Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to The Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you are joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.
You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, good morning. If you are new and I have a lot of new people here in the room today, my name is Charlie, I'm the lead pastor here, and really, really glad that you're with us.
Glad all of you are with us, but if you are new, I would love a chance to meet you. We have a little thing in the back, call it First Step. We got a gift that we'd love to give you. I would just love to meet you, figure out any way that we can help you as a church, would love to know. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd just love to talk to you there in the back after the service.
And you've caught us in a really cool time. We're kind of in the middle of a little short three week series where we're spending some time kind of talking about our mission statement. There's kind of three different parts to it, kind of working our way through it one one part at a time over the course of three weeks, kind of help remind some of us kind of who it is God's called us to be, what is it that we're supposed to be about, we're supposed to be doing, and so for some of us, it won't be a refresh, but getting to hear, what is it that makes The Grove the Grove, what it is that God's called us to? And I'll just give it to you right now. Our mission statement is this, inviting Northwest Arkansas to know Jesus, pursue meaningful relationships, and share His hope with the world.
So at beginning, as we talked about last week, we want this to be a place where you can know Jesus no matter who you are, where you've come from, what your background is, where your past hurts, problems, traumas, experiences with church. I want this to be a place where you can safely hear the truth about who Jesus Christ is so that you can come to know Him. And for those of us who have come to know Him, we want to be cultivating an environment where people can know Him more. And that's kind of, each one of these weeks have a little group project or group application goal for the year, and what was birthed out of that is what Jason talked about earlier, joining up with us on the Bible app. You can find us on the Bible app under The Grove Church, and then we're reading through the New Testament together.
Again, we're not trying to coordinate, everybody starts on this day and do this, but just making a commitment. We're gonna read through the New Testament and allow God's word about who Jesus is and what He did and how we could live for Him. Just let that sink in over the course of a year. For some of us, it is a it'll be a new discipline to gain, to kind of be just making sure I'm spending every day reading a little bit of God's word. But then after we know Jesus, we want to build meaningful relationships.
And we deeply believe here that if you're gonna grow in your relationship with Christ, and you're going to become the man, the woman that God has designed you to be, that happens best in the context of real relationships. And we're going to spend some time talking about that in-depth today. And then the last piece is that we want to share His hope with the world. Not to math nerd this too much, but it's a recursive idea. Right?
We want people to know Jesus and build meaningful relationships, and then go out and use what you have learned in the way that you have grown to extend those same opportunities to people all over the world. And we'll finish up the series next week talking about that. And so we think about this idea of building, pursuing meaningful relationships. I just want to start with a question to kind of just help you lock in a little bit on what it is I'm talking about. And I want to ask you this question.
Do you have do you have your people? Your people. I'm not asking if you have acquaintances, friends, neighbors, people that you work with, people that you are close to, but you have your people, the kind of people that would go anywhere, do anything, help you in any way that they can. Like you've got the sort of depth of relationship where just being around this person makes you better. You're growing.
They know what there is to know about me, and I know what there is to know about them. And we're helping each other get better, and there's a deep loyalty and friendship and commitment. You have your people. I think too often, we're settling for something short of that. And so I want to spend a little bit of time today talking about what that is, but I'll illustrate it a little bit here.
If you were here last week, it was the sixteenth anniversary of when our family and I moved here, and so it's got me a little bit of sentimental. Some of the very first people I met are some of the best friends I've ever had, and some of the best friends I certainly have here, one of them who I will not mention by name as a birthday present to them, It was their birthday this week, and we got to celebrate that. And I was talking to her about it. It was just very sentimental to think about for sixteen years the amount of life we have lived together. But the first person that I met here, other than the people I interviewed with, was a woman Kim Blanchett, about the same age as us.
