My name is Trevor Davis. I'm GCC's pastor and we are in week two of our Vision 2025 series where we talk about generosity and prepare our church to give and to be a part of what we're going to do priority wise next year. And if you're a guest, thanks for being here today. I hope that this hasn't been too much or too over the top for you. But, but Sundays are for the Lord first, they're for the saints second, and they're for the world third.

Everybody's on the list but God's first. And so when the church gets together, we do what Christians do in the Bible and it's kind of countercultural. Speaking of countercultural, Tuesday is a big day, isn't it? Let me just say, vote your conscience and let your conscience be informed by the scriptures. And God is pro life.

He's also pro chastity and we don't need to vote for perversion. Amen. And if you don't know what that is, educate yourself. And God's also not lawless. He's given laws for nations and that's why we have borders and things.

And so just be informed. I gotta tell you, the choices are terrible. They're not leaders, they're not Christians, but this is what it is. And I want to also tell you that I've been all over the world and everybody on earth wants to live here. Because as bad as it is here, it's worse everywhere else.

Amen. Right? It's just worse. And so go vote on Tuesday and ask God who you should vote for and be informed by the Scriptures. Today I want to start a two part series called How Generosity Jumpstarts Ministry.

And when we talk about money here, and Don did an amazing job by the way, on the first part of the giving journey. I want you to know that the Lord has always blessed us and taken care of us financially at our church for 25 straight years and counting. Because we're not going to coerce you and make you feel guilty about money. We're not going to manipulate you. We're going to teach you what the Bible says and we're going to wait for the Holy Spirit to do what he does.

And it just works. And so that's how we do that. But today I want to talk to everybody about being generous just in your life. And Acts, chapter 4, verses 32 to 37 is our text. I want to read that now and then.

I want to preach it to you now. The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul. Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own. But they had all things in common and with great power. The apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all.

Nor was there anyone among them who lacked for all, who were possessors of lands or houses, sold them and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles feet. And they distributed to each as anyone had need. And Joses or Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles, which is translated son of encouragement, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet. Let's pray together. Father, our prayer as a church is that you just make us a room full of Barnabases.

And we're not asking for wealth, we're not asking for notoriety. We're asking for the love of God to permeate our hearts and to make us generous and an encouragement to our local church. For Jesus sake we pray. Amen. So Pastor, why this message?

I mean you can pick anything you want to. And the answer is to help our families approach money and possessions with, with the wisdom of the Bible. It's a two part series. It's a survey of the beloved church leader named Barnabas. And he shows us how generosity jumpstarts local church ministry.

He shows us how generosity helps others. Hey, we've helped so many people this year with our benevolence fund. It's always fat and full that it's getting low. That's how much there's been needs in people's lives. And our church has been generous.

It's just been a never ending stream. And I gotta tell you, it's a delight to be able to do that. Yes, I mean just helping people. And Barnabas shows us how generosity inspires others. So here's verse 32.

Now this is the first church in Jerusalem. Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul. Everybody say one heart and one soul. Circle that in your Bible. One heart and one soul.

Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. Everybody, look at me. This is not communism. This is not socialism. This is not everybody puts it into one pot and everybody gets the same thing and it's equal outcomes.

No, this is church ministry. And I'm going to show you how it's different. Verse 32 is a summary of the inner life of the first church. And if we Want to break it down into its smallest part. If it's anything.

They were united. One heart, one soul. That's the exact phrase that used by the philosopher Aristotle to describe how true friends act and they hold everything in common. Aristotle says it's like one soul dwelling in two bodies. And I think he's onto something here.

One commentator says, you can translate it this way. They thought the same things and they wanted the same things. Can you think of a better way to describe how unified a church should be than that, that we think alike and we want the same things because our thoughts and our wants have been changed by Jesus Christ?

Another way to translate this verse is no one said, what I own belongs just to me. No one said, all I have is just for me. So let me tell you what Luke's doing. He's not showing you regular giving. The poor in the church can't do what Barnabas did because he wasn't poor.

