Now, first clue. We're going to be looking for the name of a man who failed and then made good. Second clue. On one occasion, Peter referred to this man by saying, my son. I said, Peter, my son. You know who it is? Third clue. Peter visited in this man's house after the angel released him from prison. Fourth clue. This man was the nephew of Barnabas. Now that ought to give you some pretty good ideas, man. Fifth clue. This man caused a dispute to arise between Paul and Barnabas. Sixth clue. This man was among the church's early missionaries. The last clue is this man wrote one of the New Testament books. Who is he? John Moore. Very good. John has won whatever the prize might be tonight. Now, Once again, I'll look at this man. You'll learn some things about guys dealing with us, about I dealing with other people, and a very important category, that of failure. Now, the 15th chapter, of the book of Acts, let us return and visit our brethren in every city where we have already preached the word of the Lord, and see how they are doing. In other words, they've set up on their spiritual welfare since we left them. So we can. And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname was Mark. But Paul thought it was not good to take John Mark with them, and then there was a charge laid against John Mark by Paul. He deported someone from Tammithia and went not with them to the woods. And the condition between Paul and Barnabas was so sharp But they departed certainly one from another, and Barnabas took Mark, and Pharaoh to Sansas. And Paul chose Pharaoh, and departed, and went to Syria, and Coliseum." Now, from this portion of Scripture in the 15th chapter of Acts, We learn of a severe division that took place between two great friends, Paul and Barnett. What had not been that prompted him, that is Paul, to take such severe action and demand that Mark not be allowed to go with them. Anyway, to this point, Blunt said, I don't know him. Now, Morse was there. Morse was present, and he said, I don't know him. Now, I think, Paul, at times, was a very blunt man. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. And then, by the way, John Morse found himself in the situation a lot of people find themselves, at 50. Paul said of Mark, he is a reject. That's kind of hurtful for somebody to say, you're a reject. I don't understand. Now it wasn't because he lacked tradition. He was a born again believer. He loved the Lord. I mean, it wasn't because he wasn't qualified. This man, he had a priest, and he had a priest, and he wasn't saved by the missionary. It wasn't because he wasn't qualified. It wasn't because he had backslidden into sin. Taken up his old ways of wickedness, if he ever had such ways. If that wasn't the reason that Paul came and went, I don't know if it's because he was lazy. The boy had potential, and so it wasn't because he was lazy. I don't believe it was because he was scatterbrained. He couldn't think good. He couldn't make good decisions. It wasn't because he was the trouble maker. Some people just have a seemingly massive screw-up trouble wherever they go to cause people to be offended, but there wasn't a problem with the boy. He really wasn't a hard person to get along with. I don't even believe Mark, in a real sense, was a likable person. He was a kind person. I don't even believe there was a personality clash between Paul and Mark. These are the reasons that I don't think is good for this is why Paul said, I don't want you. And if you persist, Barnum, you can also go your merry way. He's not going with me. And although we can't be absolutely sure as to what Mark had done, I think Acts 15 and 38 sort of gives us a little bit of a hint. Because you see, Paul calls him, in this verse, a willing being, a deserter. He's deported from us. And even as an excuse, he goes up and He packed up his bags and took off, right in the middle of our missionary journey. I mean, we were descending on him, we were meeting him, we were counting on him, he was a part of the team, and he just left and walked off. And today, the state of the laws was, you never get used to this, but you sort of have to accept it. I know it's a place that you go, you look out, maybe it's a place that you go, you look out, and it wasn't gone. Well, you hope, well, maybe they're out of town, maybe they can't, you know, but, no, that's not the reason, they're just quick. They just reside in the middle of their duties. You don't know really how to deal with them. What can you do? Well, Paul said, I'll tell you one thing you can do, you don't hire them again. You don't accept them again. You don't put them back in the cell with you. Now, why did Mark deserve it? I'm going to have to tell you that. I don't know. But I'm going to make a suggestion. Ross is a young man, not a seasoned doctor, not at all. Our Barnabas, who was a mature, older man, experienced, who had gone through the swirl of life and hardened up. Life had not been easy for either one of his men. And I believe John Mott, as he went on the missionary journey, did not find it quite as glamorous and as exciting as he thought it would be. Not only that, but I would imagine he began to sense that this is not going to be a picnic. As he learned that there were Jewish people wanting to eliminate Paul, There was an opposition towards the Christians by the Romans and by the Jews. In other words, what I'm trying to say is, I believe it got kind of rough. And maybe the boy got kind of afraid. And he began to think about his safety. Or I want to say that the things that they were doing didn't accomplish everything he wanted them to do. And so he began to say it. Not as many folks were converted as he really thought they would. Not as many people responded and got excited over what they had to preach as he thought they would. And he began to say, man, the war doesn't look too bright. And things are beginning to look worse and worse. And things are going to get tougher and tougher. And the results that we've had are not very good. And I make him despair, very possibly he became paralyzed. And decided the best thing for me to do is go home. And so that's what he did. Do you know? Now that's what I think happened to him. That's why I think the door be broken. