Fully Devoted Followers of Jesus

All right. Well, again, welcome to Hope Lowertown. Glad that you were able to be here. Those of you don't know me, my name is Brian, lead pastor here and excited to continue our journey in Acts. This is week 12, so if you're just new to Hope or checking us out, we, again, we typically will walk through a book of the Bible. And so we've been in acts now for 12 weeks. We'll take a kind of a summer break and do something a little bit different. But we're gonna keep going through this, and we've been flying through it. We really have. And it's gonna keep picking up, picking up, keep picking up pace. And so, anyways, I asked you that question this morning about nicknames. I had several of them, but one my dad gave me was Bug. And so my dad would call me Bug or Bugger. And it's interesting because I call my middle kid Bug, and I've heard my wife call him that a few times. And so I don't know why it just kind of. Just kind of stuck and. But it doesn't describe me. I don't know. Right. He tells a story. At least, he did. He died a long time ago. He used to tell the story about me that when I was in a doctor's office, when I was like two or three, that I was in the office, and it was one of my first words. I saw a bug on the wall and I called it out. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what he said. And he's not here to defend himself. So I win. Anyways, sorry. Jeez, that got dark. All right. Today's sermon is called Fully Devoted Followers of Jesus Christ. And we're going to see in this passage, the church in Antioch is going to be given a name, be given a nickname, that they're going to be called Christians. It's the first time that that word is going to be used. And so up until this point, just to recap real quick, Lee, is that Dr. Luke, he's a physician, and he wrote the book of Luke. And then it just kind of is, this is Acts, the Acts of the Apostles. What it's been historically called is just kind of Luke 2. And so that probably would be a better name for the book, but I didn't get to choose the name of it. I wasn't around. And so here we are. We're looking at Luke 2, and Luke is an eyewitness. We're gonna see him traveling with the Apostle Paul, who we've just recently been introduced to, but his name is still Saul, which can get kind of confusing, but we'll see that. And so going back, we're going to have Jesus. This is all the way back in chapter one. I've read this now the last several weeks, just to kind of help us get our mind in order of the. Of. Of the events that have happened. And so in Acts chapter one, Jesus is talking to his disciples because they ask him the question, jesus, are you Jesus, the Messiah, the Risen One? Are you now going to restore Israel into a proper position of power as a kingdom? And so Jesus, in response to that, says, don't worry about the time. It's not about now. This isn't happening now. The Father has set the time by his own authority. And he says, not me, not I, not the Messiah, but you. You, my followers, the church. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses. And he says in Jerusalem, and then in Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. And so we've been seeing this statement of Jesus Christ come true in the Acts of the Apostles as it is spread. So in Acts chapter two, what's commonly called Pentecost is just this idea. The Holy Spirit then descends on the Jews that are around, and they start speaking languages that they don't know, but people are hearing it and they spread all the way back out. But so far it's only Jews, only Jews that are being converted to Christianity. Again, that's not called that, but of the way of Christ. And then you have Judea and Samaria, this kind of broader region, not just the city of Jerusalem, but this surrounding area. And we see that in chapter four. And even then we have the Holy Spirit that descends on the Samaritans like kind of enemies of the Jews. And then he waits for the apostles to go in there, lay hands on them, and then the Holy Spirit comes to them and there's unity that's being built then. And then last week In Acts chapter 10, we looked at now is the inclusion of the Gentiles of any other ethnicity other than Hebrew is now being included. What's called the Gentile Pentecost in Acts chapter 10. Which leads us then to where we're at this morning. And seeing that the story continues to spread to the Gentiles. And so last week we looked at this wild story of the apostle Peter, who there's a centurion, a Gentile centurion, who God gives him a vision, says, you need to Go find Peter. So they find Peter. And Peter has this image, this vision of unclean animals that have been restricted in the book of Leviticus. And God tells him, kill and eat. And Peter says, no, no, I can't eat those animals. They're unclean. And God says, don't call anything unclean. That I have declared clean. And so in the context of what's happening in that story, it's about food. It's about what they were allowed to eat, what they're not allowed to eat. But Peter makes the obvious connection that it's not about food. It is a little bit, but it's more so that the Gentiles are included, that no longer are there laws saying, I can't associate with Gentiles, they love Jesus, they're filled with the Holy Spirit, then I can enter into their home. And if I can enter into their home and they're eating bacon, I. I too can eat bacon. And so there's this whole thing. And so we're skipping over Acts, chapter 11, 1 18, because Peter just retells the story, it's almost word for word, exactly what he says in chapter 10. And it's not that it's not important, it's actually repeated, because it is important. Anytime you have, especially within a Hebrew background or