But the poor in the church by there's this thing called redemption and lift. And we see it all over the world in missionary work. And the idea is when the Gospel comes to a community and they get saved, they get in the Word, they learn the principles that God has for us to prosper, and he lifts them out of the measure of poverty they were in. So we can't all be Barnabas's today, but we can be inspired by him and God can make us like him as we make the progress that Don was talking about earlier. Luke here is defining the kind of relationship where no one is obligated to reciprocate.

You see, in the Roman world, the idea was, if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. It's a give and take, it's reciprocity. But in the Bible, in the first century, in the brand new church, it was, I'll scratch your back and you feel loved by Jesus and it's enough for me.

Christians who are prosperous will sometimes liquidate some of their assets to provide for those in the church community who are in need. And they do it without the thought of anything in return, because that's what families do. Pastor what's being illustrated here, it's unqualified sharing. Now, the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own.

That's the unqualified part. But they had all things in common. That's the sharing part. That's verse 32. If you're ticking it off, we've got like four verses left and we're done here.

Here's verse 33. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. In my small group a couple weeks ago, a gal in my small group, a friend of mine, we were going around the room saying, who's your one? Who's that one person in your life that's close to you but far from God that has a real shot of coming to Christ and being part of our church fellowship? And we get to this gal and she tells us this guy that she and her husband played golf with at the golf course, and she and her husband had become friends with him and they're just praying for him.

So our small group stopped and we prayed for him by name. And now the members of our small group are familiar with the name of who her one is. On Friday night into Saturday, I believe that's the day it was. It may have been a day earlier. I got one of those Facebook messenger messages.

You know what that is like, came out of the blue. And it came out of the blue from that guy, and he's not even my one, right? He's their one. And he goes, I don't know why I'm sending you this message. It was 3:00 in the morning.

He said, I don't know why I'm sending you this message, but I need to get my life right, me and my buddies. And he says, look, I drink alcohol all the time. He goes, I go hunting. He goes, I want to be a part of your church, but it'll have to be after hunting season. That's what he said.

Because, look, he's just being honest, right? And he said, but real soon, I don't know why I'm telling you this, but me and my friends, we want to visit your church. Would that be okay? You know, I said, no, you're not my one. You're her one.

You gotta talk to her. Can I tell you, there's so much power in praying for people that don't know Jesus. It's almost like heaven's waiting for us to do it.

With great power, the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all the result of this generosity, this unqualified sharing, was God gave this church two priceless resources, and he gave it to them in abundance. Great power. I really believe that there is this spiritual, supernatural power that God has set aside for churches who will say, I'm going to trust you, God. I'm going to do money your way. And I'm going to be generous even though my flesh doesn't want to.

My flesh wants to tip you God, it doesn't want to be generous. And I think he's got this power set aside that when you take a step toward generosity, when you say God, just let me make a little more progress, then he unleashes that great power on you and the church you're generous in. Not only that great grace was upon them all that there's this special grace, special favor from heaven that when a church together becomes generous, he says, I'm going to shower this down on you. And not everybody gets to have it. Only the church that says I'm going to win the test with money and possessions.

I think that's good preaching. I think I got it right off the text.

The next two verses describe how a diverse group of people survived together in a cold hearted culture that ultimately proved to be antagonistic towards them. Look, all the religious leaders in Jerusalem and the Roman Empire, all the Roman soldiers around that area, they eventually hated the first Christians. Nero set them on fire to light his garden.

The Sanhedrin, the religious leaders in Israel tried to get them out. And look, the very first church didn't have religious freedom.

They didn't have a bill of rights, they didn't have what we have. But sometimes neither can we say silver or gold have I none would I have I give you rise and walk. See, I'd rather struggle in my culture and walk in God's power than have a free culture to live in and know power of God. I want God more than I want anything else. Does that make sense?

Because I share that with all the Christians on earth, no matter what continent they live on the same spirit of God. So here we go. Here's these two verses. Nor was there any verses 34 and 35, nor was there anyone among them who lacked for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them. Now look, basically that means extra land and extra houses.

