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SERMONBalcony PeopleThat the least will be the greatest is the deepest reality in the kingdom.John Ortberg
Text: Acts 9:26–28
Topic: How God uses people to encourage greatness in others
From the editor
John Ortberg points out that we are surrounded by basement people—folks who drain the life from us. This reality makes it all the more sweeter that God has graciously provided balcony people—folks who will shout encouragement our way when we need it most. To show the power of his point, Ortberg examines the life of "the patron saint of encouragement": Barnabas. One of things you will probably enjoy most about this sermon is Ortberg's ability to work in insightful connections between the story of Barnabas and those of Paul, John Mark, and the early church as a whole. Barnabas was lurking about in some of the most pivotal moments in early Christian history. If not for his encouragement from the balcony, who knows what would have happened—as evidenced by Ortberg's final, moving illustration about an imagined funeral of honor for Barnabas.
Introduction
One of my lesser flaws is that I hate going to the gas station and filling up the tank of my car. I will ride that gauge as low as I can get it. My wife's car has a little button that will tell you how many miles you can go before you will run out of gas. I will ride that down until the car has about three blocks left before I take it home and switch cars with somebody else.
We have a propane gas barbecue grill, and I hate taking that propane tank in. There's a little gauge strip that changes colors, and I'll let it get down to bone dry before I get that tank refilled. One time last year, our home group was going to bring food to a homeless shelter. I thought, I want to put all the meat on our Weber grill at once, and that way I won't have to use that much propane out of the tank. I covered every square inch of that grill, but I didn't realize how much juice drips down from that much meat on the coals—and how much fire that generates. Our backyard was completely blanketed in smoke. The paint was completely blistered inside that Weber grill, but at least I didn't have to fill up the tank again. That was my primary goal.
The people who fill—or deplete—our tanks
Cars and grills aren't the only things that have fuel tanks. People have them, too. Everybody you know has a fuel tank, and it's in their inner being, in their spirit. You can read their gauge. Look them in the eye: some are alive and their eyes have fire in them; some are just glazed over. Look at their shoulders: some people are walking with shoulders squared and straight; some are all hunched over. Look at their gait: some people are marching and have energy; some people are just kind of trudging along.
You have a fuel tank, and there are some people who fill your tank. There are some people who breathe life into you. They remind you of how good God is. They call you to live up to the best you can be. When you're with them, you find your anxiety going down, and your hope and sense of trust and faith just go up.
Gregory of Nyssa was one of the early church fathers in the fourth century, and he painted a beautiful picture of this way of living. This is what he writes: "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." With that picture in mind, he says: "I seem to be doing the same thing myself. Most valued friend and brother, while you are competing admirably in a divine race, straining constantly for the prize of the heavenly calling, I exhort, urge, and encourage you vigorously."
Gregory is basically saying, "I'm up in the stands. I'm watching my friend run the race, and I'm cheering him on. This is your life. This is your race. God is with you, so don't stop. Keep running the race." Some people do that for you. They're what you would call your balcony people. When you're with them, they fill your tank.
Then you have other people in your life, who—when you're not looking—stick a hose in your tank, take a deep breath, and start siphoning the fuel out. They drain you of life. They are basement people, because they bring you down. These are the people who are joy challenged, dream squashing, and fault finding—slow leaks in the hot air balloon of your life. We're called to love them, but we've got to guard our hearts. Each of us can be basement people for other folks; there's a basement person inside all of us. But that's not God's plan for human life.
Encouragement, correctly understood, is the language of the New Testament. The word "to encourage" is used more than a hundred times in the New Testament. 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. His name is Barnabas, and we find him mostly in the Book of Acts. We're going to look at him and dream about what you and I can be.
Barnabas was a balcony person by giving.
We meet Barnabas for the first time in Acts 4. Here's how his story starts: "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus whom the apostles called Barnabas, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet." Now, Joseph was a Levite. Levites were a tribe of Israel, and in this day they served as assistants to the priests—as doorkeepers in the temple or musicians or something else. But Joseph could not do that. He was from Cyprus, which meant he hadn't been born in Israel. He was a Hellenist—a name given to Israelites born overseas. They were regarded as foreigners. They did not speak Aramaic, and they were considered to have picked up Gentile ways. There was a lot of hostility between native-born Israelites and the Hellenists. Because of the tension, Joseph wasn't allowed to serve in the temple like his people the Levites normally were allowed.
We'd expect Joseph to be kind of sour about this, but he's a balcony guy, and he becomes a part of this new community. He sees a need, and he says: I've got some property; I could sell some of my stuff to help people out.
Joseph is the first recorded donor in this new community. When the text says he put the money at the apostles' feet, he was saying: You'll know what to do with it best. No strings attached—you don't have to build a building with my name on it. Just use it to bless people.
There is an encouragement that comes when somebody gives. So many of you here know the joy of giving. Some of you have not just given; you have given sacrificially. You put yourself in touch with a spiritual power when you do that—it puts you in touch with deeper realities of the kingdom than money. People who give, even though they have less money, worry less about their money than people who never give, whom you would think would worry less.
When you start giving, you never know what's going to happen. You're putting yourself in the flow of a reality that's much bigger than you. Joseph does this. It's not just that he gave; it's the spirit he did it in. It's infectious. Some of you know that spirit, and some of you could. The disciples say to each other: Joe is just not an adequate name for this guy, so we're going to give him a new name. We're going to call him Barnabas—"son of encouragement," balcony boy. Every time he hears his name, then, he thinks, Yeah, that's who I am; that's who I want to be.
Barnabas encourages the community, the community encourages him, and it spirals upward like that. That's how encouragement works. That's how giving works.
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