Acts 15:36-41 - God Uses Train Wrecks

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Don Filcek, Solid Foundations; Acts 15:36-41 - God Uses Train Wrecks

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You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor,
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Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the
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Book of Acts. Does anybody want to guess what book of the
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Bible I'm going to ask you to turn to right now? Acts. Hopefully you're learning from the
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Book of Acts as we've been kind of marching through that, doing this journey through the Book of Acts. We are over halfway through the book.
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I think it was probably a year and a half ago that I started it. You do the math, you can figure out it's going to take us a little while to get to the second half as well, but hopefully you're growing in your understanding, you're being stretched in your faith as we continue to grow together in our understanding of how the early church grew, and then looking at Recast and seeing some of the things that God is doing here, that ultimately we recognize that God is the foundation of the church, right?
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It's not those who came over from Berean and started this church, or it's not me as a pastor, or Rob, or Zach, or the leadership, or the worship band, or anything like that.
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It is not my preaching, but it is God who is starting his church. And so we constantly want to keep focusing in on him and seeing what he's doing.
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Now our text this morning in Acts chapter 15, and that's page 791 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you.
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I'm going to read that here in a few minutes, but I want to introduce it. But 791 in that Bible, so if you want to get there.
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And that Bible is a free gift from us to you, so if you don't own a Bible, you can take that one that's in the seat back with you.
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Our text this morning in Acts chapter 15 verses 36 through 41 is one of the most authentic and real passages in the entire
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New Testament. Now when I say that, you know, authentic, isn't all the New Testament authentic? Well, in one sense,
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I mean, what I'm saying, it's all authentic. It's all the real, true word of God. But what
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I mean by authentic is that it's something that maybe I wouldn't have included if I were
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Luke. Like, it's one of those stories that you might not want to tell. Like, how many of you maybe have a story from your past, or a story from your family, or a story from your childhood that isn't your lead -off story?
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You know, you meet somebody at a party and you're like, hey, by the way, I did this. Or my sister did this, or my brother or uncle
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Bill did this, or whatever. You know, I mean, you know what I'm getting at. You don't necessarily lead off with those kinds of stories. This is maybe one of those that we wouldn't necessarily lead with.
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But Luke chose to include it because what we're going to see is, we're going to see a significant disagreement between Paul and Barnabas.
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Paul and Barnabas have been major players, major characters. Everywhere that we've seen Paul go, Barnabas has gone so far.
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Everywhere that Barnabas has gone, Paul has gone. And we're seeing them just united and together. Barnabas was the dude who first introduced
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Paul to the church in Jerusalem. Like, the church in Jerusalem was not going to accept Paul because he had been murdering
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Christians and persecuting them. And Barnabas is like, hey, you guys, cut him some slack.
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He's a good guy. He's actually changed. And they accept him on Barnabas's recommendation.
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So we've seen them like two peas in a pod. I mean, everywhere that they go, they've done ministry together. It's been significant the way that they work together.
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And it's interesting to note that the force of the impact of our text, because we're going to see Paul and Barnabas separate. They're going to part ways.
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There's going to be disagreement and division between them. And when I say authentic and real,
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I say that because I can relate to where they live. How many of you have had an experience of betrayal in your relationships with others?
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Have you been there? Maybe we have been the betrayer at times. And we have broken faith with others.
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And we have not compromised and worked things out well together. Because we're human.
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And we're sinful humans. And so we're going to see that as it plays out. The force and impact of the passage is highlighted because we talked about unity last week.
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If you were to go back and listen to that message that I preached last week, it was about unity in the church. And now juxtaposed right up next to this passage on unity is a passage that's going to highlight humanity, reality, real life, where we see sin and its impact in the early church.
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We're ultimately getting a glimpse at a train wreck of sorts. Don't worry, there's encouragement. There's going to be encouragement.
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There's going to be some uplifting things in this passage. God's going to take what is a train wreck in this passage.
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And He's going to shine His glory in that situation. And what I'm hoping that we see here is that God can take our brokenness.
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That He can use messes and train wrecks for His glory. So we're going to see that in the passage.
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He can work things out for good. He can use train wrecks and messes. How many of you would maybe be willing to raise your hand and say,
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I'm glad that God can use messes. All right. I am.
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Personally, I'm glad that He can use people like me. Because I don't have it all together. I'm a sinner just like you.
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And I'm working. And of course, yes, you're looking at me going, aren't you held to a higher standard? Certainly. James 3 .1
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tells me that as a teacher, I'm held to a higher standard. Believe me, that's a weight on my shoulders.
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That's something I have to deal with every week. Those of you who teach and lead, you recognize that. The whole phrase, practice what you preach.
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And that's a pressure and that's a weight. But He can use people like me, people like you.
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As I look at Paul and Barnabas, I can easily fall in the mentality. As I look at biblical characters, I can fall into the mentality that they're so much better than me.
