MODEL CHRISTIANS -  the people of Acts   

(2)  A Model member  Acts 4. 36-37,  9.26-28,   11.19-26

This week we focus on one individual disciple – a tremendously attractive individual and a very worthy example of discipleship. We ask what we can learn about him and from him.

Read all the passages through, and then look at them one by one.

Acts 4. 36-37: The man with a great nickname!

What information can we glean about Joseph Barnabas from this short passage? (What do you know about Levites? And Cyprus?) Any ideas about how he might have become a Christian? (Acts 2?)

What do you suppose moved him to do what he did? How big a hold on us do our possessions have?

And what do you think lay behind his nickname?

If you were nicknamed after your best Christian quality, what do you think it might be?

(If that’s too embarrassing, think of your Christian friends: how would you nickname them after their best Christian quality?)

Acts 9. 26-28: The man who befriended Saul.

The Jerusalem Christians were full of suspicion of the newly converted Saul of Tarsus.  Why?

How would you have reacted?  Are there people we think could never be converted?

Why do you think Barnabas reacted differently?

Was it due to spiritual qualities in Barnabas?

What do you think it meant to Saul – first to be rejected by the Christian community – then welcomed by Barnabas?

How ready are we to believe that nothing is impossible for God?  Are we ready to encourage new Christians?  Or do we find ourselves sceptical and waiting to see ‘if it lasts’? Do we hold people’s past against them after conversion?

Acts 11. 19-26: Encouragement at work in Antioch

19-22:

What lay behind Jerusalem sending an emissary (Barnabas) to Antioch? Why did they feel it necessary?  What big lesson did they have to learn? Any lessons for us?

23-24

What do we learn about Barnabas from his reaction to what he found and from his actions whilst there?

talk about the description of him given in verse 24. What is your reaction to it?

25-26:

What did Barnabas feel was necessary for the nurturing of these new Christians and how did he go about it?

What do you think it meant to Saul to be brought in to help?

CONCLUSION:

What inspiration does Barnabas evoke in you about your Christian life?

WARNING:  Even model Christians like Barnabas have ‘clay feet’: Acts 15.36-39.  Only Jesus is our perfect model!

Notes for Leaders

Levites, Temple servants, along with priests were originally not supposed to own lands etc. Nothing was to distract them from  a life devoted to the service of the Lord.  They got no inheritance in the Promised Land for ‘the Lord is their portion,’ (their inheritance). Later they came to own land.

Cyprus was, in NT days, on rich, fertile land. To own land there was to be wealthy.

In Acts 2, we read of all the different places the Jews came from to attend the Feast of Pentecost. Cyprus is among them.  Could Barnabas have been amongst the 3000 converted on that day?  And now, filled with the Spirit, possessions lost their attraction for him for, once more, ‘the Lord was his portion’.

It took the very first Christians (all Jews) at Jerusalem a long time to grasp that salvation was for Gentiles as well as Jews.  They heard the Great Commission as ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the Jews in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and in the uttermost parts of the earth’!