scripture of something that is repeated twice, it's to show emphasis. And so when Jesus says, very truly, verily, verily, or truly, truly. Hey, listen to me, I'm being serious when I say this. And so Peter tells the story again, it's recorded in scripture to say, hey, this is about all people, that God is not a respecter of persons. Anyone, anywhere, at any point is within the reach of the Gospel. So let's pick up in Acts, chapter 11, 19 through 30, the sermon or the passages on that handout, and I'll have it up on the screen for you to follow along as well. And we're going to start off with a map. Woo. Yeah. All right, let me just, let me kind of explain. If this helps you, great. If not, I don't. Then don't worry about it. It doesn't really matter. But for me, it's just kind of helpful to get a little bit of understanding of what, where and what's going on. So in Acts, chapter 11, we read in verse 19 now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen. Okay, so Stephen, go, go back in time. And Stephen is martyred. He's the first, what's called the first Christian martyr. He's killed because he's A follower of Jesus by the Jewish leaders and they stone him to death. And so when that happens, it says great persecution grew out over the people. And everyone left. They all scattered except the apostles. They all stayed in Jerusalem. So that's what's happening. Stephen's martyred and then people spread all over the place as far as Phoenicia, a region, and then Cyprus, that island in the Mediterranean Sea there, and Antioch. Antioch is the city though, is a city right there, north several couple hundred kilometers or probably even a couple hundred miles that part. And if you see around on the top, that's Tarsus way up there in the north end of the Mediterranean Sea there. That's where Saul is from. So they traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews, right, Because they were Jews. They see a Jew, Stephen, get murdered and then they say, hey, we gotta go and tell people about Jesus. And they go back to their hometowns and they're speaking about Jesus along the way, but they're only talking to Jews. They don't know that Gentiles have been included yet. But there were some of them men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who according or who were coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, the Greeks, also preaching the Lord Jesus. And so now there are Gentiles that are believing in Jesus, believing in the way, and are being saved. And just naturally they want to gather together, even though they're from all kinds of walks of life. And we can see that in other books that the Apostle Paul writes. Now you've got centurion jailers and Roman guards, and you've got former demon possessed girl, and you've got Lydia, the successful businesswoman woman. And they would have nothing in common. There's no reason why those three individuals should ever associate with one another. But they come to church together and they worship Jesus. So we see churches being planted and the apostles then are going, what's going on? And the hand of the Lord was with them. And a great number who believed turned to the Lord and the report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. And so if you've been coming here for a little while, then you hear that name Barnabas and your little antennae should start beep, beep, beep, boop, boop, boop. Something's going on here, right? We've heard of this, this guy before. Where have we heard of the name Barnabas before? So let's, let's go back and let's look at the life of Barnabas. Just a little bit of how he's been revealed and what we know about him. And then what can we learn from him? What can we learn about this guy? So going all the way back to chapter four, we read this now. The full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. And no one said sorry, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own. But they had everything in common. And with great power. The apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. There was not one needy person among them. For as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles feet. And it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of Encouragement, his name is Joseph. I think at rereading this text I had forgotten like, oh no, he has like a, just like a regular name. But his nickname is what sticks, right? Did anyone like call the nickname a lot growing up and it like stuck? That's just what people called you. Anyone have that? I know a lot of us, I just recently, maybe it wasn't recent, a couple years ago I was in a staff meeting and someone said, you know, hey, Dan Farr, he works with our missions. And he said, hey what? Asked him a question. He was like, oh, my name's actually not Dan. It was like, what? Like everything I know about you is a lie. You know what I mean? Like, that's crazy. And actually just this last week in small group, someone was saying that they're. They had a grandpa or someone who was. And they went, they had a birthday. Anyways, they found their birth certificate and their name was not the same and their birthday was wrong. Like their whole life, they're like 80 years old and they realized, oh, I'm younger than what I thought I was and my name is different. That's wild, right? And that's what happens with Barnabas here though, that he's now known as his nickname. He's known as the Son of Encouragement. That's wild. He, he's a Levite, a native of Cyprus. And this guy sells a field that belonged to him and then brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet. He gets this nickname and it sticks. The apostles say, man, you really encourage me so much. We're just gonna start calling you Son of Encouragement. And