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. But whatever the reason was, the way Paul taught, He had no excuse. Don't let him speak. Now maybe we can't speak. I don't know about that. He can't speak. But that's no excuse, he said. That's no excuse. And he has some other business he wanted to turn to. Personal business. But Paul said, that's no excuse. He was offered to do this and there was no reason for him to do this. Now you might say of Mark that he had a weak point. He's not saying he had a long year. He did not have that do or die commitment that would be required. And when things didn't work out as he envisioned and as he had hoped, and as his little contribution did not seem to be very important, and did not seem to produce any real great results, And when things weren't quite as exciting as he wanted them to be, and as he dreamed they would be, he decided to be what he called a jackass. They don't need me. I think I'll just, uh, go home. In other words, for Mark, he spelled relief, or ease. So that's what he did. Now Mark had a common problem that we face today in the church and God faces with his people. He started out good, but he ended up poor. He lacked what we call enough gift and go to keep him going. And this happened so often. I've seen in my life that people identify with Mark. Although Mark recovered a lot quicker than I did. If you find a lot of people like Mark, they start out all in teams and things don't go quite as rapidly as they want them to and successful and they leave the team. They leave the team and pretty soon they just drop out. And they weren't keeping. I was there, but I'm not sure that Mark had been convinced that a thing that's worth starting is worth finishing. If it's not worth finishing, then it's not worth starting. We don't always answer that question when we start something, but I think the assistance is here. If it's worth starting, it's worth finishing. And if it's not worth finishing, it's not God's will. It's not what's done. Then there are some people in the hope of the Lord, they're like Paul. They don't have any patience with somebody else. If in any way, handicaps or interferes or disappoints them, close them down in their work. I really feel like Paul did not have any time for more. He had no place in his plans and no place in his life for people he would save. That would not totally be an asset to him, and it was. And yet, in reality, how many people do you know of like Paul? If you were going out to select a person like Paul, I don't know where you'd start. I remember when he found it. Paul was a rare kind of individual. He would bow his neck against the wind of opposition, and he would say, Paul! And you would say to Paul, you're out of your mind. I mean, there's things wrong up there, and you shouldn't care. They got the guns, and you don't have anything. And Paul says, you're right, let's do it. Now, Paul was the kind of person that they would beat him up, and throw him out of town thinking he was dead, and Paul would say, if you were thrown out with him on the ground, hey, let's get up and go back. Now, you're not going to find many people with that kind of devotion, and that kind of stamina, and that kind of get-up-and-go. Now possibly Barnabas had it, and that's why Paul, he made such a great missionary king, but I said, you're not going to find many Pauls. You're going to find a lot of John Marks, but not many Pauls. And so Paul had no time for him. Yet you know, I honestly believe that Christ calls into his fellowship, and Christ calls into his body, The Lord gave up on Mark, the Lord didn't. The Lord didn't. And the Lord began to work in the life of John Mark, his childhood. This boy's ability, this boy's interest, this boy's calling. However, the Lord is continually working in our lives as we become like John Moore, continually saying, so you fail. You can try again. And though it seems that Mark only failed once, I believe we can go beyond John Moore and say, you can fail 50 times. You can fail 100 times. And the Lord says, listen, you can give up again, and you can try again. Now it becomes more difficult to get up again and try again. After you fall time and time and time again, you get far more discouraged. And yet the Lord accepts it and the Lord says, I offer you that opportunity. Now, there are a lot of people I have found in my life that have surrendered to the Lord, but they're not very strong. What are you going to do? Are you going to just say, well, you've had your chance, out? I don't think that's right. I don't think there are people who are willing, but they're not very able. For one reason or another, they're just not very able. Think of me. They're concerned, but they're not committed. I believe we have