And she was kind of helping us move into our apartment, And she was also planning the potluck that was going to be two days later, the following Sunday, at the church. And she came with this graph paper, and she had drawn out to scale the entire building where we used to meet. And she had two copies of it. One was perfectly to scale every way that the church was lined out that time. Next page was the exact layout of what she wanted to do with the chairs and where the tables were going to go and the flow of how people were going to work and everything.
And she just kind of showed all this to me and said, what do you think? And I said as many nice things as I could possibly say. But when she left, I looked at Heidi, I was like, I don't know who that was, but I need to be friends with her. That is the kind of energy that I need in my life. And so by no coincidence, I invited her and her husband Brendan to our small group that we were starting a few weeks later, and it was there in that apartment.
Some of the people there had to sit in camp chairs because there was not enough seating here in this little apartment that we lived in when we first moved here. And over the course of sixteen years, more times than not, more years than not, we have been in some kind of small group with them. At first, it was just Kim, and then Brendan started to come, and I've got to know him over the last few years, and he is without a doubt one of the best friends I have. And they are incredible. We have kids that are approximately the same age.
Their oldest is the same age as our middle. They were nine when we met. They're 25 now, and I performed his, their son Grant's wedding last night, which had me crazy sentimental. Even in the slideshow, there was this picture that we call the cousin picture. It was from Camp Oregold.
And we have two girls. I have two boys. And guys and girls really aren't supposed to spend a whole lot of time together at camp unless you're family. And so they told all the counselors that they were cousins. So that it was okay, we would see these pictures of them.
So we decided that Kim and I are sis we tried to figure out, okay, are the four of us, how does it work? So Kim and I are sisters. I introduce herself as my sister. She's my sister. I did it at Chick fil A the other day.
Oh, Charlie, who's this? This is my sister Kim. She didn't blink, I didn't blink. No one laughed. Like, no, it's my sister Kim.
My sister Kim. And I'm really happy with who she married. Brendan's great. I was like, good job, sis. We go on vacation together sometimes, and this is gonna sound weird.
We'll go on vacation. There's a place we both like to go together, but when we go there, we like to do different things. And so we'll go on vacation together for about four days, and we'll spend about six hours total together. They do something completely different. We may meet up later that day.
We'll do something completely different the next day. We won't see them at all that day. And after four days, we come home like, that was great. Sometimes we don't even take the same flight. And so I know you're thinking like, what is this?
It's like, we we just get each other, and we have lived a lot of life together. And I hope they know that there isn't anything that I would not do for them. And I know that that it is the same. And the depth and the beauty of this relationship is great. Switch to commercial.
Right? Where did it start? It's it started just by a simple invitation to a small group and the process of just getting to know each other and be committed to be in a relationship or just doing a little bit more than friendship. And if we are going to have meaningful relationships, it's going to require us to take some steps to do some things maybe we're not 100% necessarily a little nervous about on the front end, and just a real commitment to say that I want more than contacts. I want more than friends.
I want more than buddies. I need people. I need my people. And so what we're going do today is we're going look through the book of Acts, and we're just going get a couple of stories about a guy named Barnabas. And this guy Barnabas, I think, is exactly kind of what we're talking about.
He was the kind of person that we all need in our life and also the kind of people that we need to be for other people in their lives. And so before we even get started here, there's an intro to him, we're not necessarily doing that story, but the first time we meet him, he is being a very generous giver. He's selling a lot of what he has and giving it to the church, and it says that his his guy's name is Joseph. He says, but the apostles call him Barnabas, which means the son of encouragement. Not a lot of guys in here, right, and you got very common group of guys give each other nicknames.
Right? I don't know what kind of nickname you got, but then they're like, man, you know that guy? He's just so awesome. We should call him encouraging guy. He's like encouraging guy.
Like, you may have a nickname that is based on a character trait or something that you have done, it probably ain't encouraging guy. That's not the way that guys typically give nicknames. But whoever this dude was, whoever this Joseph was, he was so impressive in the way that he conducted this. Mean, we cannot call you Joseph. We gotta call you encouraging guy because of the impact that you are just having on everyone you come in contact with.