then everyone starts calling him Son of Encouragement. And that's how he's referred to for the remainder of the story. So if we fast forward, he comes up again in Acts, chapter nine, it says, and when he. That is Saul. Saul was there at the murder of Stephen. And then he gets permission from the Jewish leaders in the synagogue to go out and start throwing other people who claim to be Christians in jail. Not Christians, but followers of Jesus. Throw them in jail. And so when Saul. But Saul has this dramatic conversion experience, and that's where we had that little series of no one anywhere at any point is beyond the reach of the gospel. I don't care how evil or wicked or gone somebody is, they're not beyond the reach of the gospel. They can still be saved. And that was Saul. And so Saul then has this conversion, and now he wants to go talk to the apostles. And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him. This was a couple weeks ago where it was like, right? Is it. Who? General someone. It's a trap, right? Today is May 4th. So General Akbar. Akbar, right? It's a trap, right? And they're all freaking out, right? And then it's. But then, no. What happens? It would have been. The story could have ended here. But Barnabas. Barnabas takes Saul, this guy who's been killing Christians, who says, no, no, I'm now one of you. And it's like, ah. And everyone's like, I don't know, man. Let's not. I don't think we should talk to this guy. Barnabas takes him and brings him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. The story, if you will, in some ways ends here. It stops if Barnabas doesn't allow Saul to meet the apostles. I mean, God would have probably figured out some other way. But what Barnabas does here is not a small thing. It's easy just to kind of gloss over this. But if Saul isn't brought in before the apostles, I don't know if he's ever recognized as an apostle himself. This is. This is a major event that happens. And so what can we learn from Barnabas? Obviously, he's an encourager. His. His nickname becomes, like, who he is. I think that when we gain nicknames later in life, right? It's not our birth name, just in our culture. My name, Brian, I think it means, like, little warrior or whatever that means. And so my mom, when she named me Wasn't thinking, oh, Brian's gonna be a little warrior someday. Let's call him Brian. That's not what happened. Right. And so actually it was my five year old brother who named me good. Thanks, Mom. And so that doesn't. But later on in life, if someone starts calling me something, I identify that it makes more sense because that has come from who I am. And you're calling me that because it's who I am in some respect. And so we see him called an encourager. That means more than his name. Joseph. I forgot that was his name. He's Barabbas or Barnabas. Very different. He's Barnabas. His nickname becomes part of who he is. He's generous, he gives to the church, he sells land that he has. He didn't have to do that. No one was forcing him to do that. He just does it because he saw a need and he stepped in because he had an answer for it. We see that he's bold with Saul and the apostles. He's full of the Holy Spirit as a descriptor that's given to him. And yet Barnabas isn't perfect. He's not like this sinless human being. Like, oh, we all just need to be like Barnabas in some aspects, sure, but he's a sinner just like everybody else. As a matter of fact, his sin is called out in Galatians 2:13, where Peter starts saying, oh, remember that whole thing where I wasn't supposed to like, be a respecter of persons, where I was supposed to allow the Gentiles in? Now all my buddies are Jewish converts. And so I don't really want to associate with Gentiles anymore. And it's. And Paul says this, even, even Barnabas was led astray. Even Barnabas started saying, oh, no, maybe we should just hang out with these Jewish converts and ignore the Gentiles. And Paul calls him out for that to his face. So he's not perfect. So we're not trying to put Barnabas on a pedestal. And for me, I don't want you to hear be like Barnabas. I want some aspects of us should be like Barnabas. We ought to look like Barnabas. But why? Because of who we are in Christ. Going back to acts, then chapter 11, we read this when he came. This is again Barnabas. When Barnabas came and saw the grace of God. Here you've got this guy now who is sent, hey, Barnabas, I want you from Jerusalem. The apostles are sending you now into Antioch because we're hearing about these churches that are just sprouting up of people who are worshiping Jesus. I want you to go to those churches and give us a report. And when he came, he saw the grace of God. You know this about me. I am a terrible church visitor. I just am. I go to a church and maybe you're like me, maybe you're not, But I go into a church and I. And it's like I was only greeted by three people this morning. I don't know if this is a real church. You know, like. I don't know. They talked about Jesus, but they talk about him enough. They didn't mention his blood. I don't know. This church is anathema, right? It's just not how I would do it. It's not the music I would pick. It's not. And I just. Bleh. I'm just awful. And I need to just sit there and listen to the grace of God. I need to see that there are churches all over the place that on any given Sunday are worshiping Jesus. And can I sit in that or is my first thought, oh, man. Well, how many people do they have? What's their budget like? You know, are they true converts? Are they just going through the motions? The first thing that Barnabas notices is the grace of God. Not programs, not imperfections, but God. That's. That's how we should be. We should be encouraging