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Have you been there? You look at some of these people and you're like, man, I can never attain to that level of, you know, they're persecuted and they're smiling and they're singing songs in jail after they're being whipped.
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We're going to see that in a few weeks here. I'm like, I don't know that. I don't know. That doesn't reflect me very well.
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Or they're picking up stones and slaying giants. And I'm like, it's not so much like me.
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Right? Do you guys relate to that? Am I the only one who reads these pages of scripture and goes, man, these guys are giants of the faith and I'm just this guy here.
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So I can elevate them so much that sometimes I can elevate them incorrectly to the place where I can't relate to them anymore, where their stories don't speak to me, because they're
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Paul and Peter and Barnabas and David and all of these amazing greats of the
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Bible. Right? Can you relate to that? I'm getting some blank stares here. Are you understanding what I'm saying? Maybe?
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Okay. Thank you. Sorry. It's getting a lot of blank stares there. Passages like this bring things back down to reality for us, don't they?
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Passages where we get a chance to see the way that life really is and that these guys were people just like us.
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Even these guys had struggles. Yet God is going to do some amazing things continuing forward through them, despite their stubborn disagreement in our text that we're going to get a first person glance at.
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So let's praise God this morning that God can use even the real messes of life and turn those things for his glory.
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That I think that as we come to worship this morning and the band is going to come after I read this text and pray, that I think if we...
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Real worship is born in our hearts through really recognizing who we are.
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I don't know that we can worship with a false, with pretense, with false views of ourselves.
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If we come and approach the throne of God as if we have something to offer him, as if he needs something from us,
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I don't believe we can worship in that context. I don't believe your heart can come to worship him if you do not recognize your own faults, your own failures, the train wreck that we make of our lives and how much we need him because worship is born in the process of needing
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God. Do you hear what I'm saying? As we recognize our need for him, we recognize the mess that we've made of our lives and the glory and the grace that is offered us in Jesus Christ.
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That should exalt him. That should make our hearts so dependent on him that when we come and we sing these songs, that the songs actually reflect our heart and our desire to bring honor and glory to the only one that really matters, the only one who makes a difference in our lives.
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Is that making sense? So let's read this passage together and as we get a chance to kind of reflect on some of the messiness of our human condition, let's turn that around and look at it from the standpoint of ourselves, recognizing the messes that we make of relationships and that God's grace shines all the brighter even in the midst of our messes.
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Short passage, Acts 15, 36 -41. And after some days,
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Paul and Barnabas said, let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the word of the
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Lord and see how they are. Now, Barnabas wanted to take with him John called Mark, but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.
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And there arose a sharp disagreement so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took
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Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the
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Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. Let's pray.
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I want to kind of set the stage here a little bit. Last week, we left Paul and Barnabas teaching and preaching in the town of Antioch.
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Now, we'd had that disagreement that had happened between the church in Antioch and Jerusalem. A council had formed.
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People down in Jerusalem were telling people in Antioch, hey, you Gentiles, you need to become more like us to follow
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Christ. You need to come through our toll booth on the pathway to salvation. And the church got together, had a big debate.
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And in the end, they came to the conclusion that no, that's not what grace in Christ looks like. That's not what salvation looks like.
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It doesn't look like come and act like us, and then you are in. So that decision had been made.
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We saw that letter delivered up to Antioch. Paul and Barnabas were part of the team that went down to Jerusalem and then came back to Antioch.
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And so we left them preaching and teaching the word of the Lord in Antioch at the end of our last section.
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And then now, after some days, right at the beginning of our passage, we see that Paul hatches a plot. He comes up with this plan.
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And he suggests to Barnabas that they return to the churches that they had started back starting in Acts chapter 13.
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Now, remember, they had been sent out by this church in Antioch, and the Holy Spirit, while they were in worship and prayer, had set aside
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Paul and Barnabas to this work and basically communicated through prophets that God's call was on their life to go out and start new churches in a
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Gentile territory. So they had boarded a ship, went across Cyprus, what is modern -day
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Cyprus, the 130 -mile journey across there, preaching and proclaiming the word of God all the way across with great success, got on a ship, went to the southern coast of Turkey, started some churches there, went around proclaiming the word of God there.
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And so you can imagine that there'd be some kind of connection with them between Paul and Barnabas and these people who they had ministered to, right?
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They had been there. They had seen them come to faith in Christ. They had traveled throughout their area. They had even suffered persecution and hardship.
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At the end of that trip, they then went back through and encouraged those people, setting up leadership in the churches and all that.
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So how many of you think that maybe there's some curiosity on Paul and Barnabas's part about how things are going up there? Would you agree?
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I mean, there'd be kind of a desire on their part to figure this thing out. So Paul says, hey, let's go back and check things out there.
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Now, let me remind you that returning to the cities where they had started this church, all of these churches in Southern Turkey is not like returning to an amusement park, okay?
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It's not even like going to a family reunion. Now, I don't know how your family reunions are. That can be like an amusement park or not like an amusement park.