a lot of people who might be concerned, but I don't know how many are committed. There's a difference between concern and commitment. Because commitment can never work. Concern doesn't get very much done at all. I think there are people who are trained and seen and prepared with the know-how, but they are not very enthused. People come to me and say, well, all we need is more enthusiasm. They like to tell me how to seduce you. I said, Don, Mark should have been charged. Mark, what you need more is more enthusiasm. What you need is more commitment. Well, how are you going to give it to me, boy? You know, how do you like to hear that? And they ask you, how can somebody give it to you? That's not it. I know there are people in church who are qualified, but not very persistent. And there are a lot of people who are agreeable to anything that I say to them, but they're not very hopeful that they'll ever come. Now, you take this category of people, and I think it's the majority of people that God draws into His character, and God treats them as the weak members. And you bring all these people together, what are you going to do? They're the hope of the church. They're the only thing the Lord's got to work with. How many Pauls have you met in life? And how many John Marks have you met in life? I'll tell you, I met a lot more John Morse than I've ever met Paul. And you'll find along that there are not a lot of people that you can really ever come to count on to put this in, rain or heat, Paul or sleep. And when you do find a few of those people, you know what you call them? You call them the faithful kids. The faithful kids. What are we going to do with all the unfaithful men? See, in the real sense, they're not unfaithful because it's tough. It's because they're sandwiched at some point in their character. And so, I think for one reason or another, you have a lot of people dropping out. To desert the fight, in a well-chance to run out when things begin to get discouraging and difficult. Put another way, John Marks told the truth that he was an overcomer in the matter of saving the law. No, we can be an overcomer in the matter of our morals. We can be an overcomer in the matter of our imagination. We can be an overcomer in the matter of our turn, what it speaks. We can be an overcomer in many areas of our personal morality. But John Morton, I believe, failed to be an overcomer in the matter of serving the Lord. Moral, holy, but not profitable to the Lord. And Mark makes no excuse for what he did. Now, as you read Acts 16, remember Barnabas and Mark go one direction, and Paul and Silas go another. He looked at Barnabas, and of course, that was thin-faced. That may make a difference, not necessarily. Sometimes you can't tolerate thin-faced. But anyway, Barnabas believed in God. And he said, although he's a man that fails, he's a man also that can still make good. And there's always the possibility of a comeback. No reason, but the possibility exists. And he said, the person that fails must be given another chance. Now we have no indication that Mark still lacks any desire to come back. Mark wanted to try again. Mark wanted another chance. And where would being be today if the Lord dealt with us as Paul dealt with Mark? That is, you only have one chance to be good. One chance to do it right. One chance to finish everything you start. And if you blow it, I'm going to put you in file 13 in the sidetrack. Now, where would we be if the Lord all dealt with us like that? I don't know where you'd be. I'd be in file 13 in the sidetrack. Now, the next time you hear about Mark in the Bible, We find him in the presence of the Apostle Peter, right? Now, undoubtedly his travels with Barnabas had produced a change in him. Because now he had proved to be faithful, his own faith had increased, his commitment undoubtedly had multiplied, and his zeal had lasted the entire ship with Barnabas. Well, how long did Peter think of John Mark? Well, look at 1 Peter 5, 13. 1 Peter 5, 13. Peter's talking, he says, the church that is at Babylon, probably that means Rome, Salute you! And also, notice who else salutes you. He says, Mark, or Martha. John Mark salutes you. And notice how he speaks of John Mark. John Mark, my friend. Now, he tried just to doctrine him. He tried so much evidence, he took him under his wing. Paul referred to Timothy as his friend. You can see his word's deep affection developed between Apostle Peter and John Mark. I wonder why. Who else paid in their service to the Lord? Peter. Who else denied in their service to the Lord? Peter. Now, Peter has a soft spot in his heart for John Mark. By now, probably the world is like, oh, John Mark, he's a renegade. He's a deserter. You can't trust him. You can't depend on him. And I bet that'll cut off Peter's heart. Well, I know what's happened to him. I understand. And Peter picked him in. Peter, you know, talked to him and encouraged him. And he said, listen, it's Jesus that takes me back. And he will give me a second chance. After I denied him three times. When he was on trial, he'll take you back. And he'll give you a chance. And you can overturn him. I will. You can't. And so Taylor I believe really identified with John Mullen. Now. To my mind, Tom was famous. I mean, he was a go-getter from start to finish. He nailed him down to the log before he got no warning done. He did it. Now, here's where the thing begins, I think, with a relatively great friendship with John Mark. And possibly, most of what John