Fast forward a little bit, we've got the guy that's going to become the Apostle Paul that at this point in the story is being called Saul more than Paul, but it's the same guy. And he was this person that was persecuting the church. He was arresting believers and doing everything he can to kind of stop this movement built on Jesus, keep it from spreading. He was kind of this known figure, and all followers of Jesus, pretty scared of him. God meets him on this road and has this powerful interaction where basically he comes face to face with Jesus.
And his whole life is turned upside down, and now he wants to become a follower of Jesus. And people are rightly skeptical of this. They're rightly skeptical of this. And here we go. We'll start here.
Acts nine verse 26. When he, talking about Saul, when he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples. They were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus.
So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. He he talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews, but they tried to kill him. When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. So it says here, it's verse 26, 27, he came to Jerusalem, and everybody was afraid of him. They didn't he he wanted to be one of the disciples.
They wouldn't have him. And Barnabas comes in. He took him and said, I'm gonna take you directly to him myself. I'm gonna tell you what happened. This guy met Jesus, and and and we need to accept him.
I know you're nervous, but you don't need to be. He's the real deal. You need to accept him. And we'll say it this way, that Barnabas, what he did, Barnabas, he fought for Saul. He fought for him.
No one else believed in him. And honestly, they have a great point. Man, I know Paul was genuine, but it's a fair point. This guy has been sounds like a setup for a plot in any number of crime shows or movies that you can possibly imagine. You got this guy, he's a villain, and he's trying to get these guys.
And so he finally is like, well, no, I'm actually not on the right team. I'm on your team now. When do we meet? What time? How many friends can I bring?
And why don't we just meet up at my house? It'll be great. It's no problem. Can't wait to meet all of you. Can I get your names, your numbers, anything about you?
Give me all your personal information. I would love that. Again, Eric, nice try, Fed. Like, we're not like, I'm not I'm not playing I'm not playing that game. They were right to be suspicious.
Like, it's not right. It's understandable that they were suspicious. But Barnabas deeply believed in him, and he fought for him. I'm gonna hand deliver you to the apostles and say, you need to accept this guy. Ever need anybody to fight for you?
You ever been in a situation where it just seemed like the whole world was against you or turning against you? I have. It can be part of the job sometimes. I wish it weren't, but it is. Something will happen.
There'll be a misunderstanding. There'll be some sort of relationship break. And next thing you know, you got somebody that you care about deeply or you used to care about deeply or whatever, and now now they're just saying things. They're just saying things. It's not it's not necessarily an exclusive thing to pastors.
It happens to everybody. Someone that you trust is now saying things about you and the worst possible things that you can imagine. Some of the worst things that have ever been said about me have kind of been in this sort of context. And it's like, it happened to me in St. Louis.
It's happened to me here where people that I trusted are now saying just some really awful things. And there's a pattern that happens. There's kind of three groups of people, right? If somebody that some of you right now, if somebody came to you and said, I know what you think you know about Charlie. You see him on stage.
You feel I know him on stage, but actually, really, he's like this. If somebody you trusted more than you know me said this thing about me, he's like, well, wow, I guess that's true. So these things happen, and some people are like, wow. They start they believe these terrible things. Yeah.
Those people. I don't you don't really blame them. There's people, like, they just don't know what to do. I don't know what to I thought I knew who Charlie was. I don't know.
I don't I don't don't know what to believe. But then there's this other group of people that as soon as they hear that this is going on, start making shivs out of all the spoons in their silverware drawer. It's like, well, I'm just gonna start keeping a knife in my pocket and my sock, and you just point me in the direction of the person that I need to kill, and I absolutely will. And I am very thankful for the sentiment. It's like, we don't need to kill anybody, literally or metaphorically.
But thank you for the sentiment. Thank you for the loyalty. Thank you for the friendship. Thank you for the kindness. Thank you for when I get discouraged that I know you're going to be there.
