Failure Is Not The End | Crossroads Students

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey, what's up everybody. My name is Rob. I am the student pastor at Crossroads Florence. I'm excited that we're together this morning talking more about friendships in our core memory series here at Crossroads students. Have you ever noticed that most of our last names come from weird places? - Yeah, that's a good point. - I mean, if you think about it, last names and the ways that people are named usually come from things that they used to do as like a job or most likely like their ancestors used to do as a job. For example, if your last name is Smith, it means your family probably worked in metal. If your last name is Miller, you owned a mill and probably ran a mill. There's just a bunch of names that are like that. Well, I have a very weird last name.

And it's something I've dealt with as long as I've been alive is people either not knowing what my name means, certainly not knowing how to spell it. More telemarketers butcher my last name than anybody else on the planet. (upbeat music) And I want to tell you this quick story. I was in college, it was my sophomore year, it was my first day of class in this one class that I was in. And just like you guys probably experienced my teacher, my professor, he started this class off by taking role. And my last name starts with a B. And so he gets to me pretty early on in this process and he says, "Rob, bone and camp, bone and camper." You hear and he nailed it, he said my name perfectly. And I was like here and kind of caught off guard that he got my name right 'cause teachers usually wouldn't. She done messed up, hey Ron. And he hits me with the, do you know what your name means? And this has happened a few times in my life and I always do the same thing every time. I make something up completely. I do know what my name means, but I don't want to share that with everybody. And so I tell him like, yeah, bone and camp, it means like strong warrior. I think it means a guy who women love. (laughing) You serious? Like my last name means like coolest guy in the room.

Like I just started making stuff up. And he said, well, that's funny. I actually used to live in Germany. And your last name doesn't mean that at all. In front of the entire class, he outed my last name. He goes, your last name, bone and camp, it actually means bean farm. Which is the most uncool last name you can have, by the way, my name's not just confusing and hard to spell. It literally means bean field or bean farmer. Which means somewhere in my ancestry, my family, I come from Germans who used to work in a bean field. And they used to farm beans. That's lame, that's not exciting, that's not fun at all. Maybe you have a really awesome last name and I'm really happy for you, would love to be a part of that club, but I am not, my last name is bone and camp. Isn't it, it's just weird, right? It's weird that our names, our identity, the things that people know us as, often comes from something that we did. To be honest, I'm really thankful that it's not that way anymore and that our last names come from ancestors and ways our families grew up or maybe we even get to choose them. But I would hate it if my last name was based off of, maybe the worst thing I ever did. Can you think about how weird it would be if we still did that? Like if your name was John Cheeter or Sarah Lyre

or Chris, like bad at taking tests. I don't know, it was just, it would be silly, but it would also suck, like the worst thing I ever did is all of a sudden the thing that I'm known by. Now we don't name people based off the worst things that they have done, but I bet there is somebody in your life that when you think about them, you don't think about who they are, you don't think about their family, you just think about the thing they did that hurt you. As we're continuing in this series on friendship, I think it's important that we talk about when we have hurt in our lives or when we have conflict with somebody or when somebody has crossed a boundary or broken trust with us, it's really hard for us to see that relationship in any way, except for the worst thing that they did or maybe the worst thing that happened. We're gonna be looking in the Bible this morning, specifically in the New Testament, at the story of a couple guys named Paul and Barnabas. Now, if you don't know who Paul and Barnabas is, that's okay, welcome to being like everybody else. Paul and Barnabas were not just close friends, but these were two guys that would travel the world and they would tell everybody about Jesus. They were like the two highest up leaders in telling people about Jesus early on in the meeting. They wrote the book. And I'm not just saying that because it's a saying.

I mean, Paul literally is known as writing most of the New Testament, which is like the second part of the Bible that focuses a lot on the gospel of Jesus, but it also focuses on the early church. (upbeat music) So Paul and Barnum, as they didn't just write about it, they lived it and they traveled together. They were more than just coworkers and people who did a lot together. They were friends. There was so much trust. There was so much like hope and goodness between these two dudes that the story we're gonna talk about today is actually pretty shocking. A time where not only did they not get along, but a rift grew between them that I think we can learn a lot from today. Our story starts in Acts chapter 15 where it says this. It says, "After some time, Paul said to Barnabas, "let's go back and visit each city "where we previously preached the word of the Lord "to see how the new believers are doing." Barnabas agreed and wanted to take along John Mark, but Paul disagreed strongly since John Mark had deserted then in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in their work. Their disagreement was so sharp that they separated. Barnabas took John Mark with him and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and as he left,

the believers entrusted him to the Lord's gracious care. These two guys were incredibly close friends who spent so much time doing ministry and life together that it was shocking that they split up. And they split up because there was another guy named John Mark that Paul was angry with, and honestly, Barnabas probably was too, because John Mark deserted them when he needed them most. And so when Barnabas suggested let's take John Mark with us, Paul said no way, I'm not letting him anywhere near this because he derailed our mission. And yet Barnabas thought it was so important to include John Mark that Paul and Barnabas for a season went their separate ways. Now here's why the story matters for you and me today. Each of us is somebody in this story. Maybe for you, you are like Paul. You're a guy who is devoted to the things that you are doing, and maybe somebody like John Mark hurt Paul has hurt you along the way. Maybe they broke trust, maybe they hurt your feelings, maybe they said something to you or did something to you, maybe they did something to a friend of yours that you really care about. And like Paul, you've just written that person off. Maybe you are somebody who when you think of a certain person in your life, they're probably coming to mind right now. You just immediately associate them with the thing that they did to you. They burned you and so you're done with them.