Mark puts in the Gospel of Mark, in your Bible, He learned from the first-hand experience and testimony of Peter. He walked with Jesus. Now, the next mission we have of Mark is found in a sentence Paul has to say to the church in Colossians. Colossians, the third chapter, verse 10. Colossians, the third chapter. Maybe it's the 4th chapter. Yes, 4th chapter. I'm sorry, 4th chapter, verse 10. Colossians 4, 10. He says, again, at the close of this letter, various people want to speak to me. I'll tell you, hello. He mentions their names. And he says, our inner constructs, I guess, if I'm out of that one. He says, oh Artie, my fellow prisoners, salute you. Then he mentions this man, and Mark it. Also, Philip too. Then he mentions him being killed in the body. Then he says, If Mark comes to see you, I want you to receive him. Now, I don't know whether that means that Paul had told everybody where he went, but don't we see Mark, because he's a deserter, and you can't touch him, and he won't last? And now he's trying to undo the thing he had said about it? Or it just means that they didn't know Mark, and if he came by, he's the kind of person you ought to meet. He's the kind of person that will bless you. You ought to bring him in your church. You ought to know this boy. He's a great saint of the Lord. You see, Paul has changed his mind. Because Mark has changed his mind. And Paul wouldn't give him a chance. The Lord did, and Barnabas did, and Peter did, and the Lord pretty good. And so now Paul says, I believe it. And I recommend it. Now, The most brilliant mention we have of Mark and Paul's letter is written to Timothy. Very interesting. On the fourth chapter, 2 Timothy, verse 10 and 11. Verse 10 talks about another one. It says, by John Mark, he says, Demas has forsaken me. A lot of folks seem to think so far, and Demas has to say to me that it isn't reason here. This was not Mark's reason. He says Demas loves the present world. Now it's going to be hard to get Demas back. I don't think Mark had another Lord. He still loved the Lord, he just couldn't have enough to get up and go. That's all he liked. Not empty. Now, Demas liked this. He found something else he'd rather do. That didn't happen to John Martin. And so he says here, he's departed, same thing as he's gone back on. He's deserted us, and he's gone with us for life. Then he says in verse 11, now Paul's in prison. He's nearer the time of his death. And he says here, Luke is with me. He's all alone now. But I want you to notice now to take Mark. I want you to find Mark, and I want you to bring him to me. He came away from me, and now he says, I want you to bring him to me. Why? For he is profitable, useful, beneficial to me in the ministry. I need him. Once declared by Paul unprofitable, now he is declared profitable. I mean, first of all, Mark did it on himself, he did it. And what happened? All you knew was some acceptance. All you knew was some party, some encouragement, and you got that from Barnum. and some assistance. Somebody would take an interest in him, and somebody would fix him, and somebody would give him another chance. And as a result, this effort, this talent, this gift, it's gone. And so Moss, to me, represents those who start out poorly, and for one reason or another, just want to drop out of the race, mainly out of fear or discouragement, disillusionment, but they still have a certain force that activates their conscience and makes them feel wrong to try and try and try again. I believe most of us can recall there are times when you failed yourself Didn't live up to your own expectations. Didn't accomplish your own dreams. There are times when all of us have failed our friends. And disappointed them. There are times when all of us have failed our family. All of us have failed our church. All of us have failed the Lord. And somebody has labeled us a sinner, and somebody has labeled us a deserter, and somebody has labeled us unforgivable, and somebody has labeled us unfaithful. And we can't really blame them, because that's the true charge against them. But, like Mark, I believe amidst the embarrassment, and the shame, and the guilt, We have the obligation to ourselves, and the Lord, and the church, and everybody else, to come back, and to rest. We may go down, we don't have to stay down. I want to close with this. A temporary quitter, yes. A permanent quitter, no. A temporary senator, Yes, I think that's right. Permanent failure? No. A temporary disappointment? Yes. A permanent disappointment? No. You may have to face it up on your special report card. But you can come back and take the course again And chances are you can make an ace the next time. And this is an example in the Bible of a man who failed and then made good. That can be the testimony of anybody that the Lord calls. Father, we thank you this day for placing in the Bible A person that many of us can identify with. May we few realize that being down does not mean being out. That failing once or twice or even three times or more does not mean that it has to be permanent. That we have not overcome does not mean we cannot overcome. And so may we this day, if we lack the effort, the zeal, the drive to try it again, may it be replaced, rekindled. And again, may we try to make a comeback. If the servant heart is there, and the desire exists, then there's no reason why we have no right Because we cannot die again. The invitation goes out. May we accept it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.