in that way, like Barnabas. And a lot of us are. A lot of you are. But what do we see from Barnabas? Let me just maybe finish reading this. As he came and saw the grace of God and he was glad. And he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose. For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. Barnabas sees a need and he acts on it. He steps up himself to do it. Or like with Saul, he encourages the apostles. Leadership. Hey, leadership. You should probably help this guy out. We need to figure this out together. Some of us, myself included, a lot of times, don't see the grace of God in a church, even our church. Some of us see a problem, but unlike Barnabas, we add to the problem or we become the problem. We don't find a solution to an issue that may come up. As I was looking this week, it took a turn. I was studying this passage and just trying to sit in it, and I got here and this popped up. I was sitting there thinking of the bystander effect. And so there's A did a little bit of research, and in 1968, there was a famous research. Apparently I can't even say their names. Darlee D, A, R, L, E, Y, N L, A T A, N, E. With like a little. Must be French. Latane. I don't know. I don't know how to say it. All right, so there's this big study that they did. And what they did is they got people in a room and they had some kind of emergency happen next to them. Someone would have a seizure or would pass out, and they wanted to see how would people respond in an emergency. There's a need clearly at hand. How would people respond? Here was the the result. The more people that were present in the room that observed the emergency, the less likely anyone would act to help. The conclusion is that if no one acts, everyone assumes that inaction is acceptable or someone else will handle it. I know you can't read this, but it's just kind of this. This, you know, the sheet of like. Right. There's presence of others. Is there a presence of others taking no action? Okay. And we observe that we're in a room. We see something happening. Does. Does the person even notice the event? No. Okay, well, then obviously nothing's gonna happen. If the answer is yes, then it moves to the next thing. Does the person interpret the events as an emergency? Is. Is this really. Or is it a hoax? Right. Especially nowadays, everyone's got a camera. Oh, it's obviously a prank. Right? Someone's pranking me. You're trying to get some views on YouTube or TikTok. And so clearly nothing actually is happening. So we say no, there's no intervention. Then step three, does the person take personal responsibility? And if the answer is no, then there's no action. If they say yes, if they take personal responsibility, then something happens. And so there was another test like this. If you'll experiment. I don't know. I don't think you're allowed to do this kind of stuff anymore. So pre 70s would be my guess. Maybe pre 90s, they did this again, where they started filling a room with smoke. Right? You're in a room and smoke starts to pour in. They said if there was one person in the room, which is wild to me, 80% of the time, they would try to get help or try to fix the situation. 80% of the time, I don't know who the 20% were. Like, that's just some smoke. It's no big deal. I don't. Whatever. But then they found that if there were two people in the room only up there, 50% of the time, it would drop to 50% of the time that people actually report the smoke pouring into the room. And if there were four or more people, it drops to 30 and 20%. Like, that's wild, right? If smoke started pouring in, and especially as maybe someone up here in authority or whatever, if I see smoke and you're like, oh, what's going on? I'm like, hey, don't worry about it, it's okay. You'd be like, oh, well, I don't know. I guess he said it's okay. And we just are. We're not moved to action. And so I think we can sit in this. And I know this is like a psychological disposition or whatever you want to call this, but do we think this way? Even looking at a local church, do I have a bystander effect mentality of like, oh, that's not my problem, it's not my job. I don't need to worry about that. Brian is on staff, he'll take care of it. We have key volunteers and leaders. They'll do that. They'll step up when they need to. I don't need to do that. And I'm not trying to guilt, shame or anything like that because we're going to get into that. Just a minute of why, what is the motivation behind that? But do I, do I help solve a problem or do I add to the problem by not doing anything that's part of the problem. So let's keep going here. Acts chapter 11. Looking at verse 25, we see this first called Christian. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. So he's back up, Saul's back in his hometown. He goes up there to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians. So now we're going to use that phrase. It's going to be the phrase that's going to be used for the church, that they are Christians. Are you a follower of Christ? I am a Christian. You may have heard, maybe growing up, if you kind of grew up in the church like me, that that means little Christ, right? I'm like Christ. And that's true. It's helpful, but it's not exactly everything. So I want to quote FF Bruce on this. He said, who are these people? One Antiochian, I don't know why just someone from Antioch would ask another as two or three Unofficial missionaries gathered a knot of more or less interested hearers and disputants around them in one of the city colonnades. Oh, these are the people who are always talking about Christos Christ, which is the Greek word for Messiah, the anointed one. That's what Christ means. It's not Jesus Christ, that's his last name. It's