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I don't know. In Antioch, so I should have put a map.
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I apologize to you that I don't have a map. Hopefully some of your Bibles have them. There's two different Antiochs that I'm talking about here in the passages.
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Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas are right now, which is north of Jerusalem. There's another city, Antioch, that is in modern day
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Turkey. So two different Antiochs. The Antioch in Turkey where they had started a new church, they had been run out of town there.
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The text told us that they were kicked out of that district by the Jews. In Iconium, there was a plot to kill them and they fled for their lives, okay?
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Not necessarily a picnic in the park going on up in this area. And then to take it a step further in Lystra, the town of Lystra, Paul was stoned, knocked unconscious, just dragged outside of the city and left for dead.
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Not a picnic kind of journey. Not just kind of like, hey, let's go just kind of hang out with some of our friends over here.
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I mean, what Paul is proposing is, hey, Barnabas, let's get back in the fray. Let's get back into this here.
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Remember where they're at. They're at their home church. They're at a place where they're well respected.
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They've got a ministry. It says that they're teaching the Word. They're in a safe place. They're needed there. They, how many of you know,
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I mean, there's places that you go that you have respect, right? Hopefully you have some of those places. There's some places where you go where you have some respect, where people like you and they know your name, you know, the place where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came.
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I didn't come up with that. That's not original with me. But you know what I'm saying. I mean, there's places where you're respected.
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And how many of you know it would be comfortable for Paul and Barnabas to hang where they're at, stay there? Are they needed where they're at?
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Yeah. Yeah, of course they are. I mean, they're teachers, they're leaders, they're elders in their church.
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And yet God is going to push them both out here in a moment and we're going to see that they're going to re -enter the freight.
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One thing that is very important to start off with is the common ground that Paul and Barnabas share because we're going to see, like I said, some division here.
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We're going to see a heated debate, a strong disagreement formed between them. So what do they have in common?
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Paul and Barnabas both share a common desire to see the church grow and for Christ's fame to spread throughout the world.
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Pretty significant thing that they hold in common. Would you agree that that's cement? That's some pretty significant reality.
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Now we might disagree on all different kinds of things from style of music to the type of things that we wear to whatever types of foods that we like.
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But we have something in common, don't we? We have Christ in common with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
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And that's a significant cement that holds us together. But we're going to see that there's some cracks that form in that here.
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But they have this desire to see the church grow, Christ spread. They both love Jesus. Not only that, but to the extent that they have both risked it all for Him.
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They've both had their necks on the block. Either one of them could have been killed at any time in that whole process of planning and starting these new churches.
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They've risked much together. How many of you know that that kind of intensity of ministry has a tendency to forge strong relationships?
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Do you understand what I'm saying? I mean, they faced significant hardship together. So that what we're going to see here in the text is all the more stark.
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All the more desperate about the human condition. All the more about the depth of our depravity and ability to part ways with friends and close associates and people who are close to us.
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They share a lot in common, but there's a conflict. Look at verse 37. Now, Barnabas wanted to take with them
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John Mark. Barnabas wants to take not just John Mark. There's some important things that you need to understand about John Mark.
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It's natural. Paul says, hey, let's go back and go back and visit the churches that we started. John Mark went with them on that very first journey.
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So he's just basically saying, hey, let's start off the same way we started off last time. John Mark was our assistant.
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If you go back to Acts chapter 13, you'll see John Mark went with them across the nation of Cyprus, that province.
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So he started with them in Antioch, boarded a ship, went over to Salamis on the east coast of the island of Cyprus, and then all the way over and marched across that with them to Passos.
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He was there when the Roman proconsul, leader of the entire island of Cyprus, had given his life over to Jesus Christ, had put his faith there.
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So John Mark was there. The text told us back in Acts 13 that John Mark was their assistant.
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He was a helper to them. Now, some people have, you know, was he there just to carry the bags? What kind of an assistant was he?
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It's quite likely that he was a teacher. The word that's used there is that he was actually an assistant in helping with the teaching and the discipleship and working.
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So don't think that John Mark is just some immature guy going on here. So he had gone with them and they had crossed that island together.
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But it says here in Acts 13, 13, if you were to just write that down, if you're taking notes, you can just flip back a page if you want or whatever.
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But Acts 13, 13 told us that John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem.
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Now, where did they start from? Does anybody remember the town, the city where they started their missionary journey from?
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In Antioch. So they started in Antioch. So what does it mean that John Mark went back to Jerusalem?
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Well, one thing that's very interesting is we've already seen earlier in the book of Acts that John Mark had some relatives in Jerusalem.
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So he doesn't go back to where they started. He goes back home. And who is his relative that lives in Jerusalem?
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Any guesses? His mommy. John Mark's mommy lives in Jerusalem.
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We actually saw Peter in a group, but we saw people, a group of people praying at Mary's house. Mary is called
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John Mark's mother in that text. And they're praying. And remember, Peter was in prison. Miraculous angel appears to him, breaks the shackles, the gate opens, all the guards are asleep.
