Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. In this chapter, we’ll follow the first major missionary expedition of the Apostle Paul and Barnabas more than 700 miles from Jerusalem to the Roman province of Galatia. We’ll get a good feel for what it was like to bring the gospel to places where Jesus was completely unknown. What kind of a reception would the apostle get? Keep listening. Acts chapter 13.

And they’re off. Are you ready for some very valuable life advice from Share the Word? You may want to listen up, especially if you’re a young man or woman in a hurry. Here it is. Never underestimate the importance of getting prepared, studying and learning, being mentored and practicing. Studying and learning, being mentored and practicing.

The better prepared you are, the more effective you’re going to be. The better prepared you are, the more likely you’re going to succeed. This principle was even true for someone as intelligent, as gifted, and driven as the Apostle Paul. I’ve noticed that after his conversion, he spent three, we would say, almost silent years in Arabia. We’re not told anything about it except that he was there being taught by the Lord. I’m sure he was searching the scriptures, he was listening to God’s promptings, and he was learning.

Then he went and spent some time with people like Barnabas, his mentor, and with Peter and James in Jerusalem, who I’m sure gave him a lot of help. Then he spent some time back in Cilicia, where he was from, likely practicing, experimenting with different approaches at sharing the gospel in a predominantly Gentile city. Then more learning, more being mentored and practicing leadership in Antioch, Syria, during that extremely valuable one-year internship there. I was talking with my 24-year-old son the other evening about this very thing. He’s a very serious Christian who has just in the last year or two of his life caught fire in his faith. He sincerely wants to do something to impact his generation for the cause of Christ, and that makes me, as a dad and as a Christian, feel very good.

But I reminded him that even the Apostle Paul, whose life made a huge impact, a man with extraordinary gifts, still spent several years getting prepared. He didn’t even begin his effective ministry years until he was in his thirties. So again, never underestimate the value of getting prepared, studying and learning, being mentored and practicing, whatever your field is. As chapter 13 opens, we’re at a pivotal year. The year is 46 A.D. Barnabas and Saul have just completed their mission of mercy, taking relief funds to the Christians in Judea hard hit by a famine.

Now they are back at their home church in Antioch, Syria. Luke notes that when they returned, Barnabas brought along a young man named Mark, a relative of his. Mark had been around Jesus and the apostles since he was a kid. His parents owned the home in Jerusalem with the upper room where Jesus and his disciples often met, and it was the home where Peter went after his miraculous escape from prison. This young man Mark, by the way, many years later, would write the third gospel in our New Testament, which is called by his name. While ministering at the church in Antioch, Saul was able to witness firsthand what had only been theory for him up to this point.

He experienced a local church functioning just as God intended. It was a family of believers that was continually expanding because their faith was real and contagious. It was people from all different backgrounds and races connecting together deeply because of their common commitment to Jesus Christ, loving, accepting, serving one another. It was believers growing deep and strong in their faith as they learned the Word of God from gifted teachers who could apply biblical truths to their lives. And there were great times of worship and prayer too, I’m sure. The reason God wanted His chosen instrument, Saul, there for this period of time was that he needed to experience this to learn how it happens, because this is exactly what God wanted him to reproduce as he carried the gospel to the great cities of the Gentile world.

Antioch would be his model. Luke tells us this church in Antioch was led by quite a diverse leadership team. Besides Barnabas and Saul, there was a man named Simeon called Niger. Simeon was obviously a black man. Can’t call anybody by this name in America today, but obviously in the first century it wasn’t considered a pejorative term. Another of the leaders was Lucius of Cyrene.

Luke tells us Cyrene was clear over in Libya in North Africa. A third leader was no doubt Jewish, a native of Israel, because Luke says he had grown up with Herod the Tetrarch, so likely someone from Israel’s aristocracy. Then, of course, Barnabas and Saul, who were both Hellenistic Jews, Jews from outside of Israel, fluent in the Greek language and at home in the Gentile culture. At the end of that year, God spoke clearly to these leaders, impressing on them that it was time to release Saul and Barnabas for a special mission, the mission for which God had been preparing Saul. The other leaders of the church, it says, laid hands on them, which was an act of ordaining them for this special task. It demonstrated that they were being sent off as representatives of Christ and also of their home church.

And they’re off. What we call today Paul’s first missionary journey was underway. They couldn’t possibly know all that was ahead for them, but these two were seasoned men of God, well prepared, and they were ready for this adventure. I’d like you to imagine now that you were a member of that church in Antioch. When I was a kid, missionaries came to our church to show us what they had been doing in some foreign place. They always seemed to have slide presentations.

You may not even know what I’m trying to describe if you’re under 40. Slides were shown in a special projector. The missionaries would describe a scene and then click to the next slide showing something different. You can still do a slideshow now, sort of on PowerPoint, and actually add in the sound effects I’ve found. But I miss the sound and noise those old projectors made. We don’t have slides from Paul’s first missionary journey, but hey, let’s pretend we do, okay?