And they brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and they laid them at the apostles feet and the apostles distributed to each as anyone had need. So if the first part of this text teaches that the first church was united, the second part teaches us that it was unselfish. There wasn't anyone among them who lacked. Because the ones who had a lot said I'll sell what I have. This extra.

Because what's more important to me than my portfolio is that widow over there, that new family that he lost his job because we baptized him they're worth more. Because this world we live in, the clock's ticking down. It's a vapor. It's soon to be done away with. In light of eternity, it's the next world that doesn't end.

Do you believe there's a next world? Because if not, what are you doing here? Because we're talking about the Lord Jesus who reigns now but he's the Lamb on the throne and the next world is the one that never ends. And so that's what these men and women were doing. Laying the stuff at the apostles feet.

They were united, they were unselfish. Unity plus unselfishness paves the way for generosity.

Think of it this way. Even though the Christians had personal possessions, they didn't consider them to be private possessions. There's a difference between personal and private. They didn't consider them to be private possessions to be held exclusively for their own use or their own pleasure. I want to ask you this.

Can we agree on this? The fact that nobody regarded his or her property as being under his or her own unquestioned control but was prepared to release it to the leadership of the church so that they could relieve the poor and the suffering. Can we agree? That's remarkable. No matter what time or place that happens, it's not like that was just awesome in the first century that'd be awesome now.

It was the kind of power the Lord Jesus had in mind when he said buy this. All will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for look at me one another, that one another is specific. It's not every human. It's the bride of Christ you belong to.

It's the ones who see your testimony. It's the ones who have a ringside seat to your life. It's the one you're in a covenant with. When the world sees how we love one another, then the gospel gets appealing to them. That's what the Lord meant.

He said that to the 12. And by the way, this whole practice of selling something that was valuable and laying it at the apostles feet, this early Christian practice, it was entirely voluntary. Communism and socialism. The government says we're taking it from you whether you like it or not and we're redistributing it. Do you see the difference?

Barnabas did not have to.

Neither do you.

You don't have to learn generosity if you don't want to.

But. But you can't be wise unless you do. There is no requirement to surrender property to the church. In fact Barnabas offering at the end of our Text wouldn't be noteworthy if it was expected of him.

So it's best to understand this text, this activity as voluntary, occasional, but just in time. It's voluntary, occasional, just in time. Giving of discretionary personal capital to meet the needs of others. That's what's happening late in Ephesians, chapter four. I mean in Acts, chapter four.

My brothers and my sisters, because Barnabas and the gang in the Jerusalem church, because their hope was in the next world. That is precisely where they were eager to invest. See, he was making a deposit in the kingdom. They treated their current lives as temporary and fading away. So my question to you would be, why not hold loosely to worldly wealth if it's only good for this fleeting life?

And I think our Lord said basically the same thing in the Sermon on the mount. Matthew, chapter 6, verses 19, 20 and 21. These are the words of the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. To the twelve apostles and to the eavesdroppers that day. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.

Hey, doesn't that look like a command from Jesus? Do not where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. And why would we do that, Lord Jesus? Because it will show you where your heart is. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Your heart follows your treasure. Your treasure doesn't follow your heart. So look where your treasure is. You're proving that that's what matters the most to you. And so if you're investing in heaven like Barnabas did then, now you have evidence like he did, that the next world is what matters to you.

Your heart follows your treasure. At this point, the Old Testament promised to the Lord's people that there would be no poor among them. Deuteronomy 15:4 was being fulfilled in the early church by the generosity of the better off members. That's what verses 34 and 35 teach. Now the last two verses of our text, verses 36 and 37, new King James has Joseph, but that's just an emendation of Joseph and Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles.

Do you understand that all of Barnabas family that weren't Christians called him Joseph. And when he went back home to Cyprus, you know, and went back to the beach over there, and they were having some kind of holiday meal, nobody called him Barnabas. They didn't know the testimony he had in Jerusalem. But Barnabas is translated Son of Encouragement. Hey, look at me.

