God Speaks Through Barnabas, but who is he?

Kari Farnell

I have to admit it! I often do not remember sermons much beyond Sunday morning. One exception to this is a sermon given by my father-in-law about 30 years ago. To be honest I don’t remember a lot of it either, but I do remember he talked about Barnabas. I didn’t remember ever hearing much about Barnabas prior to this sermon. You too may have never heard of him. 

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 The first mention of Barnabas is in Acts, chapter 4. I rediscovered him when I recently read through Acts, chapters 3-5. These chapters talk about some of the events surrounding the beginnings of the church, including one of the arrests of Peter and John as they attempted to share the good news of Christ. There is a lot of interesting information in these two chapters, so I encourage you to read them on your own. After healing a man, Peter, John, and the man who was healed, were arrested.  The Sadducees couldn’t decide what should be done with them, but finally released them with the instruction to stop spreading the stories of Jesus. The main reason they released them was because between the time of healing the man and being arrested, Peter and John had convinced more than 5000 people to believe their stories about Jesus. In addition, there was no way to hide the fact that this man who had been crippled for more than 40 years was now healed. With all of that community support for Peter and John, the Jewish leaders were afraid of riots and so they released the men telling them not to share the news of Jesus. Once Peter and John were released they went back to the community of believers who prayed about the situation. The Bible tells us that after the prayer, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began sharing God’s message with even more confidence.

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Acts 4 then goes on to describe this community of believers as being so deeply committed to the cause that they put all of their earthly belongings together in “one pot”, so to speak, and shared what they had with each other. This is where Barnabas comes in. Barnabas is first identified as a Cyprian Levite, a Jewish man (of the priestly order) that had been born in Cyprus. His name was originally Joseph. The writer of Acts tells us that this Cyprian Levite, Joseph, along with others, sold property and put all of the money from the sale into this “pot” to be used by the fellow believers. The apostles recognized the significance of this act and actually nicknamed Joseph as Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement”. Barnabas’ act was an encouragement to others that they could also give what they had to this community of believers. This same Barnabas went on to travel and spread the Gospel with Paul a little later in Acts..

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When I heard my father-in-law’s sermon all those years ago and he talked about Barnabas being an encourager, I knew right then and there that this was my calling...to encourage others. For some time I had wrestled with my spiritual gift(s). I knew that we were each given at least one, but was really unsure of what mine was...until I heard about Barnabas. It was then that it occurred to me that perhaps this was my gift.  In college, I studied Psychology with the idea of helping others, then wanted to try teaching to help others. My gift was really not in teaching or even helping others, but in encouraging. Often we may feel that we have no contributions to the family of God, but know that we can always be an encourager. Encourage others to follow God; encourage them to pray; encourage folks to come to church; encourage friends to read the Bible. If you cannot seem to find any other gift, choose to be a Barnabas!

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