How Important is a Reputation
Unedited transcript of sermon delivered at Windsor Park Baptist Church
550 East Coast Rd, Mairangi Bay, Auckland, New Zealand, E-mail: bnw@wpbc.org.nz
Sunday 8/4/2001, Brian Winslade, All rights reserved
A group of frogs were travelling through the woods when two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered around the pit and when they saw how deep it was they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump out of the pit with all their might. The other frogs kept telling them : “STOP – it’s no use, you’re as good as dead.”
Finally one of the frogs took heed of what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died. The other frog however continued to jump as hard as he could.
Once again the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. “What’s the point of going on”, they cried out to him. In response the frog in the pit jumped even harder and harder and finally made it out.
When he got out of the pit the other frogs said to him “Didn’t you hear us? We were shouting at you – Give up – you’re as good as dead” In response the frog said to them “Oh is that what you were saying. I’m profoundly deaf. I thought you were shouting out encouragement to me all the time!”
We’re picking up the theme again (that we introduced a few weeks back) of encouragement, and in particular we are looking at a character in the New Testament who had a reputation of being a great encouragement to other people. The name his parents gave him was Joseph but the leaders of the early church gave him another name. They nicknamed him Barnabas which meant literally “son of encouragement”.
Barnabas was a blessing to be around. He was known as someone who took an interest in people and was prepared to give people a second chance even when they had messed up in the past.
We’ve noted previously (Acts 9) it was Barnabas who saw potential in Saul after his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. Other people wanted to write Saul off because of his violent persecution and cruelty to Christians in the past. They were somewhat suspicious of Saul’s conversion experience and questioned whether it was genuine or just a fake conversion so that he could get access to the inside of the church.
In contrast to popular opinion Barnabas saw what others couldn’t / wouldn’t see. He looked at Saul with the eyes of God and saw potential. We might want to say that Barnabas’ God was big enough to be able to turn around the most violent non-Christian. He believed in what Saul could become. And what a mighty man of God Saul was to become in the future. We know him today as the Apostle Paul and the author of a large chunk of the New Testament.
To be a Barnabas is to have eyes of perception that see what others cannot see – particularly when it comes to potential.
Another example of this was in Acts 15 where Barnabas stood up for his cousin John Mark. Mark had been part of Barnabas’ and Paul’s travelling ministry team but at one point had abandoned them. When the going got tough Mark got going! He let them down, whimped out. As far as Paul was concerned that was it. Mark was no longer of any value to the cause. However, Barnabas saw potential beyond the failure. He was willing to give someone who had messed up a second chance. This aspect of Barnabas’ character actually cost him his partnership with Paul. They may have reconciled some time later but over the issue of John Mark Paul and Barnabas went their separate ways. There is no record of them ministering together at any later stage. However, what there is evidence of is John Mark being later accepted by Paul. Paul writes about him in some of his later letters as being a faithful member of his ministry team – and all because Barnabas was willing to give a failure a second chance.
To be a Barnabas is to be willing to go out on a limb for someone in whom you see potential. People have probably done that for us; who are we doing it for today? At work, at home, at school, within the church, are there people of immense potential that we are willing to mentor and believe in and defend in front of others – whose natural inclination might be to write them off? That’s the example of Barnabas – the son of encouragement. The God of the Christians believes in broken people, and as we become more like Jesus we begin to see people as God sees them.
In Acts 11:24 there is another little insight into the character and personality of Barnabas that I want us to focus on. Barnabas had been sent to Antioch to check out a new church that had started up. The gospel had jumped the cultural fence and now a whole lot of different ethnic races were becoming Christians. The leaders in the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to them as a kind of ecclesiastical trouble-shooter. When Barnabas got to Antioch and saw the evidence of God’s Spirit at work within this new church he blessed the people and encouraged them to keep going in what they were doing.
Then there is this statement about Barnabas’ reputation :
24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
Acts 11:24
How would you like to have people think that way about you? How would you like to have a reputation, recorded for posterity in the history of plant earth, as a good person? This was Barnabas’ reputation. This was how people thought of him behind his back.
It has been suggested the Barnabas was a man whose public life and private life were consistent. He wasn’t a person with a public persona that was different to the way he behaved away from open view. His character and reputation was totally in sync. Character has been described as what God knows I am; my reputation is what other people think I am.