It was a nickname given to him by the Christians who saw his life and said, this is what you remind us of. You're Barnabas, the son of Encouragement, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, an island nation, having land, sold it, brought the money, laid it at the apostles feet.

Barnabas is likely the first in the church that time to sell something so significant that it was noteworthy to write down. And certainly these verses are there because later Barnabas will resurface in the book of Acts as a Christian leader known for his splendid kindness and his strength of character. In fact, that's next week's sermon, the rest of what Barnabas does in the book of Acts. But let's talk about the nickname. He was given, the nickname Barnabas.

Luke translates it for us, Son of Encouragement. Because the words, there's a range of meaning here. It might be better to call him son of Exhortation. Encouragement and exhortation are interchangeable terms in the New Testament. I am exhorting you right now, but you get to decide whether I'm being encouraging to you or not.

Exhorting is saying, hey, this is really really true. I want you to believe what I believe. Encouragement goes the next mile and you go, I see it, I feel it, and it makes me feel good that you taught me this truth. Because Barnabas is a compound word, bar. The prefix of the word means son of and nabi is the word for prophet.

So he's son of preaching, son of prophet, son of exhorting. Preaching, exhorting. And from that Luke goes, I don't want you to think he was just the son of preaching. I don't want you to think that he was just the son of exhorting. This guy made people feel better by the way.

He inspired them because of the example that he set. Take it all the way. He's the son of encouragement.

Now may I ask you a question? Don't you want your nickname to be a gift of the Holy Spirit or a fruit of the Holy Spirit? Because encouragement is a gift of the Spirit. And like, do you remember the fruit of the Holy Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

Galatians, chapter five. You know the fruit of the Holy Spirit that everyone bemoans that they lack is patience, right? Like don't pray for patience or God will make you wait. A few weeks ago I cracked my front toothy right up here and I was a little less pretty the next day and it was hard on me. I gotta be Honest.

So I had this fang up here. It's cutting my tongue. It's just bothering me. So I go to the dentist, and he says, I put a feeling on it. So I go there, and this is the guy that's worked on my teeth.

If I open my mouth and you looked in, there are thousands upon thousands of dollars from Dr. Evans in my mouth. He's my guy, 30 years, 30 years strong. He fixes my tooth, shapes it all up, gives me the mirror, and I'm like, it's even more beautiful than before. I'm so proud of this.

I go home and I'm getting my Bible and I'm studying for all of you people, all right? So I'm studying the Bible. And before I went home, he said, now, Trevor, look, there's a reason your tooth broke. And it's not because you're in your 50s now. It's because you're doing something to cause that.

And he said, don't take, like, beef jerky or anything that's hard that you have to tear because you're just gonna rip that thing right off. You can't do that anymore. I'm like, okay, Doc, no problem. My fault. I did all this.

I'll be very careful. I'm studying, I'm typing out sermon, and I have a hangnail on my thumb. This is 40 minutes after he fixed my tooth. I don't even know I'm doing it. I do this, I'm reading, and I do this, and my mouth exploded and gravel was in my mouth.

And I was like, what in the world? And I touched my tooth and it was like a mountain range of just peaks and valleys, and the whole thing just popped right off. Forty minutes later, I called the dentist back. I'm like, how can I make this look like it's his fault, right? I don't know how to do this right.

What can I say? I called the dentist, they said, look, and here's why I'm telling you the story. You know what they said to me? He said, come back right now. I went back to the dentist, he took me right to the chair, he looked at me, and I confessed my sin.

And I was like, it's a hangnail. And he said. He goes, no problem. And look. I said, look, Doc, it was my fault.

I insist I'm going to pay for this double today. He goes, no, you're not, because I'm a good man and hangnails happen. So he fixed my tooth, and it looked better than the first time that he did it. 40 minutes ago. All right, look, I told you that because I didn't even have to wait.

These are first world problems, right? Because I looked into the teeth of little Kenyan boys and girls that we feed every day and we educate every day, we evangelize every day. And they'll never see a dentist as long as they live unless we go send them one. And I was having a bad moment because I thought I was going to have to wait a whole nother day to get my teeth, my tooth fixed. It reminded me of what it means to be full of the Holy Spirit, full of the fruit of the Spirit.