Because Saul is in a difficult situation. He's right here. He's converted, and God has given him this mission. You are gonna be this great missionary and take God's word to to countless numbers of people. And he knows that his first step is he's gotta get connected with the disciples, and he's stuck here.
And Barnabas comes in and says, let me take you there. Again, if we just look at the story, obviously, God is superintending and overseeing this whole situation. From Paul's perspective right here. Right? He's given me this thing to do, and I can't even get started until this guy shows up.
Let me be the let let me be the one that gets you there. When no one else believes in you, I believe in you. And I will help you make that first step that seems impossible to get you to start this journey, this path towards becoming the man that God has called you to be. Again, if you notice here at the end, right, it kinda the story kinda ends with these people are trying to ultimately, these people are trying to kill him. Right?
He's debating with these people that used to be on his team. Right? He's trying to move on this team. Just imagine you're in this situation. This team won't have me, and at the same time, my old team is trying to kill me now.
And so they're trying to figure out what to do, and they finally decide, hey, we we got to sneak this guy out of here. And it says that they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. We got to get you out of here. We don't want you to die, so we're going to send you back. And Tarsus is his hometown.
And so now here's where he is. I'm here. I can't get I can't get I can't even get in. He finally gets in, so it's doing what God has called him to do. The threat on his life is so serious.
Like, man, we're going to have to get you out of here. And now it's not just back to step one, it's back to hometown. And this is where Paul finds himself now. Acts chapter 11 verse 22. Now there's been this big movement in the town of Antioch where a lot of people are finding Jesus and are believing in the gospel and starting to follow Him.
This movement's kind of erupted there. Verse 22, Acts 11, news of this reached the church in Jerusalem, And they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and, again, play on words here, encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. So he's given this assignment to go do this, and so he goes and does it, and great things happen.
And he's encouraging them, and he says, and he was glad. He's so lifted up, and he's encouraging them, and all these great things are happening. God is using him in this incredible way to help encourage and strengthen this movement. Verse 25, then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch.
So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Barnabas is having a great time being exactly who it is that God has called him to be and just seeing all of this incredible fruit of ministry in the lives of these people. No one told him to go get Saul. No one even brought him up, but he remembered.
You know who would really be fired up about this? Saul. This is in fact the kind of thing that God called him to do. You know what? I should stop what I'm doing, and I should go get him so he can do this.
The fact that even Barnabas even remembered him or even thought of him, much less stopped what he was doing to go back and get him. So not only did he fight for Saul, Barnabas, he went he found him. He went and got him. He was at his darkest, lonely, hopeless, not sure what's next. Again, I I I I it was hard for me to get this thing started the first time, and now we got it started, and now it's like nothing I get nothing I'm home.
I mean, I guess it's great. Mom's here and she cooks. I don't know. But I got I wanted to do something. I failure to launch.
I don't know. That was a phrase back then. Right? That's kinda gotta be what he's feeling. And next thing you know, Barnabas shows up.
Let me take you to this place where you can do and be what God has called you to be. At his most discouraged, his most isolated, Barnabas remembered him and knew, like, knew him well enough to know, one, to think about him. Two, to know what he would want to do and to know that this situation was perfect for him. So he found him, and he brought him. Now there's lots of serious, I've been using serious examples, my friendships and bad things that have happened to me.
Let me just, just for my own purpose, I'm going to use a silly example here. As many of you know, and all of you ultimately need to know, I guess, I'm a pretty significant, deep, Razorback basketball fan. Not only that, I'm one of the crazy ones. I mean, I'm way too emotional about it. You can say anything you want to say.
I just am. I know I am. I'm a hot mess. And you think, people say it. I think maybe I want to watch you be at a game and watch a game with you.
Like, don't really. You'll lose respect for me, and you won't want to come to church anymore, and it's a lose lose for everybody. So I have to kind of highly curate the people, right, because sometimes I can just kind of I don't handle it well. I've mentioned this story before, right? Unwillingly, I just thought it was going to be easier than this.