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He walks out and he goes to Mary's house, who is the mother of John Mark, the text told us. So you put all these stories together, you piece it all together, and you start to see what's going on with John Mark here.
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Where did he leave? Why did he leave them? Now, we could speculate all we want about why John Mark left that missionary journey.
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By the way, when he left, they had had quite success, quite a lot of success going across Cyprus.
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They led the entire, the leader of the entire province to faith in Christ. Significant success.
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At what point does he ditch them? Just as they enter into hostile territory, just before, as the text is gonna tell us here, just before the work began.
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Cyprus wasn't work for them. Cyprus was a relatively peaceful place, but he's gonna take the ship across the
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Mediterranean Sea to the southern coast of Turkey. And once that ship lands, he's like, going back to Jerusalem.
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Now, like I said, we could speculate all we want, but one thing that we know for sure is that Paul thought he was a sissy.
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Paul thought that, I mean, that's what's gonna go on here between Barnabas and Paul. And the important thing that you recognize in this, an interesting twist, is that Barnabas is
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John Mark's cousin. They're blood. Or as my relatives in West Virginia would say, they're kinfolk.
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And how many of you know that blood is pretty thick? Right? So we're gonna see a little bit of that dynamic going on here.
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That factors in, I think. But Paul saw what John Mark did back in 1313.
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He saw it as desertion. Luke uses the word desertion here in our text.
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He deserted us. In verse 38, the word that we have, had withdrawn from.
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Withdrawn from is, another way to translate that is to desert. And so we see a significant way that Paul viewed that.
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He didn't like it that he had left. They had depended on John Mark as an assistant.
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They depended on him. And Mark left before the real persecution began, before the real work of ministry had started.
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Now I wonder if Paul had a strong view of ministry. Paul, who was constantly reflecting on the words of Christ, constantly reflecting on the
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Old Testament. And I wonder if he took quite literally the words of Jesus. If you were to write this reference down,
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Luke 9, 62, Jesus says this. Think about how this would have an impact on your view of ministry. Luke 9, 62, the words of Jesus Christ himself.
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He says, No one who puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.
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Did Paul take a quite literal tack on that? Is that the way that he viewed that? Now I think there's a little bit more of a figurative interpretation of what
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Jesus' words mean there. But was Paul thinking John Mark put his hand to the plow and then looked back and needed something back there and went back home to his mommy?
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So we see a division form. And it can clearly be seen by a focus on the verbs here between 37 and 38.
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These verbs matter. Look at how verse 37 starts. Now Barnabas wanted.
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Barnabas wanted, but look at 38. Paul thought best.
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Barnabas wanted, but Paul thought best. Now thought best doesn't mean it's not interpreting that he was the right one in this text.
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It's just that his thoughts are pitted against the wants of Barnabas. Those things are meant to be parallel in the text comparing one another.
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So Barnabas wanted, but Paul thought best. And so often we see in our lives that our wants are pitted against the thoughts, the desires of others.
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Have you encountered that in your life? I want to watch TV, but my wife thinks it best to sit and have a chat.
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I want to drive 10 over the speed limit, but the police officer thinks it's best for me to drive safely at the speed limit.
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One spouse wants to save money ahead for Christmas and budget that money and plan it out.
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And the other thinks it best to rack up credit card debt and just take care of it later, at least by their behavior maybe.
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So what we see here in the text is the language of legitimate disagreement. Paul and Barnabas do not see eye to eye on this issue.
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And in our text, it's personal. It's personal between them. Like I said,
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Barnabas and John Mark are cousins. And how many of you know that having relationship involved in a discussion, in a debate, in an argument has a tendency to cloud our judgment and ultimately even heightens the stakes?
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Do you know what I'm saying? So things that you might not have been passionate about, all of a sudden you become passionate about because you're talking about my mom, you're talking about my sister, you're talking about my cousin, you're talking.
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Now, now the gloves come off, right? Do you know what I'm talking? Is anybody relating to that?
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How many of you know, how many of you know, I can say things about my sister that you can't say about my sister? Did you know that?
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I mean, that's the way it rolls, okay? And that's what's going on here.
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Not only that, but as we get to know Paul and Barnabas in the text, over the course of the text, you get a chance to get to know these guys.
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If you really read it, I think sometimes we have these empty shelves of people in the text and we think that they are merely just tools for us to, you know, they're a nice teaching lesson.
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They're a case study for us. These are people with real emotions. Put yourself in the text. I challenge you when you read
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Scripture, let it come alive to you. These are real people with real feelings and real emotions.
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And you can get to know Paul through the pages of Scripture. You can get to know Barnabas through the pages. I mean, do you know what the name
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Barnabas means? That wasn't his original name. He's given that name by the church. What does the name mean? Son of encouragement.
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The thing that the church identified the most about Barnabas, the thing that he received his title from was his ability to encourage people.