I have people in my life that it's really hard for me to have a relationship with because of the things that have happened between us. Maybe like Paul, when somebody hurts you, you write them off. Maybe you look at this story and you find that you're a lot more like John Mark. Maybe you're the person that made a mistake. And let's be really clear here. John Mark did mess up. You know, people were counting on him to do something. He was expected to do a job. And for whatever reason, he left in the middle of the mission. He left in the middle telling people about Jesus and he went back home. Now the Bible doesn't tell us exactly why John Mark left. It could have been that he was homesick. He could have been afraid of the things they were going. They were getting into pretty dangerous situations. Maybe John Mark just missed his family. We don't know. All we know is that when Paul and Barnabas needed him, John Mark wasn't there. I bet you can name a friendship or a relationship in your life where you wish you had been there and you weren't. Or maybe a situation where you did something that was out of character and out of line and other people are still mad at you today for it. Maybe you're carrying some shame because you fell short and you messed up and you let people down who are counting on you.

The other person in the story that maybe we're not seeing ourselves in, but I think it should be our goal is Barnabas. Barnabas' nickname is literally the son of encouragement. He is a guy who will see the good in people all of the time. And maybe when you're at your best, that describes you. But if you're like me, there are times where you are far from being a good encourager and a good friend to people. And it's easy to see people just as the worst thing they ever did. Barnabas says something completely different. He says, I think it's more important that we take John Mark with us. Even though he messed up, even though he heard us, we don't know what could happen. We don't know what good things could happen if we bring him along. So we need to do that. I think our goal as friends, good friends, should be that we don't want to freeze people into the worst moment of their lives or the worst thing they ever did to us. When we do that, we eliminate it. that you have to be best friends with everybody. I'm not saying that you should forget when somebody does something wrong. In fact, that's not what happens in this story. We talk a lot about grace at Crossroads students. Grace is something that Jesus did for us. When we did not deserve it, Jesus, who lived a perfect life, he died and made a way back into connection with God for you and for me. He did that, even though we didn't deserve it, and that gift is called grace. But let me be really clear. Grace is not saying, man, let's just forget it ever happened. Grace is not saying nobody did anything wrong. Grace is not skipping over

something bad that happened. Instead, grace is saying that something more can still happen here, despite the bad things that have gone on. Barnabas showed grace to John Mark in a season where it wasn't easy, and a good friend will do that. Here's the best part of the story. Here's the part of the story that encourages me the most. We don't know all that much about what the future held for these three guys. We don't know a ton about where Paul and Barnabas and John Mark went or when they met back up together. Here's all we know for sure. In the book of 2 Timothy, later on, years and years after what we just read together, Paul is older, Paul is actually in prison, and he's giving advice to this young pastor named Timothy, and here's what he says. He says, "Only Luke will be with me." And he tells Timothy, "Bring Mark with you when you come, for he will be helpful to me in my ministry." Now again, we don't know exactly what led up to this moment. We don't know about all of the in-between, but we know that at some point between when Paul said, "I don't want Mark around. He burned me and I'm done with him." Something shifted, and later on in the story, Paul is the one who is saying, "Hey, Mark is important to the things that we're doing. Bring him along." It's not lost on me that there are probably some friendships or relationships in your life where right now you don't see any scenario where there's going to be a season in your life where you're calling them up as important in your life. But the cool thing about grace is because Jesus gave that to us first, this thing we don't deserve. It gives us the opportunity to set that example to other people by doing the same thing. Now, I'm not saying you have to be best friends with everybody tomorrow, but if we're willing to do the hard work and say, "You know what? We're not going to write somebody off. We're not going to look at them and just see the worst thing about them." Instead, we're going to say, "God, if there's something here for me in this friendship, or if you can make right something that's really broken and wrong, God, we're going to say yes to it." In the same way, you don't want your friends looking at you. I certainly don't want my friends looking at me and knowing me based off the worst thing I've done or the things I do wrong. Guys, that's the good news about following Jesus. As following Jesus means no longer is our identity based off the things that we have done. He doesn't look at you and I and see the worst moments of our lives. Instead, he looks at you and me and he sees his son and he sees his daughter. What could

change in our world? If instead of looking at people and seeing the thing that they did to hurt us, we looked at them and saw somebody that Jesus values as much as he values you and me. What could change if we look at the friendships that maybe were somebody has broken something with us or if we're being honest, somewhere where we've done harm to somebody else and instead of saying we're just going to move on and be done with it, we say, "God, is there anything else you can do with this?" Because I think on the other side of us being willing to do the work, like Jesus did the work for us on the cross, I really believe that on the other side of giving grace, like Jesus gave grace to you and me, we're going to be able to see relationships not just come back from broken, but turn into something way more beautiful and powerful than we ever thought they could be. Mark went on to write one of the four gospels and the gospels are found in the New Testament and they are just the stories of Jesus and in the book of Mark, Mark lays out who Jesus is and what he has done and it all started not because Mark got everything right or because Paul was showing a ton of forgiveness, it actually started with a man named Barnabas who looked at somebody who had no business being involved anymore like John Mark and said, "Come with me, we're not done yet." And Mark went on to become one of the most important authors in the history of the world. You have no idea what your friends or what people who have done wrong are capable of and the whole story of the things we believe is that even though we're broken, God can make something beautiful out of us and I want you to know you might have broken friendships or relationships but just because they're broken today doesn't mean God is finished with it. Your sin was never the end of your story and a broken friendship or a hurt in your life doesn't have to be the end of your friendship either. God could have way more for you. God could have He can do way more than we think or imagine if we're just willing to see people or try to see people the way Jesus sees you and me. [BLANK_AUDIO]