We had our very a tournament, it was supposed be an easy first round tournament game a few years ago, invited a whole lot of people to the house, including people who had never watched a game with me before. And next thing you know, very early in the game, against this team we should be beating by a lot, we were down by 14. And I, this is again, I'm hosting this is host I'm hosting this party. I left. And my closest friends were like, where did Charlie go?
And they were like, it's fine. He'll be back. And they knew, right? They just knew. And any time we experience a particularly devastating loss, you might think that my friends would text and be like, man, that was tough, man.
We'll get them next time. So sorry. I know you're probably discouraged. Like like like what normal people would do. No.
Don't ever do that. Don't ever don't ever be like, we'll get them next time. You should say, we'll get them next time. Gonna show you your house. Don't do that.
But what my best friends know to do is to not talk to me. Just don't bring it up. Just don't bring it up. No more text. And then the following Sunday, they'll talk to me about it.
A few of you, because you're not nice people, you'll do that on purpose because you know, oh, we'll do that at a game. Like, I'm going to we were talking about shivs earlier. What no, it's like and I get it. It's playful. It's playful.
They know to just leave me alone. Now again, that's not what you're supposed to do when somebody's going through it, but I know that if I experience the loss, like a real loss, like in like real world loss, that that my inbox of texts and calls, they would be right there as as much as I needed them. But they know me well enough to know that in certain times, he just wants to be he nope. Nope. Just nope.
That's nope. Nope. And these are the friends that we need. The kind of people who, when bad things happen, they think about you. They know.
They're thoughtful enough to know, And they know what you need to get you out of this place to get you back on the track that God has called you to. And this is what Barnabas does. He fights for him when he needs to. And when he gets discouraged, he goes and gets him, and he brings him. So they go on this they're now they're going on journeys, and they're having a great time.
God is just doing things with them all over the world, all over that that part of the world. A lot of great things are happening. God is moving. And it is great to have a friend like Barnabas. And it's easy to have buddies.
It's a little more difficult to have a friend like this, someone with that level of deep devotion. But there's something even greater that Barnabas is for Saul that I think is the hardest to kind of put all of this together. Fast forward, Acts chapter 15. Sometime later, Paul said to Barnabas, let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preach the word of the Lord and see how they're doing. Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him because he had deserted them in Pamphlia and had not continued with them in the work.
They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia strengthening the churches. He fought for him. He found him when he was at his most discouraged, and lastly, confronted him.
I mean, Barnabas confronted Saul. He told him truths that he needed to hear whether he wanted to hear them or not. And I can only imagine how this went. It's like, Barnabas is like, hey, man. We should we should bring we should bring Mark with us.
Like, and Saul's like, we're gonna we're gonna go bring Mark. He abandoned us. He was like, were together, he just left. We can't have that kind of energy. We can't have that kind of energy on the trip.
Well, we can't bring him. And it says sharp disagreement, so I don't think that I'm out of turn here by just kinda adding a little bit of intensity to this. Because I can imagine Barnabas being like, oh, so is that is that is that that what we do? We just give up on people? We just give up?
If one person doesn't believe Him anymore, we just kind of let them just kind of whatever happen to them. We don't go hard after people that are kind of sidelined. I'm sorry, that's not what we do. I think, in fact, that is not what we do. We believe in people.
That's how we got here. That's how you got here. We will not give up on this kid. This is the disagreement so short. They they they well, I guess we're just gonna go on two journeys now.
And because Paul is the main character here in the book of Acts, it's from this point forward, we kinda lose the thread a little bit about what really happened to Barnabas and to Mark. But here's one thing that we do know. Second Timothy, the end of Paul's life. He's talking to Timothy about all these different people and how this person's abandoned him, this person's hurt him, and how he feels so alone. But in the midst of his worst moment where he says, like, I feel like almost everybody has abandoned me, he says, but you know who I need?
