10th Birthday Message

Our text for this morning, while you're doing that, I want to welcome Kathy back to worship. After how many weeks have you been? Seven weeks. Kathy Koper's back. And I think someone mentioned to me that, yeah, Linda, where? Linda DePriest is a worshiper. Is that true, Lois? Linda DePriest came today. God bless you, Linda. We're glad you're here. They're special, special people. Pastor Tom wants you to know that SOAR is only three weeks away, and he needs your participation. That's why we have the big SOAR. If you walked in the front door and didn't see this, you were really in outer space. It says SOAR in letters in shocking pink. What that is for, to help you to recognize we need about another hundred volunteers or so to help. Just that weekend, April 26th. If you can help, stop out there and see Pastor Tom at the visitor center right afterwards. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it sure is important to us. Because this is our 10th birthday, I believe that it's the wisdom of God for us to look and evaluate. Look at our church, look at who we are, and evaluate a bit. Don't you do that on your birthday? Don't you kind of take stock of things? You ought to. It's wisdom to do that. One of the things that John Hagai said that has stuck with me is that he plans six months in advance as if it would be his last six months on earth. He writes his epitaph six months later, and he works backward from that. And that's a good idea. We all have our idea of what the ideal church is, don't we? I mean, you do. You do have that ideal in your mind, I know. Some of you have told me what it is. Some of you came from a church where it was, and you haven't found it yet. I don't know why you left that church, but you're here now. Some of you have read about the ideal church, or you saw it on the 700 Club, and said, that's what we need to be like, Pastor. Some of you have visited places, and that's been the perfect place. Come back with all these ideas, and it's good. I mean, it is really a good idea to have ideals in mind. Because, folks, listen, we're a family. And we need to treat this whole operation, as it were, as we would a family. How many of you don't change families a whole lot? When you get tired of the kids, you'd like to sometimes go ahead and just, but no, you work through it with them. And there's much wisdom to working through and to establish what your ideal would be, so that you can participate in making it better. Now, for me, when I decided that I was going to evaluate the church, I decided that it was not the best thing to do to go comparing us with other churches. How many of you know it's not a good idea to compare yourself with other families? Well, you look at that, and you say, have you ever said to your husband or wife, you know, I wish our kids could be like one of our kids. No, well, they're not going to be like them, because they're your kids. Or you say someone else's family, they always seem to be so at peace. But, you know, that's usually not the case, but they seem to be that way. Well, how many believe that it's better for us to compare our church to the Word of God than any other church? That's where we need to go. So I was doing that this past week. And I was looking at what the Word said about churches. I studied the church at Corinth, and I studied the church at Rome, and Philippi, and Thessalonica, and Galatia, and all those great, neat places. And I felt the Lord was saying in my spirit that we weren't to look at those churches. And I was a little frustrated. Well, Lord, then, which church should we look at? Which church are we to be like? And I studied some more. The church he finally led me to was one that you may not have even heard about. It's one that I wouldn't have put on my top five list of all-time great churches. And yet, as I studied, I realized that it really, in God's economy of things, it was a very pivotal church in that generation. And it's talked about right here in Acts chapter 11. It's the church at Antioch. The church at Antioch. I want you to read about it with me because it's an exciting, exciting place. Here's what the Bible says, beginning in verse 19. Now, those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also. Notice that. They broke out of the mold. You see that? Not just Jews now, but Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. And look at this next verse. The Lord's hand was with them. And a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Now, that was the church at Antioch. And I began to say, well, Lord, what is this parallel about? First of all, the church at Antioch was a church that had spun off of another body. 15 or 20 years ago in Jerusalem, these few little apostles were there. They were the ones that were, after the persecution, went out about 200 miles north to Antioch to start this church. Secondly, this was a church that was alive in the Holy Spirit. We'll read a little bit later that the Holy Spirit moved and spoke through people and touched lives. Thirdly, this was a church where great numbers of people were being drawn. I mean, it was an exciting, exciting place to be around. Fourthly, it was a church that had a pioneering spirit. It was not afraid to go beyond the normal boundaries of things. And I began to see why God was speaking to me about our church and this church. But mainly, the fifth reason why was verse 21. Look at it once again. It says, for God's hand. Would you like it to be said of your life that God's hand was upon it? Think about what a hand does. What do your hands do for you? What's one basic thing? You feed yourself. You write with your hand. You extend care. You even at times embrace and hold with your hand. And I read that and I said, Lord, the church at Antioch must have been richly blessed with a sense of your presence because your hand was feeding, communicating, caring, providing, leading. And I want it to be said of us that the hand of the Lord. I can think of nothing more important than