“When they had
preached the gospel to that city (Derbe) and had made many disciples, they returned
to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the
disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through
many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them
in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in
whom they had believed…And when they arrived and gathered the church together (back
in Antioch of Syria), they declared all
that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the
Gentiles. And they remained no little
time with the disciples.”-Acts 14: 21-23, 27-28 (ESV. Read Acts 14).
Paul and Barnabas continued on their
first missionary journey, leaving Antioch in Pamphylia and proceeding to
Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. At Iconium a
large audience gathered at the Jewish synagogue to hear the missionaries speak,
and many, both Jews and Greeks, believed there.
But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, “poisoning their minds”(v. 2) against the believers. We are told that Paul and Barnabas stayed at
Iconium a long time, teaching and
“granting signs and wonders” (v. 3). But
opposition continued against them, so much so that a plot was under way to
stone Paul and Barnabas. They escaped
and moved on south to Lystra and southeastward to Derbe. At Lystra they saw a man crippled from
birth. Paul commanded him to stand and
he did so. Then the man shouted that the
gods had come to them, and he called Barnabas Zeus and Paul he called Hermes,
the messenger, because it was Paul who was the main speaker of the two. Paul and Barnabas set about immediately to
declare that they were mere men—not gods. Paul began to preach the message of
Jesus to them. A summary of Paul’s
sermon is given in Acts 14:15-17. Yet
even with his strong preaching advocating Jesus and denying they were gods, the
people still wanted to offer sacrifices to the men who had brought them the
message from the true God.
Then trouble came to Lystra in the form
of Jews from Antioch and Iconium who did not want the missionaries preaching
about Jesus. They stoned Paul
unmercifully and dragged him outside the city and left him for dead. Disciples from within the city of Lystra
ministered to Paul and took him back into the city. The next day they departed for Derbe where
their mission was successful; they preached and many became Christians. Then they began to retrace their route from
the earlier part of the first missionary journey. They returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch
of Pamphylia, strengthening the disciples they had made when they first
preached in those cities. They helped
the churches select elders from among their membership. Elders’ functions in the church were based on
the those of Jewish synagogue elders who had important decision-making
responsibility and served on a sort local church council. In Acts 20:28 Paul refers to them as
overseeing the church and serving as shepherds of the church. They seem to have attended to business
matters and led various ministries including teaching.
They set their faces homeward,
continuing through Pisidia and Pamphylia, on to Perga and Attalia. Acts 14 does not say they helped these
churches find elders to be in charge, but they probably did that as they had in
the other towns. At Attalia they set sail and arrived at Antioch in Syria, at
the church that had ordained and commissioned them as missionaries. They reported enthusiastically what God had
done as they had been “lights to the
Gentiles.” Their missionary journey
had met with success. God had indeed “opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (v.
27). They remained quite a lengthy
time at Antioch, probably “breaking bread
and having fellowship from house to house” as the first believers had done
in Jerusalem. Success stories inspire us
to greater service. And when these come from members of our fellowship, we
rejoice with them. Praise be to God!
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