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Do you see how maybe that might play into this discussion here? This argument? This disagreement? Barnabas always wanting to give people a second chance.
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An encourager. Do you see something of his personality? Do you know somebody who's like a Barnabas? Always eager to give a second chance.
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Always gracious. Always merciful. Ready to give a second chance.
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Paul, on the other hand, is a down -to -business spitfire type of personality. You read him in the pages of Scripture.
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He's type A. He's driven. He's fearless. No room for this interpersonal monkey business.
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Several times in the pages of Scripture, just to give you a sense of his view later on in Scripture.
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This is a positive thing and it's going to show that there's some grace at the end. But literally,
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Paul later is going to say, send John Mark to me because he could be of use to me.
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He is useful to me. I'm going to think that that's not necessarily the kindest way to address people.
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You, I like you because you're useful to me. Do you see? I mean, that's, that's, ew.
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But that's the kind of personality they had. And we, there's all different kinds of personalities, right? Is their personality sinful?
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Well, I think there's sin in all personalities, right? We can be too gracious. We can be too encouraging.
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Somebody comes to you and says, I murdered somebody. It's like, okay, it's okay. It's all right. No, that's not okay. You know, you could be too encouraging, couldn't you?
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So you look at this and you see these two personalities develop. Now, how many of you are glad that God saves all different kinds of people?
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I am very grateful that he saves all kinds of people. I'm grateful for the driven type A personalities like Paul.
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I'm also grateful for the encouragers like Barnabas. We need both. The kingdom of God needs both type of people.
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In this case, however, I fear that Paul and Barnabas were not very thankful for each other. And I think that's an issue that we see here in the text.
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They're not thankful for one another or each other's viewpoint. Because verse 39 says that a sharp disagreement arose between them.
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And the effect of that disagreement is going to be separation. The two friends are going to part ways over this disagreement.
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That's how cutting this is. Ironically, the word for disagreement is one of irritation.
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It is a word for provocation, provoking. It's literally around the time of Jesus Christ, the
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Bible had already, the Old Testament had been translated into Greek. So we have the benefit of being able to look at how modern usage of the
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Greek in that time, how they translated Old Testament words. So we have the
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Hebrew Old Testament and then we have a Greek Old Testament called the Septuagint. In the Old Testament Septuagint, this word, this
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Greek word is used to translate the wrath, the anger, the provocation of God. When Israel sins against God and he becomes angry and upset with them, this word, irritated, aggravated to action.
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There's another irony in the use of this word later in Scripture. Because Paul himself is going to use this same exact word later in a letter to the church in Corinth.
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And we're going to see in a few weeks, he's going to go to Corinth and then we're going to see that he's going to depart from there and write a couple of letters back to them.
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But this word occurs in many weddings. I've read this word in a wedding before because there's a famous passage in Acts, I mean in 1
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Corinthians chapter 13, known as the love passage. All about love, right?
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And Paul is going to say that love is not this word.
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Love is not irritable is the way that it's done in most translations. That's this word for this strong disagreement, this irritability, this aggravation that comes up between them.
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So you're going to see, I don't know whether Paul practiced what he preached or later on feeling guilty about this situation, he recognizes that he had been guilty of that.
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Because he's going to pen those words later in his life. He's saying love isn't like that. He himself has been guilty of being like that.
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You see that? This is not a gentle dispute. And I think it's important for us to reflect on what are they arguing about?
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Are they arguing about doctrine? No. Are they arguing about the gospel?
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No. Are they arguing about preferences in ministry? Yeah, just preferences.
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Don't you know that we can be petty? Can we be petty? We can.
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They could be too. They're arguing about whether or not to take another man along to the lion's den with them, back into the fray.
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Paul thinks it's going to drag them down. Barney thinks that the guy deserves a second chance. This is a personality conflict.
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And I want to point out, it's okay that Paul and Barnabas don't see eye to eye on this. I mean, you know that's okay. The point of this passage is not that everybody just always gets along all the time.
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It's okay that they disagree. But there's a problem here. They're not going to respect each other's opinion.
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And even the years of ministry together are not going to bring Paul and Barnabas to an agreement together. They're not going to be able to see past this difference.
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It's important to acknowledge, though, that scripture does not take sides here. Scholars have poured time and energy and hours and hours and hours of study into this text trying to figure out who was right.
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But the text is silent on choosing who is right. Because that's not the purpose of this text.
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How many of you know that in our human nature, we want to drive towards the text being about us and our application.
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And so we look at the text. And if we could determine who was right, then what would be our application from this text?
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What would we walk away from this text with? Either one way or the other, right?
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We would be like, don't give people a second chance. That would be our application. If Paul is right, then don't give people a second chance.
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And that would just be done with the text, right? Or if Barnabas was the one who was right, then give second chances and we're good to go.
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And we would just take their specific situation. And rather than understanding the principle that what
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God wants to communicate is something about himself through this text, rather than just tell us how to live or what to do.
