Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem…
Acts 13:13-52
With their mission in Cyprus now completed, Paul, Barnabas and John, the Apostle, sail back to the mainland arriving in Perga, in Pamphylia. The Apostle John travels from there back to Jerusalem while Paul and Barnabas travel to the region of Pisidia to a town named Antioch. This is another town by the same name as the town where the church in Antioch was located. To distinguish these two towns, they can be identified as Antioch of Syria, the town where the church originally sent Paul and Barnabas and Antioch of Asia. Like most cities and towns of this region, there were many Jews living in the area, enough so that were synagogues in several towns of the region. Paul’s usual method of introducing the gospel was to go to the town’s synagogue on the Sabbath. After reading from the Law and the Prophets, the Old Testament to us, the synagogue leader would, as a courtesy ask the visiting religious leaders to say a word of encouragement to the ones gathered there. In Paul’s opening statement, we learn that there are Jews, “men of Israel” and, Gentiles, “you who fear God,” in the synagogue to worship. The Jewish religion was attractive to many Gentiles through the ages and there were “proselytes,” converts to Judaism, in many places throughout the Roman Empire in that day. Paul now proceeds to use the only Holy Scriptures available to him, at that time, to preach the gospel message to the people gathered. We see Paul’s masterful use of his intimate knowledge of the Scriptures to show God taking His chosen people, the Israelites, from being slaves in Egypt through their settling in the promised land, ruled by judges, appointed by God, to them demanding a king like other nations around them and God giving them what they demanded to David, their greatest military king, on to John the Baptist, who announced the arrival of the King of kings, to the earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and God’s verbal announcement that Jesus was the Son of the Living God. Paul continued by telling the people of the religious leaders in Jerusalem rejecting Jesus’ claims to His deity and of their murdering Jesus through the Romans governing the land. Paul goes on to show the Scriptures had prophesied all that happened to this Jesus and God the Father raised Him from the tomb on the third day so that all who believed in this Jesus would be saved. Many, that day, Jews and Gentiles alike, were saved and they begged Paul and Barnabas to stay and tell them more in the coming Sabbaths. Nearly the whole population came the next Sabbath to hear Paul and Barnabas preach the gospel message and many more were saved that day, too. But, this tale ends with the ultra-religious Jews, the legalists of their day, rejecting the gospel message and stirring up persecution against Paul and Barnabas so that they left Antioch and “shook off the dust from their feet” to go on to Iconium. To end this “mission stop,” we are told, by Luke, that they “were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit” as they went on their way. Oh, Christians, missionaries today experience the same as Paul and Barnabas. Let those who support them do so with great prayers and thanksgivings for these missionaries! Source: S C Ball July 2, 2023
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