And I thought about this text in Barnabas and I go, lord, I don't want my nickname to be mad because my tooth broke, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. I want to be this generous person and I want to acknowledge all of these extraordinary gifts and privileges and conveniences that I live under every day that I often fail to say thank you for. That's ridiculous. That I could break a feeling and he fixes it 20 minutes later.

You know what that is? It's the grace of God, undeserving. Now, Barnabas sells the field, right? But did you notice that no details about the land that Barnabas sold or given. We don't know how many acres it was.

We don't know was it in Jerusalem or on the island of Cyprus, Is it beachfront property? How big was it? What was the sale price? We get none of the good details, by the way. I want all the details.

So I feel like kind of left out here and ripped off. Why doesn't he give us the details?

All the details are left out intentionally to show us that what made the difference was not the price of the land and not the size of the real estate. What made the difference was Barnabas generous heart. And you know as well as I do that if we knew the sale price of the property, if we knew how much real estate it was, nothing would stop our flesh from figuring out that amount in today's currency and making it the standard and the rule by which a person is considered generous in the sight of God. And then we would use it to congratulate ourselves and condemn others for not giving at that level. You should thank God you're in a church that shows you the giving journey and not just some 10% deal to make you feel guilty and make you quit.

You should thank God that there's this wisdom from the leaders of the church that understands this thing. I'm going for your Heart, not an amount.

It was his example, not the size of the gift that was important. Now Luke doesn't say that every believer who happened to own his or her own home immediately when they became a Christian and were baptized, they had to sell their houses and give the proceeds away. Because if that was the case, where would they have slept that very night? That's ridiculous. But Pastor, does Luke mean to suggest that this whole selling property and giving it to the church, selling a car and giving to the church, was this necessary and an indispensable condition for being saved?

Do you have to give on this level to be accepted as a genuine Christian? What's the answer to that? Good night? No, of course not. It's by grace.

We've been saved through faith. It's the gift of God. It is not of ourselves. It's not by works. So that none of us may boast.

May I just say to us, it's when the church loses our sense of wonder at the salvation of Jesus. When we lose the sense of wonder for the love for the family of God. That's when a selfish, possessive attitude about material things creeps in and establishes itself in our lives. When we lose the wonder of what he's done for us.

Somebody say it this way. When Barnabas laid the proceeds of the sale of the field at the feet of the apostles, it was the practice of radically valuing people over possessions. Radically valuing people over possessions. Can I tell you, I'm not trying to make you a good church member. I'm trying to help you become a follower of Jesus who makes other followers of Jesus.

And if our church has imperfections along the way, and we do, we celebrate it. It's okay. It's your heart that matters. When Barnabas sold a field and gave it to the apostles, laid it at the apostles feet. That's Acts chapter four.

Can we agree that Acts chapter one comes before Acts chapter four? It was the exact opposite of what Judas Iscariot did. Here's Acts chapter 1, verses 18 and 19. Judas who betrayed Jesus. Now this man Judas purchased a field with the wages of iniquity.

How much were the wages of iniquity? 30 pieces of silver. And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. Amen.

And it became known to all those dwelling in Jerusalem. So that field is called in their own language. Akil dama, field of blood. Here's what one commentator said about that. Barnabas sold a field that showed his heart.

Judas bought a field that exposed his Guts.

It's the field of love or the field of blood. And I want you to know that that laid it at the apostles feet is very instructive to us. Let me kind of define it for us. To lay a gift for the church at the apostles feet was to offer it to Jesus Christ himself. Because the apostles were his representatives.

They were giving it to the Lord. The church was not just engaging in charity, they were giving to the Lord. They were expressing his sovereign rights over all they possessed. The whole vineyard and all its fruit is God's. Yes.

So finally today, this is why we prefer to give most of of our financial offerings through the local church, filtering it through the prayerful wisdom of our elders and leaders. It's the principle of the apostles feet. Because the American church has misunderstood the biblical definition for missionary work. And biblically it's very narrow. It's evangelism and church planting, which is what we do by the way, because the American church has misunderstood that definition for so long.