that for a local church. As I studied this, I began to be increasingly aware, however, that something was missing. There's a gap between what I saw at Antioch and what I see here. And I wrestled with this. I said, Lord, what is that? What is the difference? And what enabled the church at Antioch to press on? What enabled that church to persevere through the years, to make a difference in its culture? By the way, Antioch was the center of a lot of arts and entertainment types of people and also a center of commerce. It was the third largest city, by the way, in the known world in that day. Isn't that something? What would you have said? Rome? What was the second one? Alexandria. Yeah, not London or Paris or all the cities. No. Antioch was the third largest city. What enabled that church to continue to grow in the grace of God? Well, the Lord spoke to Timmy in one word, and you're going to read it now. The word is Barnabas. Barnabas was the reason. Look at it with me. Verse 22, news of this, of what was happening in the church, reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem. And they sent Barnabas to Antioch. And 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. And 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 called Christians first at Antioch. You see, it was Barnabas that came at the time the church needed somebody to help go on from where it had been. And dear ones, as you read the book of Acts, the contribution of Barnabas to that church was incredible. Barnabas made an enormous difference in the life of that church. Do you believe one person can change the course of a church? Do you? Might you be that person? Oh, I'm not a pastor. I don't have any great... That doesn't matter. One devoted praying saint can change the course of an entire... Barnabas, by the way, was a unique person. His name means Son of Encouragement. Son of Encouragement. How would you like to have your name be something positive like that? Encouragement. This is the symbol. I asked Sally Power last night. This is the symbol for encouragement. Moms, do you do that in the morning with your kids? Come on, come on. Son of Encouragement. The way Barnabas did his ministry was in a spirit of encouragement. And I want us to just touch on today a few of the specifics of how Barnabas encouraged this church. And I said, Lord, are you going to send us a Barnabas? And I believe the Lord's answer to me was, yes, but more than that, I'm going to pour out upon the church the spirit of Barnabas, a spirit of encouragement. Would you believe that there'd be a difference here among us if we took upon ourselves a spirit of encouragement? Barnabas, first of all, number one on our outline, the Bible says he recognized the grace of God. Again, look at your Bibles. It says there, he saw the evidence, verse 23, of the grace of God. Now, I said, how did he do that? What did he see when he walked in on the scene here in Antioch? What is repeated three times in those few verses? He saw what? Great numbers of people. Three times it said there were great numbers of people. Barnabas saw, hey, wait a minute, he said, something is happening here. And he was struck with that. Secondly, I believe Barnabas saw that the people there were not afraid to be changing and malleable, that they had big hearts. Folks, listen, it doesn't matter how many people are in your church. If they're big-hearted people, they can have a big impact. One reason I believe they were big-hearted was because they received him. Have you ever had someone come down from headquarters and investigate your job? How many have you ever had somebody from another office come and check you out, okay? Yeah, you know, you don't tend to really like that kind of a deal. You know, they're coming from New York to see how we're doing here. Well, Barnabas was sent by the big guys in Jerusalem. You know, he was going down to see, what kind of job are these people doing? And so they were looking to see, you know, is there any fault here? I think it's impressive that the church in Antioch opened their arms to him and said, welcome. He saw that. That was an evidence of the grace of God to Barnabas. And Barnabas saw that lives were being changed, that people were being touched. And it says, look at it. It says that he was glad. I have a question for you. Are you glad for the evidence of the grace of God among us? I sometimes wonder if people are more attuned to the negatives and the difficulties and the problems than they are the evidence of God's grace. I mean, if I weigh it all out, folks, I see the evidence of God's grace here. And I'm glad about that. I'm not ignorant to the problems, but I see more of his grace than I see of our problems. If that ever switches, I'm out of here. How about you? I mean, if his grace isn't sufficient for our problems, then what are we doing here? And people tend to focus on the negatives. And last week I had someone say to me after the service that, I got bumped around really badly in the halls today. OK, if you like, I can give you a list of places you can go next week. And I promise you, no one will bump into you there. I mean, you just have the whole hall to yourself. I mean, to me, the fact that God would send us all these people and bump into the halls, to me, that's an evidence. Now, numbers do not legitimize anything, but I'll say this. If a body of people is growing and alive and full of the Spirit of God and loving each other, there's going to be numbers because people are attracted to that. And I would say to you, folks, let's be glad about the grace of God. Let's be glad about things like we heard Bill and Pat share today. Let's be glad about those who are seeing things happen that have never happened in their lives before. Let's be glad about the fact that we've had hundreds of people encounter Jesus Christ this year in this place. I don't need more reasons than that. That's enough for me. I don't know what people want, but let's be glad about it. Let's have the spirit of