I need Mark. He's been everything. I he's been so great. I need him. So whatever happened, turned out Barnabas was right.
We love this guy. We encourage him. He's gonna he's gonna come around. But even if even if we had no evidence of whether or not Barnabas was right or not, it does not matter. Paul needed to hear that truth.
We are not a graceless people. We are a people of multiple chances, and we go after those who have been discouraged. That is the foundation of our relationship, and that is who we are going to be. Paul needed to hear that, and, ultimately, he got the message. And Barnabas was willing to say something that Paul really didn't wanna hear.
And these are our people. This is what we do. We fight for each other. We go after each other when we're discouraged, and we'll say things to each other that many of us don't necessarily want to hear. Maybe I don't even want to say it, but the things that are essential to help one another get better.
So last week, we talked about we want to read through the Bible together this week, very simple application. I want this to be the time where you just kind of make a next level commitment to be a part of a small group here in the church. Now, for some of you, you're already doing that. For some of you, maybe you've tried it, and it's like it's not working for you. You're kind of I don't I don't know.
I don't know. These things are not built. You're not going to show up one Sunday or one Wednesday night to a small group and find your people. The first Sunday of any small group's always a little bit awkward. It's just like camp chairs in an apartment, right?
With with with the pastor that I don't even know. It's awkward. There was a couple there, they were dating. I thought if you're a couple and you're dating and you're coming to a small group together, you're probably engaged, and so I asked them, hey, are you guys engaged? I mean, as fast as you No!
Like, oh, my bad. They're married now with a kid, which is fine. But at the time, it was awkward. And it was my I brought the awkward. It'd be a little bit awkward.
I'm not asking you to visit a small group once. I'm asking you to make a commitment at least for a semester to say that I'm just gonna kinda lock in to see if God can help me develop meaningful relationships here beyond just the normal friendships that I have here or the normal friendships I have out there, that I can have people. And for those of you who are not in a small group, many of you, you don't need me to help you find one. You just need to say yes to the person that has been asking or start coming back to the one that you stopped going to for no good reason. But if you do need help, Mark is here, the connect desk is there.
I mean, I had already talked to somebody this first service who was looking for one, and I've got him coming to a men's Bible study that I'm starting up here in a couple of weeks. And bebop, I mean, can be easy. The hard part is your willingness to kind of step out of a comfort zone and say, I want to do this, especially if what I'm telling you is the end target here is for you to have people who know you well enough to help you get better. It's risky. If I said, I mean, we should all have dinner together with somebody in the next couple of weeks, that's safer.
But to take a step to get into a small group where I wanna learn we wanna learn together, we wanna grow together, we wanna get to know each other where I can have people, it can feel risky. But the reward far exceeds it because I need people. Because sometimes I I feel completely stuck. So far from the the man, the woman that God has called me to be, I can barely even see it. And I need somebody to get me here.
Sometimes I feel lost and discouraged, and I need people to get me back. And you've got some blind spots in your life that are holding you back and you don't even know it and you need somebody to say, hey, not that. This is what we need if we are going to become the men, the women, the church that God has called us to be. So I encourage everybody. Take a risk.
Take a step towards building meaningful relationships and finding your people. Let me pray. God, I thank you. I thank you for the people that you brought here today. God, for people who have been building meaningful relationships in small groups here for longer than I've been here.
To people who were and now aren't. To people who are new and have started, to people who are brand new and don't even know a other person in the room. God, we all need the same thing though. We need people. And, God, I pray that we would all take the necessary step that we need to take over the next few weeks to find people and to get those people in our lives enough where they they can make a difference in our hearts and we can make a difference in theirs so that we really can grow and become the men, the women, the church, God, you've called us to be so that then ultimately, we can share your hope with the world and more and more people can come to know your son, Jesus Christ.
And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to thegrovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening.
And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues of dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate podcast. It's on the same feed however you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.