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And so often we look at the text, just give me a nugget, give me something I can do different this week instead of show me who
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God is. Show me the God of the text should be our call, should be what our heart beats for.
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I want to know God deeper through this text, not just simply a list of rules.
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Could you give me one more thing to tack on the end of my to -do list this week? Boy, I hope you don't walk out of here with one more thing to do differently, but a bigger, broader picture of what
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God can do through faulty humans like us, like Paul, like Barnabas, that he can still work even despite our sinfulness.
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I hope that that's what you get here. I was all a little bit of a sidetrack here and I got to get caught up, figure out where I was.
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So Paul and Barnabas separate. Paul and Barnabas separate.
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It's like the band is broken up and it always seems to be the drummer's fault. Have you noticed that in the band?
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I can say that because Lee's not here this week, so our drummer's gone, so I just kind of throw that in. But what happens at the end of verse 39 and in verse 40 is redemptive.
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It is going to be God purchasing things back in this situation and actually causing good in the midst of sinfulness, even in this tense situation.
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Because what we have here in our text is an illustration of how God can use our messes and turn them around.
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You see, Barnabas is going to take John Mark and head to Cyprus. Now, if you remember, as I said earlier,
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John Mark had already gone through Cyprus. He had already developed relationships. I can't imagine that they didn't stop in and see how
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Sergius Paulus, the leader of the entire island, was doing when they got over there. He's already been there.
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Barnabas has. And John Mark. So they revisit and they go through the island.
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And as Barnabas boards that boat to depart Antioch to head over to the island of Cyprus, as he's on his way over,
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Barnabas literally sails out of the text of the book of Acts. We're not going to see him again. This is the last thing that's recorded of this guy's life is this disagreement, this wrangle with Paul.
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How many of you know that Paul and Barnabas have been reunited? They're back together.
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But this is the last thing that we see of him. We're going to see more of John Mark. John Mark's going to appear and not
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Barnabas. Paul sends for Silas back down in Jerusalem. Silas, he had just met recently at that council.
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And at the council, they kind of became buds and they talked and they interacted. And then Silas is from the church in Jerusalem.
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He's a leader down there. Paul is a leader in the church in Antioch up in the north. And he sends for Silas and says, hey, send him.
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Probably said something to the effect of, I could use him, knowing his personality.
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Paul and Silas head off over land to visit the churches.
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So they don't get on a ship, but they're going to walk through Syria and Cilicia, take the road, the Ignatian Way, goes right through his hometown of Tarsus and right up through those towns and those cities that they planted those churches in.
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And they're going to be on foot, hoofing it many, many miles together. God chooses to multiply the ministry.
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Despite this hardship, despite the sin, despite the disagreement,
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He ends up creating two missionary teams where there had only been one. There ends up being a divide and conquer.
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We see that the teams are commended in verse 40. But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the
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Lord. Many believe that the end of 39 should be included in 40 so that you get the notion that both teams were commended.
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That's kind of what the Greek leans towards. So it's more likely that both teams, not just Paul and Barnabas, were commended.
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But the structure seems to imply that both were commended by the church. I heard a sermon some years back on this very passage that the main point was about compromise, about working things out and working out our difficulties.
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Paul and Barnabas, in the end, they just disagreed. And so they sat down and they divided and conquered.
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And they just came up with this immaculate compromise to, hey, you take John Mark and head to Cyprus and I'll take
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Silas and we'll go and we'll work this out. But I don't see that. I'm unconvinced after studying this that Paul and Barnabas were noble and exemplary in their behavior in our text.
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I don't think that they're a model for us in this. They didn't plan this for good.
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God worked it out for good, but they didn't plan that. They didn't sit down with a whiteboard and a map and divide and conquer.
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They had a sharp disagreement and they separated from each other, the text says. I'm not even convinced though that the application is just simply that there are times we should separate from each other.
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Some people have made that the main point. Well, there's just times we should separate and one should go this way and one should go that way.
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Because I think the point is about God. You see, I value, I see value in the reality that scripture records human sinful behavior because it highlights the glory and power of God in using even messy sin -corrupted people to accomplish his ministry for his glory.
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Do you see the value in that? There's a record of sinful leadership actually getting an opportunity to see their faults and their failures and seeing
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God still use them and still work through them. Can you see value in that? Because that's real life.
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I want to point out that this gets messy and we see sin. And certainly we don't go out and sin so that God gets more glory, right?
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You could accidentally hear that or catch that from me. God received more glory because the leadership was sinful and so he still got his will done.
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And so we're going to see Paul later ask this question in the book of Romans. He asks this,
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Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Should we go out and sin more? Because the more that we sin, the more glorious God looks when he forgives it and when he saves us and when he still shines the light.
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Do you know what I'm saying? Like if it's really dark, then the bright light is brighter. Do you understand that mentality?
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So Paul's challenging that and saying, so should we go out and sin more so that God's grace shines all the brighter?