encouragement. I happen to think that a whole lot more positive would happen if we started encouraging what was happening and we gave thanks to the Lord for it. Barnabas saw it and he was glad about it. And he began to spread that joy around. And I have to say this, because we've seen God's grace to this point, I have a conviction that God's not going to back off now. I'm going to believe he just might pour out more grace for the next 10 years. I see us building on a foundation, not going backwards, going forwards beyond where we've been in the goodness of God. So Barnabas had an ability to recognize the hand of God and to see his grace. Other people, by the way, have tended to see the grace of God here more than we have. I have kept a journal through the years. I can tell you of conversations with John Wimber and Larry Lee and Dick Eastman, people who many of you watch on television because you think it's wonderful, who have told me and told our elders that they've sensed the grace of God in this place. It's time, church, listen. It's time we believe in the God that's in us and really believe it and encourage one another to go on from where we are and be all that God wants us to be. Barnabas saw it and he was glad. Secondly, Barnabas called the people to renew their devotion. He recognized the grace and then he said, wait a second, you need to keep pressing on. Dina, that may not have been your favorite song, but that was the right song for us. You see, something Barnabas saw that I have seen, folks, is this. As the numbers get greater and greater, there's an inclination that we all have to think that our contribution is less and less important. And so we drop back a little bit and we tend to kind of wonder, well, do I really matter here? Would anyone miss me if I was gone? Is there really anything I can do as well as someone else? Probably not. And we tend to drop back. Barnabas noticed this and he said, wait a minute. Look at verse, it says 23. He was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. It says in some Bibles, with steadfast purpose. He was saying, get a mindset about this. Be faithful, press on in your calling to serve the kingdom of God. How many of you know what a mindset is? It's an attitude, right? I could be wrong here. I'm not a literary expert. I couldn't find mindset in the dictionary. You go look it up. I couldn't find it. Maybe I couldn't find it. But I know what a mindset is. My mother-in-law has one. When we go out, she steadfastly refuses to let me ever buy her dinner or anything. When we go to a place, I mean, driving on the way in a turnpike, she'll give her percentage of the turnpike toll. And we'll go out and get something. And she'll, no, here's my $7 for lunch. And then we'll go to Baskin-Robbins. Here's my $1.05 for my ice cream cone. Come on, come on. I mean, there's a mindset. Like, and the reason is, well, she lived by herself for 35 years. And she was self-sustaining. She'll be 80 years old here in the next month. And I mean, she's still buying. Okay. I mean, you know, here's mine. All right, do it. It's just a mindset. It's just the way she is. And it's, in a lot of ways, served her well. Folks, we need to have that same deliberate determination that we're not going to get pushed out of God's purposes. We're not going to, when the Lord comes, we're not going to say, well, you know, I was just kind of out of it, God. I was just sort of out there, you know, drifting along. May God pour out the spirit of Barnabas that encourages everyone to be all that God has created them to be. That's what Barnabas did. And the third thing that I see is that Barnabas recruited others to the vision. Now, this is a powerful, powerful statement right here. It says that Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. See, the spirit of a Barnabas encourages others to discover how God might use them. Now, most of us here today have heard about, who knows who Paul was, the apostle. I don't know most of the New Testament, other than the gospels, was written by Paul. The greatest mind of the New Testament era, some say in modern history, a man who planted churches all around the world, a man who did more single-handedly to carry forward the cause of the kingdom than any other man. I want to submit to you today that if it weren't for a man by the name of Barnabas, we may have never heard of a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus. Do you understand that? Back just a few chapters, it was Barnabas that convinced the disciples in Jerusalem that Saul was for real. He had a spirit that embraced that brother that people didn't like, didn't trust. And Saul of Tarsus became the great man that, you know, to this day people almost worship. Barnabas never wrote a book of the New Testament. Barnabas never, that we know of, did great miracles and so. But God used Barnabas to open the door for Saul of Tarsus to be there. I want to ask you a question. Who might you be relating to today that could be the next Paul or the next Billy Graham or the next Pat Robertson? Who might you be relating to that could be the next person that will establish a work that will touch mission fields around the world like some of our young ladies are doing these days? See, we don't know that. But if we don't risk going out and embracing folks, it won't happen. I've discovered people are not chasing me around, asking me about what's going on in my life. They do that to you, I've got to go to them. I want to submit to you today, risk a breakfast or a lunch or a dinner with someone just to talk to them about the love of God. I mean, risk it a little bit. Say, hey, can we have lunch? I want to share with you some things that are happening in my life. Now, I guarantee you this, people notice you if you're living a life that's faithful to Christ. Because if they don't notice you, what good is it? To me, the saddest epitaph that could ever be written was nobody noticed. Nobody noticed. I shared this last night. You know, back in November, I