The life of John Mark is one more tribute to the power of a balcony person.
• What if Barnabas had given up on Mark?

• We need to be balcony people for each other.
• This idea is all over the New Testament.
  • Hebrews 3:13 and 10:25
• Do you ever think about what you want folks to say at your funeral?
  • Illustration: Ortberg imagines Barnabas's funeral, with Paul, Mark, and others sharing how their balcony person—Barnabas—had made all the different in their lives.

• That's a kingdom funeral of a man who never tried to be great, but just tried to call out greatness in others.
• The spread of the gospel from this one little ethnic group where it had been housed for so many centuries to the whole world—and the collective writings of Paul and Mark that comprise about half the writings of the New Testament—all happened because one man stood in the balcony and said: Keep going; you can do it.
• In the kingdom, that's what greatness looks like.