For Barnabas it appears that both sides of the personality coin were the same. What you saw was what you got and people liked what they got.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have people reflect on your life and mine the way the early church did about Barnabas. He was known to be a person full of the Holy Spirit. I wonder how people could tell that? What does it mean to be spirit filled?
In short, it means to reflect what God is like. People look at a Holy Spirit-filled person and see or sense the presence of God or the attitude and character of the Holy Spirit. Their own personality and preferences have been pushed down in favour of allowing God’s character to shine through.
There are some people who want to define spirit-filled in terms of being able to exercise certain gifts of the Holy Spirit. Spirit-filled is equated with the demonstration of spiritual power or ability that manifests in us or through us. I guess there is a measure of truth to that definition. Those who invite or allow the Holy Spirit to have complete or unfetted control of their lives are able to operate with divine power that comes from the Holy Spirit.
But I think a more accurate description of being full of the Holy Spirit is the display of spiritual fruit. It was Jesus in Matthew 7:16 who said that you can tell the type of a tree by looking at the fruit that hangs on its branches. Good trees don’t produce bad fruit and bad trees cannot produce good fruit. Therefore the person who is full of the Holy Spirit is someone on whom, or about whom is found the fruit of the spirit. To be spirit filled is to evidence Holy Spirit fruit in our life.
In Galatians 5:22 we have a clear description of what the fruit of the Holy Spirit actually is.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Galatians 5:22
That’s the clearest definition of spirit-filled that the Bible offers. Being spirit-filled is much less about what I can do for God by way of ability and power and much more about who I am as a person. Spirit-filled is fundamentally about character. When people thought about Barnabas it was the character or behaviour of the Holy Spirit that came to their minds.
Another thing Barnabas was renowned for was being full of faith. The word faith has many synonyms. The original Greek word, pistis, was used in a variety of ways. It meant “belief” as in having been persuaded that something was absolutely right or true. It meant “trust” or “confidence” in someone who wouldn’t let you down. It meant “close relationship” and “intimacy” that grows through experience. Barnabas was known as a man of faith for all of these things. He had been brought up as a Levite in the ways of the Jewish faith but had been absolutely and thoroughly convinced that Jesus was the Messiah or the Son of God. He had a profound and personal relationship with God in whom he had absolute trust and confidence. He didn’t make decisions and judgments from the basis of his own past experience or tradition; he looked upon people with God’s eyes and perspective.
Relationship with God and seeing things from his angle permeated every aspect of Barnabas’ being. You couldn’t separate the religious component of his life from the non-religious. His fullness of faith infected every aspect of his life.
This statement about the character of Barnabas has being likened to his epitaph. It’s a short succinct statement that summed up his reputation in the eyes of his peers. In the light of Barnabas’ reputation I want to invite us to consider what our reputation might be. If someone were to write an epitaph for your gravestone what would they write? What would they say that described who we are and the indelible mark we are leaving on this world?
While you are thinking about your epitaph have a look at these statements of reputation :
In a Georgia cemetery:
“I told you I was sick!”
In a London cemetery:
“Here lies Ann Mann
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann”
In a Ribbesford, England cemetery:
Anna Wallace
“The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife
And the Devil sent him Anna”
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown
Pennsylvania cemetery:
“Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the break.”
A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
“Sacred to the memory of my husband John Barnes who died January 3, 1803.
His comely young widow, aged 23, has many qualifications of a good wife, and Yearns to be comforted.”
A lawyer’s epitaph in England:
“Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest Lawyer,
And that is Strange.”
On Margaret Daniel’s grave at Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia:
“She always said her feet were killing
her, but nobody believed her.”
Someone in Winslow, Maine didn’t like Mr Wood”
“In memory of Beza Wood
Departed this life Nov.2 1837 Aged 45 years.
Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood within another
The outer wood is very good
We cannot praise the other.”
The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard Pennsylvania
Is almost a consumer tip:
“Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870 by the explosion of a lamp filled with “R.E. Danforth’s
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid.”
Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
“Born 1903 – Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down.
It was.”
