WHAT GREAT MEN DO FOR US
1. The central character in Acts is God but God most often works through people. They aren't always even good people much less great people. Still, Luke gives us our share of great people through whom God did and is doing his redeeming work. All of the people he mentions are "triumphs of grace" so they wouldn't boast about themselves and nor should we, except briefly, and only then if we remember that by the grace of God they are what they are (see 1 Corinthians 15:10).
2. Wordsworth said: "What a great man accomplishes for the world is this: he does something that was never done before but which once it is done, becomes a standard for the rest of us, below which we can no longer be content." The great men and women Luke introduces us to and whom God used to spread his gospel to the world, make us glad we're a part of the human race which has such people in it. As Mark Rutherford said, they give us back our self-respect.
BARNABAS: SON OF ENCOURAGEMENT
3. Several texts in Acts are of interest to us here. They are 4:36-37;9:26-28; 11:19-26; 15:36-41. In the first text we learn Barnabas was a Jew and a Levite from the island of Cyprus. We learn he was generous with his money. We're impressed with those who are generous with their money without making a big fuss out of it.
4. We learn, too, that he had a nickname: Barnabas. His given name had been Joseph but the apostles named him Barnabas and this is the name that stuck. The name can mean "son of exhortation" or "son of encouragement, consolation". He was like that, an encourager, a consoler, an inspirer, so they smiled and made that his name.
5. When he met up with Paul ( 9:26-28) in Jerusalem, Paul was friendless, isolated-the believers were suspicious of him and didn't want anything to do with him. (Is this hard to understand?) One man stood by him and believed what Paul told him. He brought Paul to apostles and told his story for him. Barnabas convinced them and Peter had Paul stay with him for two weeks (Galatians 1:18). But instead of believing the message from the former persecutor, the unbelieving Jews plotted to kill him (Acts 9:29) so the disciples sent him to Tarsus, his home town. That's the last we hear of Paul for some years.
6. Later (11:19-26) when sinful Antioch saw multitudes of Greeks turn to Christ, the Jerusalem church sent Barnabas to check the work out. When this good-hearted man (11:24) saw how the Lord was moving among these Gentiles, he was filled with joy and urged them to cleave to God. And as he exhorted, many more turned to God. But this was a huge work. People of Gentile background and culture, people in an evil Gentile environment needed much help and no doubt Barnabas felt he wasn't able to do the work alone. He went to Tarsus and brought Paul into the thick of things (11:25-26). He has recognized the grace of God in Paul and with his mind on the needs of these new Christians, he gets for them the finest help he can imagine—the apostle of the Gentiles.
7. Later still, when Paul asks him to go on a second missionary journey (15:36), Barnabas is eager to go. He wishes to take John Mark with them again (15:37) but Paul refused to have him because Mark had turned back from the work on the previous trip (15:38). We might have thought that was the end of it. If Paul, the mighty apostle to the Gentiles, writer of NT books, perhaps the world's greatest evangelist—if that man said No, we might easily think that was the end of the matter. It wasn't! Barnabas wanted to give the young man another chance. The argument became heated and rather than cast the young man off, Barnabas parts with Paul! What Barnabas had done for Paul years earlier, he wished to do for Mark on this occasion. (Paul will later praise Barnabas and will concede that Mark is useful in the ministry—see 1Corinthians 9:6