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And then he answers with three words with an exclamation point in the text. By no means.
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No. Definitively no. We don't sin more so that grace shines brighter. And then he goes on to say, how can we who died to sin live in it?
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God is not glorified by our sin. It's not the sin of Paul and Barnabas that he's glorified by.
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He's glorifying himself despite their sin. So we don't go out and sin so God can get more glory.
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This passage leads me to four primary applications from this text. One commentary suggested that there is no application from this text that we can take away as a normal encouragement for the church today.
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Nothing that we can take away. So I'm going to try to give you four. Number one, and these are things that just hit me.
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God can use you and me. He can use us. You see,
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Paul and Barnabas were not unlike us. They had wants and thoughts that were occasionally in conflict with others.
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They did not always navigate interpersonal relationships with maturity and grace. They didn't even practice what they preached at times.
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Geez. There's a word for that, isn't there? Hypocrite.
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But God can use messes. He can use train wrecks for His glory. I am so grateful that God can use us.
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As I said earlier, if God were to look at all of our hearts and was looking for a perfect person to shine
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His glory and to be used in ministry, how many of us would still be standing?
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None. Not a one of us. He has no choice but to use messes because we make messes of our lives.
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So it's to His glory and ultimately He likes to use the weak things of the world to shine
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His glory all the better. The second thing that I see in this text, so the first is that He can use us. He can use the messes.
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But second of all, look for others to bring along. The concept of mentorship and developing deeper relationships is key.
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And you see that Paul had some kind of view of Silas in this. Even in the middle of this disagreement, there were two winners, right?
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John Mark and Silas. They both got to sit under great teaching. Both of them would go on to literally pen portions of Scripture.
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And you might kind of scratch your head and say, Silas, did he write any Scripture? Look at the introduction to 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
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He's there, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He was part of the team that put that together. John Mark will eventually write the gospel according to Mark under the guidance and direction of Peter.
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Both of these men are chosen to embark on an adventure. They are trained and mentored by leaders in the church.
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Some of you here are looking and saying, well, what could I do in that regard? You know,
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I'm new in the faith. Well, those who are new, maybe your role is to take somebody who's not even in the faith and share what
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Christ has done for you. How many of you know there's somebody wherever you're at in your spiritual walk, there's somebody who's a couple steps back that could use help and assistance.
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And some of you are like, you know, I've been around the church, but I just don't feel that spiritually mature.
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I don't know what I have to offer other people. Well, start to think through some of these things in your mind. How many sermons have you heard?
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How much time have you spent in God's word? How many Christian songs do you know? And I think you'd start to realize that maybe you have a little bit of something.
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And like I said, there's always somebody who's just a couple of steps behind. Now, if you ask somebody, they're going to think that you think that they're a couple steps behind.
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I don't know. Oh, you're just asking to mentor me because you think I'm spiritually immature, right?
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Well, get out and forge those relationships. Get to know one another. I mean, during the connection time that we have in the middle of the service, at the end of the service, before the service, just as you get a chance to talk with people, maybe there's some things that you connect over.
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And how many of you know, it doesn't have to start off as a necessarily spiritual thing. Like, I mean, maybe you both have a love of Tigers baseball or the
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Lions. I mean, you already have some kind of a weird, strange connection if you're connected over Lions football.
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You belong together on that one. So you make these connections.
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And sometimes it starts as things that you have in common and you can develop that relationship. And what often happens, and I love to see this has happened in my life too, you take somebody on to mentor them and to encourage them and you find that you end up growing more.
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Sometimes more than them. So this is, you get these relationships, but they were looking for others to bring along.
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Barnabas obviously had that as a very central framework of giving people a second chance.
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He wanted to take those who were weaker along. Paul still brought alongside with him. The third thing is that relationships in the church can get messy.
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Does that kind of go without saying? It just seems like I barely even need to say that. But I would dare say that because of what is at stake in the church, things tend to heighten and even get messier.
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Because one thing is, we recognize that things that we deal with out in the world or at our workplace, hopefully you're able to leave some of those things behind.
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You recognize that's not the end all of your existence, right? But when we start talking about spiritual things, when Paul and Barnabas are talking about going into the fray together and they're talking about souls of people,
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I want you to know that things start to get elevated in their intensity around those things. Especially if you're fearful that maybe this person's gonna stop the ministry or is going to leave us stranded in a desperate place.
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You see, Paul considered what was in jeopardy in bringing along John Mark and decided it wasn't worth the hindrance. He knew what kind of environment they were heading into.
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He had felt the stones smashing into his bones and muscle as one hit his head and he went unconscious.
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He remembered that feeling. And he was like, sorry, I'm not taking somebody who deserted us before into that environment where we might get slowed down.
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Barnabas wanted to give his cousin a second chance. And ultimately, isn't that the message of Christ? You can kind of see how both had...
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How many of you agree with Paul? Don't really raise your hand. Some of you agree with Paul on this one and you're like, man, that's an intense ministry.