In a Thurmont, Maryland cemetery:
“Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go”
When I was a student at Theological College we studied the life and ministry of William Carey. In the late 1600’s Carey defied the norms of his day and left the little Baptist Church he pastored in England and went to Calcutta to preach the gospel to Bengali people in India. People thought he was crazy. However Carey had a dream and a passion and after more than 40 years in India Carey had translated the scriptures into in excess of 30 languages and established a mission that changed the course of India’s history. He is revered today as the father of modern mission. He was an outstanding spiritual leader in God’s mission to our world.
Before he died Carey had the opportunity to select what they put on his tombstone. He specifically wanted a statement that summed up his life and the sense of importance that he felt he had in God’s purposes. Whenever I am in Calcutta I like to visit Serampore where William Carey worked and died and to visit his grave in particular. On it was written these simple words:
“A poor and helpless worm; on Thy kind arms I fall”
While we revere William Carey as a great man of God he saw himself as merely a man and no one particularly special.
What would you like written about you on your epitaph? How would you like to be remembered? Perhaps a better question to ask is this : “How important is it to have a good reputation?” People obviously thought very highly of Barnabas but is that really necessary for all of us?
There is obviously a school of thought that suggests it isn’t very important at all. There is the attitude that says; “I don’t care what other people think of me, they can take me as they find me, or not if they want. If they don’t like what they see or get then that’s their problem. I don’t care what other people think!” At the other end of the spectrum there are those people who probably think too much about what people are thinking about them. There are the very intense and insecure people who imagine that every eye in a crowed street is on them as they walk down the footpath - and every ounce of excess fat is being noted and tabulated. Or there are the “Hyacinth Bucket” of this world who have to keep up a good appearance in the eyes of the world. Which one of these two extremes is the right one?
In actual fact the Bible has quite a bit to say about reputation. What other people think of you or I is not something we should treat lightly or flippantly. Being people of good repute is something we are supposed to aim at and not disregard. However the main issue in our reputation is not so much what they think of us, as what they think of God because of us. As followers of Jesus we reflect an image of God.
1 Corinthians 12:7 says that to each Christian the manifestation of the spirit of God is given. That’s an awesome responsibility. We each reflect an aspect of what God is like.
Proverbs 3:3,4 says this about reputation
3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
Proverbs 3:3,4
Proverbs 25:9,10 warns us about maintaining our integrity when keeping a confidence
9 If you argue your case with a neighbour, do not betray another man’s confidence, 10 or he who hears it may shame you and you will never lose your bad reputation.
Proverbs 25:9,10
(When it comes to keeping things confidential I want you to know that you can absolutely rely upon me. However it’s the people I tell who you can’t really trust!)
When Paul wrote to Timothy about the character of those who should be appointed to leadership positions in the church one of the specific criteria was a good reputation with people outside the church.
7 He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.
1 Timothy 3:7
In other words to use contemporary business terminology, before you appoint someone as an Elder, do a bit of reference checking. Maybe the people best able to authenticate the God-likeness of our character are those who are outside the church. What kind of reputation do we have amongst unbelievers? This is a bit of a scary thought, but what do our neighbours or our workmates think about us? More importantly, what do they think about God because of what they see of Him in us?
Jesus said ;
16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16
That was a theme the Apostle Peter picked up on in the first of his pastoral letters. He acknowledged the fact that we as Christians are different to the people of this world who don’t follow Jesus but he also said we have a responsibility to guard how we come across to them.
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
1 Peter 2:11-12
Why is our reputation important? It’s important because when we become a child of God our personality and character becomes melded or intertwined with God’s, and people will often judge what God is like by what they see of him in us.
In 2 Corinthians 5:20 Paul likened being a Christian to the role of an ambassador. We are ambassadors of Christ. Therefore diplomats watch their own behaviour and character very carefully because everything they do is regarded as a reflection of their home country’s government.
Barnabas had a highly credible reputation amongst the people of his day. He was known as a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and faith. He was a huge encouragement to many people. He was a person of integrity and because of his influence many people came to faith in Jesus.
In the shadow of Barnabas I guess the $64 million question we each need to ask is this :
What will they say about us when our time on earth is up.
How will you and I be remembered.
What legacy will we leave behind in the minds and memories or our peers?