Jesus the Christ. Jesus the Anointed one, Jesus the Messiah. Which is why the Jewish believers or Jewish people never refer to them as Christians because they don't believe that Christ is the Messiah. You can't be a follower of the Messiah if the Messiah hasn't been here yet, right? So they're talking about Christos the Christ's people, the Christians. Just as in Palestine, the adherents of the Herod dynasty were called Herodians, so says Luke. In Antioch, the adherents of Jesus the Christ first came to be popularly known as Christians. This is still used in our context. There are people who in this church grew up as a Lutheran. What does that mean? It means I am a follower of this guy and his teachings as and his name is Luther. I am a Lutheran. It's the same thing. I am a Christian. I am a follower and adherent to Christ. So what does this mean today? What is a Christian today? I know as a kid it was really easy. We sang a song about it all the time. I am a C I m a C H I M a C H R A S T I a N and I have C H R a s T N my H E A R T and I will any da da da thank you. He's got the motions. Mommy's got the motions now. Okay, well, so that's simple, right? I got Christ, I'm a Christian. That's it. I'm good. That's who I am. Is that really what a Christian is today? What makes us a Christian? Well, it depends. It depends on who we ask. Depends on a lot of that. Who we ask could be positive, could be negative. You might ask someone, hey, what is a Christian? You could ask your neighbor or someone who's a non believer and say, hey, what is a Christian? And they might respond with some of these adjectives or some of these descriptions. Kind and compassionate. Charity, Generosity. Upright. Morally. Family values. They forgive. They have grace. Community, builders. Hopeful, faithful, joyful. They have hospitality. They advocate for the vulnerable, which is true. Like our government does some things, but the church, like V big capital C church, does a lot to help the vulnerable. Resilience and suffering that they, they seem that even in the Midst of like awful things. It's like they, they have this hope and this joy that I don't know if I would have in the midst of suffering. They seem to be peacemakers. So that those might be some descriptors of a positive way, but in a negative way. There's a lot of them, but the same person. Oh yeah, they're, they're hopeful, but man, they, they judge. They're hypocrites, they're intolerant, anti intellectual. They just go, oh, the Bible told me so I guess that's what I believe. This political partisanship, cultural insensitivity, all these different things, they're just negative. Is that really what makes us a Christian? Right? Is that what Christian means? If you were to give a 3 by 5 card out to everyone in this room and say, what makes you a Christian? It is in some ways quite simple. It's the same question. I think the answer to that question is what we would ask when we do baptisms we did just a few weeks ago. Are you now trusting alone in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and all of his promises to you? And is it your intention, with God's help, to follow his commands and follow his teachings? That's what it is. I believe in the forgiveness of my sins and I walk with him. I am a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ, not just this label of a Christian. I've been going through these. My brother and I, we've been going through this. I don't know, we started recording a podcast, which sounds cool, it's not, but we've been starting. But we've been reading a book a week, which has been intense, but it's been great. So last week he recommended this book. And this is Anthony Demello. He's a Catholic Jesuit priest. Was. He died back in 87 and listened to his book and it was very enlightening, which is ironic because that's the, the whole point of the book. But it was a good book. There's things like, I don't agree with that, but there's a lot of things that were really helpful with it. And so I'm listening to this book and it was an audio book, so it's hard to quote him. So I'm just gonna kind of talk about some of the ideas. But the big thing is that we shouldn't be affected by what people call us, by our labels. He gets into that a lot, that we shouldn't be into our labels. And so he kind of shares the story of like, of someone who is just for time. Basically, you're proud to be an American, right? Yeah, I'm proud to be an American. There's maybe an asterisk or a little caveat with that. But yeah, I think as a whole, I'm proud to be an American. But then somebody else hears me say that and says, oh, oh, you're an American. Well, hang on a second. What do you mean by that? It sounded like a little bit of resentment in your voice. Yes, I'm an American, but what do you know about Americans? Or how do you feel about Americans? Because that's not necessarily who I am. It's a label, right? And so this whole idea is that our labels are not who we are. It's not our identity, if that makes sense. My nickname isn't who I am. I can use labels like husband or wife or single or divorced or father or mother or pastor or accountant or lawyer. All the things I could be Democrat, Republican, and God forbid, in an instant those labels could completely be not true in an instant. I am not my label. I can't be. I can't be a husband that can be taken away from me in a moment. It helps define, maybe put me in a box in some way. But is it who I am? And so the question shouldn't be so concerned on what do people call me? Do they call me a Christian? It should rather be when they see me, do they see Christ? Because that's who I am. My identity is in Christ. And according to Jesus, no one can snatch that out of his hand. I am in Christ. I