guess it was early December that we had the Operation Care Giveaway, the food giveaway, Operation Care Pittsburgh. I did some things intentionally to be noticed. Not to bring attention to us as much as to bring attention to some situations. And I said some things I thought were kind of inflammatory. I walked away, nobody noticed. Nobody said anything. I thought to myself, it's possible, folks, for us to live and go through the motions of life and nobody noticed us. We're irrelevant. If you're living a Christian life, people will notice. And I would say this to you, then ask them to go with you, to sit down and talk about what it is that's different in your life. Or go to that person who once was a worshiper with you, but now has wandered off and doesn't care. See, the spirit of Barnabas recruited, went out for, looked for an opportunity. And he sacrificed himself. It was about a 50-mile hike over to Tarsus to find Saul. And then he had to convince him to come back amidst people whom he didn't know. Why? Because Barnabas had a spirit of encouragement. He wanted them to become all that they could become. And then it says that Saul and Barnabas taught them for a year and so much happened that people started calling them for the first time, Christians. What does that term mean? That's what you're called. What is a Christian? It means little Christ. And I want you to know back then, being called a Christian was just like being called a Jesus freak today. It was not a statement of great, oh, we're really admired. It was a statement of you people are really different. The person next to you, they look like a Jesus freak or a Christian. Now, am I all for weirdness? No. I don't think God wants us to be weird. I think God wants us to be different. Yes. And we far too often accommodate ourselves to the world's way. Folks, we want to make a commitment here for you to become all that God wants you to be. And one of the reasons why it's been difficult, we've been limited here. Right now, if we wanted to, we couldn't have classes to train you in evangelism so you could share your faith or to train you in parenting or to train you in ways of bringing healing or deliverance. Because we don't have the space to do that, even though most people want to come. But I want to tell you something. Listen very carefully. In a few weeks, we're going to own David Weiss and we're going to have space for you. Amen. We are at the table now. An agreement has been drawn up and hands have been shaken and things are all getting worked out. And it's been a real journey, very interesting one. It hasn't changed anything about the property behind us. That's still in the hands of your uncle, Sam. Yes. And we're working with him. But this building is going to be renovated and we have plans for a lot of space for adult education and for youth ministry and for missions training and for our kids and everything we need. We have more space in that building potentially than we have here. So I don't see it as a final step, an interim step, but something we can have almost immediately so that you can continue to become. Property and buildings don't mean anything if the people don't become something. And I'm excited about it and I know you will be too as I unfold the plan to you in the coming weeks. I want to end this morning. I want to share my heart with you and say this. This has been a pretty simple message. We can be as the Church of Antioch, a church that, by the way, became ascending church. Paul's missionary journeys, you read about them. He went out all over Asia Minor and came back and reported everything to the Church of Antioch. It was a powerful church, a church that shaped its culture and changed the world around. When the Lord impressed me with that, I have to say this. I don't know, folks, if we really believe that about ourselves yet. A few of us do. A few of us haven't really come to terms with what it would mean to be great yet, great in the eyes of God. But it starts with a spirit of encouragement. And the people that work around me will probably want to say amen now, but please don't. One of the things that's been hardest for me to have over the years, just not the way I'm constructed. I don't have a natural spirit of encouragement. I have much more of a spirit of, let's go do this job. Let's get the job done. Let's take this hill for God kind of thing. But I want you to know, I prayed a prayer this weekend. And I said, Lord, if you're going to pour out a spirit of encouragement, would you let me stand right underneath the faucet? Would you let me get caught up so that something could be broken loose in me that hasn't been there to be as a Barnabas, to be out there recognizing the hand of God, renewing devotion as God leads and recruiting others to the vision. And I want to ask you a question. Would you say to God today, I'd like to be part of that too. I want to be as a Barnabas. We're going to walk around here the next weeks with Barney name tags to encourage one another to be all that God would have us to be. I don't think we need anything else. We've been given the spirit of God and the word of God. We just need to encourage each other to go on and be the church that God would have us to be. Let's stand together, shall we? Lord, I know of no other way to adequately declare your goodness except to say thank you for what you've done. Thank you for what you're going to continue to do, Lord. Father, this has just been a time of incredible opportunity and challenge. And yet Lord, one that you've over and over and over again shown us your faithfulness. And I praise you for that. Lord, surprise us in the coming months with your glory. Surprise us with your grace. Lord, I believe in this church. I believe in what you're doing in this church. And I pray your spirit would pour over us, God, and renew us on the inside, breaking down walls and opening the windows of our souls, God, and letting a fresh breath blow upon us. Perfect your work in us, God. Do all that you would do.