God's missionaries, God's called missionaries, have had to improvise to be supported. That's why missionary agencies and missionary alliances and mission boards and private donors have filled the void that biblical illiteracy has created. See, we should never have underfunded missionaries. A generous church doesn't have that. In the New Testament, it was the local churches who preached the gospel.

In the New Testament, it was the local church who sent out missionaries. In the New Testament, it was the local church that planted the new churches. But on this other side here, I'm going to give you a word bank of good medical assistance, dental work, digging wells, vaccinating livestock, teaching advanced agricultural techniques, all of that is good stuff. Yes, all of it has a place in the love of God for the world. But those things, by definition, they're not mission work.

They belong to the categories of Christian ministry, humanitarian aid, even charity, but not missions. And this may be even confusing for some of you because it's all you've ever learned. But Paul and his team preached the gospel on their missionary journeys. They invited sinners to repent and believe and they baptized the new converts. They established local churches when they baptized them.

They trained indigenous leaders to be the elders and pastors of the churches. And then they left and went somewhere else and did all that again. Evangelism and church planting, that's the work of missionaries. The local church is the primary missionary work in the Bible.

That's why when we give to the Lord, our local church comes first. And often there's no second because we evangelize and we plant new churches and we raise up leaders and we send thousands and thousands of dollars every month out of America to Africa, to Central America, to South America and into Europe. So when the sun rises every day in those four continents, believers are being supported, new churches are being started because of a generous local church in East Olive Branch, Mississippi that virtually no one's heard of. May it be that way forever. Die, preach the gospel.

Die and be forgotten. Ain't no better way not building a brand. Jesus is building his kingdom and the gates of hell won't prevail against it. So here's how you apply this message to your life. You can come for prayer today on these two things.

Come and pray. And ask our prayer team to pray two things for you. Pray to prove my love by radically valuing people over possessions. You take an inventory of your life and you go really? Right now everything I do is about my possessions and not about people.

That's your prayer? To prove my love and also to prove my faith by making my most significant investments in the next world. It's what you lay at the apostles feet. Let's bow for prayer. Father, would you do the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of my favorite people?

In Jesus name, amen.

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Come and join us this Sunday at the Great Commission Church for a truly remarkable and uplifting experience. Great Commission Church is not just any ordinary place of worship; it's a vibrant community where faith comes alive, hearts are filled with love, and lives are transformed. Our doors are wide open, ready to welcome you into the warm embrace of our congregation, where you'll discover the true essence of fellowship and spirituality. At Great Commission Church, we are more than just a congregation; we are a family united by a common mission – to follow the teachings of Christ and spread His love to the world. As you step inside Great Commission Church, you'll find a sanctuary that nurtures your faith and encourages you to be part of something greater than yourself.

We believe in the power of coming together as a community to worship, learn, and serve. Whether you're a long-time believer or just starting your spiritual journey, Great Commission Church welcomes people from all walks of life. Our vibrant services are filled with inspiring messages, beautiful music, and heartfelt prayers that will uplift your soul. Every Sunday at Great Commission Church is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with God and connect with others who share your faith and values.

At Great Commission Church, we believe that faith is not just a solitary endeavor but a shared experience that strengthens and enriches us all. Our church is a place where you can find purpose, belonging, and the encouragement to live a life in accordance with Christ's teachings. Join us this Sunday at Great Commission Church and experience the transformative power of faith in action. Be part of a loving and supportive community that is committed to making a positive impact in our world. Together, we strive to fulfill the great commission to go forth and make disciples of all nations. We look forward to having you with us at Great Commission Church this Sunday, where faith, love, and community intersect in a truly amazing way.

Great Commission Church is a non-denominational Christian church located in Olive Branch, Mississippi. We are a short drive from Germantown, Southaven, Collierville, Horn Lake, Memphis, Fairhaven, Mineral Wells, Pleasant Hill, Handy Corner, Lewisburg and Baylia.

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