Sermons on Biblical Characters

by Clovis Gillham Chappell

Here is the story. Barnabas is in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost. The Church is in the early spring-time of its power. Many Jews, both home-born and foreign-born, have been brought into the fold. They have thereby broken with their kindred, and many of them are without any means of support. Then Barnabas comes forward. He is a wealthy land owner. He sells his land and puts every dollar of it upon the altar of his Lord, for the saving of the church in its hour of crisis.

What does this mean? It means that when Barnabas became a Christian, that when he gave himself to Christ, he gave his money also. Now, stewardship for you may not mean that you, as Barnabas, sell what you have and give it all away. God does not call upon all men to do that, but what He does do is to call upon every man to put both himself and his money at His disposal. He calls upon every man to recognize God, and not himself, as the owner. That is the first step in Christian Stewardship: that God owns all; He owns me; He owns my home; He owns my children; He owns my property. I have called your attention before to the fact that the modern idea of ownership is pagan. The Christian idea is this: that God is the absolute owner of all things.

I am sure that we are as ready as was Barnabas to acknowledge this fact. We nod our heads and agree, but a truth like this demands something more than simply a nod of the head. If God owns everything, then I am to acknowledge that ownership. How was God's ownership acknowledged throughout all the Old Testament days? By the devoting of a tenth to His service. That was required of the rich and of the poor. No man was exempt. Christ never at any time set that law aside. I do not see how any man dare do less than that to-day. The Jews, without one thousandth part of our light, were cursed because of their failure to do this very thing. Since when has it come to pass that the greater the light the less the responsibility?

There is nothing more needed to-day than a Christian attitude toward money. There has been a reaction from the altruism that prevailed during the war, and the world is more money mad than ever before. And men are making money as scarcely ever before, and the man who is making money is the man who stands in the position of a peculiar danger. For the men who can rapidly accumulate money and at the same time be loyal to Jesus Christ are few indeed.

While I was in Dallas the other day I talked to a friend who was a man of wealth. He said without enthusiasm, "I have made more money this year than I ever made before." And then I questioned him regarding his work in the Church. At one time he had been the teacher of a very large class of boys. He told me that he had given up his Sunday School work, that he had given up all his religious work. Then I said, "If you had a thermometer for registering happiness, I suppose your thermometer would register lower to-day than at any other time since you came into the Church." And with sadness he acknowledged that such was the case.

Yes, Barnabas was sound in the doctrine of stewardship. And I am fully persuaded that the man who is genuinely Christian in his attitude toward money will be Christian in every other relationship of life. And I am likewise fully persuaded that the man who fails here, who falls short of the standard of goodness here, will fall short everywhere. A man may be a liberal man and fail to be a good man, but no man can be a good man and at the same time be a gripping, grasping, covetous man. It is an utter impossibility. Barnabas got a degree in goodness, and the first course he mastered was a course in Christian Stewardship.

Second, Barnabas was proficient in that difficult branch that we call faith. He had acquired faith till he was full of it. Faith in God? Yes, he had faith in God. That lies back of all that he did and all that he became. But the faith that shows itself most in his life, as we see it, is his faith in men. How he did believe in folks! Confidence in men is an essential to true goodness. I do not believe that any cynic was ever a really good man. I know we sometimes pride ourselves on being hard to fool. We congratulate ourselves at times on being able to see more through a key-hole than other folks can see through a wide-open door. We boast of our ability to read character and to see behind the scenes and to detect sham where other folks dreamed there was sincerity. And I am not arguing for blindness or stupidity, but what I do say is this: that the really good men are the men who believe in their fellows.

You have met the man who says that every fellow has his price. But whenever you hear a man say that you may know that there is at least one man who does have his price, and that is the man who is making the statement. You can compromise till you come to persuade yourself that compromise is the law of life. You can play with honesty till you come to believe in the dishonesty of the whole world. And the man without confidence in his brother is a man who personally knows that he himself would not do to trust.

Barnabas believed in men. One of the greatest enemies that the Church ever had returned one day from a tour of persecution in Damascus. He declared that he had been converted on the way, but nobody in Jerusalem believed him. Yes, there was one glorious exception. That exception was Barnabas. He believed in Paul, staked his reputation, his life, his Church, which was dearer to him than his life,—he staked all these upon his faith in Paul's sincerity. But for that, Paul might have been lost to the Church.

And here is another instance: Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary tour. With them is a young man named Mark. He has been tenderly nurtured. He finds the missionary life harder than he expected. He proves a coward and goes home. Years after, when the faces of Paul and Barnabas are again set to the battle front, Mark once more offers his service. But Paul will not accept him. He knows that the mission field is no place for parlor soldiers. And so he flatly refuses to allow him to become a part of the army of invasion.