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When do you at least agree that that's an intense ministry situation? You want people who are committed in that kind of situation?
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Do you want somebody who's gonna just ditch you at a moment's notice when you thought he had your back and it's like, he's gone.
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So you can understand Paul's side of things. So you see how it gets messy? Because I can agree with both of them on this.
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Barnabas is like, isn't it the message of God? Isn't God a God of second chances? He's got a good point, right?
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It's a little bit messy and a little bit hard to walk through. In our strategies of ministry here at Recast, obviously it's our desire to be as close to God's word as possible.
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How many of you know that they couldn't turn to the Old Testament and figure out whether they should take John Mark with them?
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They couldn't find a chapter, you know, a verse nestled in the middle of Leviticus that said, thou shalt take
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John Mark on your missionary endeavor. They had to work through that, didn't they? And the same is true here at Recast.
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We turn to the word as much as possible. Where the Bible is silent on an issue, the leadership here at Recast carefully picks a pathway forward, cautious.
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But we recognize this reality. Get your pens ready. We can please most of the people some of the time, but we are displeasing some of the people all of the time.
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Did you get that? We can please most of the people some of the time, but we are displeasing some of the people all the time.
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And I think you can relate to that in your work, in your personal relationships. Somebody is always at some point offended by what we're doing.
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And occasionally people are happy about it. But in the end, the application must be a gracious recognition that we are fallen people in a fallen world, recognizing what we are.
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In the church, we are forgiven, but we are no less fallen. One of my favorite quotes of all time, definitely my favorite
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C .S. Lewis quote, but in my top five quotes, if you were to go on my Facebook and look at my favorite quotes, this is one of them.
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C .S. Lewis said this, the Christian has a great advantage over other men. Whoa. Not by being less fallen than they.
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We're not less fallen than the rest of the world, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world. Not like the effects of the fall are minimized on us.
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So the Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.
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It's the knowledge that we are fallen people in a fallen world that gives an advantage to the follower of Christ.
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Knowing who we are. Having laid bare ourselves that we might worship him as he is, that we might see him as holy and other and different because we recognize what it is that our hearts are.
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You know that the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things. Have you seen that in your own life?
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Have you come to the end of yourself? That's a prereq to embracing Christ.
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Coming to the end of yourself and recognizing this is a mess in here and I need
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Christ. And I don't need him just one time, I need him day by day. Every day renewing my commitment to walk with him moment by moment saying,
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God take these thoughts, take these away from me and make me new moment by moment and day by day, hour by hour.
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We live as fallen people in a fallen world and knowing that matters. The last thing, here comes the light shining in.
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Christ is the solution. Christ is the answer. Although Paul and Barnabas parted ways, the purpose to which they had been called went forward, continued on in the ministry of Christ through them.
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Their call was not changed because of this parting of ways, because of the sinful disagreement between them.
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What mattered most about them continued to go forward in the kingdom of God. And they were used by God to do great things for him.
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That Christ can come into our messes and transform us and change us. And as I said earlier,
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Paul and Barnabas are reunited. They are friends once again. And in Christ, when they met,
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I'm convinced that there was an embrace and a reconciliation and a bringing them together. If it didn't happen in this world, which it may have happened, we just don't have that recorded if it did, but if it didn't happen on these shores, it happened on that shore.
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When they met each other, they embraced and they were whole and complete in Christ. And he is the answer to our relational crud in our messes.
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It's worth noting that years later, and I mentioned this before, Paul and John were actually, Paul actually refers in the book of Philemon, he refers to John Mark as a ministry partner.
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So there's reconciliation between those two that we see. As a matter of fact, if you want to jot that down, it's Philemon verse 24.
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There's only one chapter, but Philemon verse 24, Paul lists Mark among his fellow workers.
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And as I mentioned before, very late in Paul's life, within his last couple of years, he requested a visit from John Mark.
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So whether that was a meeting of reconciliation, we don't know, but he requested, like I said, he was useful to him and he wanted them to come and see him.
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In the church, there's going to be disagreements, but for those who are in Christ, we know there is ultimate reconciliation when sin is done away with and we see our
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Savior face to face. We have the privilege to come to communion this morning. We take some juice to remember that Jesus shed his blood for us.
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We eat a cracker to remember that his body was crushed for us. And ultimately, as we come to communion, we remember that no amount of trying to clean up our act is sufficient.
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No amount of trying to be a good Christian is enough. We make royal messes of our life even as we're trying to be self -righteous and trying to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and make ourselves look better, trying to lift ourselves to heaven.
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And we make messes along the way. So we need a Savior, and Jesus came in as both
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Lord and Savior. So if you placed your trust in him, you've said, Jesus, I recognize that you're the rightful ruler and I need you to save me, then
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I want you to feel free to come and take communion with us. There's a table set up in the back and there'll be two lines in the front. I want you to remember the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made that we might have these messes put away from us and have unity as a church only in him and walk with him all of our days.