am united with Christ. I am one with Christ. That's my identity. And so when all hell breaks loose in my life, I can be firm in Christ. That's my identity. He's the one who goes to Moses. When Moses is in a burning bush in Exodus, and Moses, God's like, hey, I'm going to send you to set my people free. Moses says, well, why would you do that? Who am I? He has this kind of existential crisis. Why me? Who am I that you would pick me? And God's response is, I am that I am. I am the is in one. I am the self existing one. Put your identity in me and you will not be shaken. That's the point. Not about labels, not about who am I in Christ. The church helps those in need. Again, I don't want to just gloss over this. It says now, in the days the prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them named Agabus, stood up and foretold by the spirit. There'd be great famine over all the world. This took place in the days of Claudius. What's going on here? There's a prophet, Agabus, what's happening? I don't have time to necessarily get into that this morning. If you have questions, feel free to talk to me or email me, but what's going on? Did this actually happen? Was there famine? Right. Did this prophecy come true? Yeah, it did. I'm actually quoting a footnote. I don't know if I've ever done that before. I'm quoting a footnote here from FF Bruce. Famine conditions are attested for Rome at the beginning of Claudius rule for Egypt in his fifth year, for Greece in his eighth and ninth year, and again in Rome between his ninth and 11th years, more generally. That guy says that his principle was marked by persistent droughts. Okay, so. So this prophecy ends up actually happening in Claudius. And so as we keep running, the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. So now you have the Gentile church. Those who were unclean, that were not allowed to associate with, they're now part of the church, and they're now giving their abundance and what God has given them to the church in Judea, to the Hebrews. And they did so sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. So in conclusion, Gospel application for us this morning. What areas in my life do I fit into? The bystander effect? Where do I do that? Do I look at something? Whether it's church or not, that's not my problem. It's not my kid. It's not my thing. I don't need to worry about that. It's not as bad as it looks. They don't need help, even though they're asking for it. It's not my problem. Which leads to. Then why help in the first place? Because that is directly tied to my identity. Why do I help? I helped because I was helped. I helped because I was loved. That's where this comes from. I don't do this because I have to. I do it because I get to. So are you known more by your nickname or by your identity in Christ? By others and yourself? Meaning how do you view yourself when you try to answer the question, who am I? Do you just come up with a list of labels or what do you identify as or identify with and with Christ? Because being a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ doesn't simply mean I believe in Jesus. And I've put my faith in Jesus to Forgive me of his sins. That's a what I would say. That's a Christian. That's somebody who is for their sins are forgiven. But a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ is one who does that and also then does good deeds. It can't just be just good deeds. I like the teachings of Jesus, so I care about people, and so I'm going to help people. That's not a Christian. It's got to be both. It's got to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus. So who am I? Are you united in Christ? Are you one with Christ? Or do we get worked up about a label that I have or a label I don't have, or a label I wish I had? Am I okay? Am I content in my life being in Christ alone? We have communion at Hope Lowertown every Sunday. And so we had these elements. The bread that represents the body of Christ that was broken for you, the juice that represents his blood that was shed for us. That we get to be followers of Jesus Christ. We get to be Christians and we are reminded of his finished work. And we take these elements every week. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church. But if you say, yeah, I am a follower of Jesus, I have bent the knee to King Jesus, I have asked him to forgive me of my sins, and he has done that. And so now I want to live my life in light of that. Not out of duty, not out of obligation, but because I see Jesus and he is so good and he is so beautiful. I can't help myself but to love and serve others. The worship team is going to come back up. They're going to play two songs. And so as they're playing, feel free to come grab these elements, worship with us, pray, repent, confess, and ask yourself the question, who am I? What is my identity? Am I more than being in Christ? Let's pray. And the worship team will come back up here. Father, we thank you again for just our time this morning to gather, to look at some basic, simple, if you will, truths from your word, of just looking at this narrative through Acts and then reading about Barnabas and his life and how he helped the apostles through the power of Jesus Christ and his gospel to set people free from their sin and to enable people to have compassion and love towards people that they would never have associated with God. That's because of you. That's because of what you have done through your Son, and then enabling us with the power of your spirit. So I pray that as we take these elements. You'd be honored. You'd be glorified as we remember the finished work of Christ on the cross for our sins. To your name be honor and glory and power forever and ever. Amen.