And like we’re watching a report to that church in Antioch once they’ve returned. Here in our first slide, you can see Paul and Barnabas boarding a ship sailing from Seleucia, a seaport on the Mediterranean coast, their first destination, the Isle of Cyprus. That’s Barnabas waving to the camera as that taller guy there. Oh, I forgot to mention, Barnabas again brought along Mark with him. See the younger fellow? All smiles as they’re boarding the ship for this great adventure.

Do you see the good-sized leather bag Mark is carrying? The term used to describe Mark here in Acts chapter 13, verse 5, by the way, translated helper in most English Bibles, had the technical meaning in the Roman world of document handler. The term suggests that besides being along for sort of an apprenticeship, Mark was probably specifically tasked with handling documents, perhaps scrolls containing words of the life of Christ, for example, or something that they wanted to leave in the churches in the places that they would stop. Also likely, some scrolls from the Old Testament would be in the bag which Saul and Barnabas would be studying in order to be preaching from them. The three missionaries first sailed west about 90 miles out into the Mediterranean, reaching the island of Cyprus, landing in a port called Salamis. Here, their disembarking relieved to have had a safe voyage.

There was a Jewish synagogue at Salamis, and Luke says they visited there and spoke in it. Doesn’t tell us of any particular results. They then worked their way across Cyprus till they came to a place called Paphos, the capital of the island. Here’s a good look at that town, more impressive than you thought, I bet. But something disturbing happened at Paphos, and Luke wants us to know about it. And here’s how he describes it.

At Paphos, we met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet called Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the proconsul Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. But Elymas, the sorcerer, that’s what his name means, opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from listening to the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, You’re a child of the devil, an enemy of everything that is right. You’re full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?

Yikes. Some of you were probably thinking I was too harsh on false teachers and false prophets a lesson or two ago. Here’s the governor, Sergius Paulus, stingy-looking gentleman, don’t you think? But he looks shocked in this picture because he had trusted this person, Elymas, as a sort of spiritual advisor. And this is Elymas, who called himself Bar-Jesus, meaning the son of Jesus. He’s covering his face because he doesn’t want to be photographed.

He’s no son of Jesus, that’s for sure. I wanted to be sure you heard how Saul called this guy out. The apostles of Christ had no respect for false teachers and false prophets who spiritually led people astray, and neither should we. God actually struck this man Elymas with a temporary blindness, Luke says, and here he is fumbling around hoping someone will lead him back to his house. I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t laugh at that, but I think the blindness was a way of sort of showing the governor and other people on this island that this man trafficked in the dark arts. He was a medium.

He was just tricking them. The governor afterward was glad to listen to Paul and Barnabas tell him the good news, and it says here that he himself became a believer. Here’s Sergius Paulus being baptized, the first convert on the first missionary journey. Doesn’t he look happy? You may remember that Barnabas was actually a native of this island, Cyprus. That’s no doubt why he wanted to come here first.

And here he is in front of the house that he grew up in. But the Christian message had already been seeded on Cyprus at least ten years earlier because we’re told some of the believers who had been trying to escape Saul’s persecutions in Jerusalem had actually fled to Cyprus. Although it may have been high on Barnabas’ agenda to further evangelize Cyprus, that was apparently not what Saul wanted to do. He was anxious to take the gospel to places it had never yet reached. Notice the little note Luke makes at verse nine. He says that Saul was also now being called Paul.

Saul was his Jewish given name, but Paul was a Roman name he adopted. From this point forward in the book of Acts, Luke is always referring to him by his Roman name. And it seems, just by force of his personality as well from this time forward, it’s no longer Barnabas and Saul, but Paul and Barnabas, or just Paul and the others. Paul became the leader of this expedition rather quickly, and so they moved on. They were back on a ship now, a larger one sailing due north about 200 miles to what is today southern Turkey, a region called by the Romans Pamphylia. Something unpleasant happened when they landed there at the port city of Perga.

Look, Mark doesn’t seem all smiles now, does he? It was at that point, maybe a month into the expedition, that Mark decided really he’d had enough and wanted to go home. There’s been a lot of speculation as to why. Luke only mentions it in passing here in verse 13, but later we realize how badly this disappointed Paul. They were just ready to head out into the real thick of things when Mark, as Paul later termed it, deserted them. I won’t show you a picture of Paul looking extremely unhappy as Mark hands his document bag off to Barnabas and turns back toward the ship.

Perhaps Mark was too homesick or genuinely scared. Paul wanted to go directly north from there through the mountains, not only a difficult trek, but through an area that was very known to be dangerous. The destination was a town about 130 miles inland in the southern portion of Galatia, a Roman province. Have you ever hiked 100 miles? I have, if you add up all the walks I’ve ever taken in my entire lifetime. But seriously, this was a trek through rugged, potentially dangerous terrain.

Mark was just not ready for this. Remember what I was saying earlier about being prepared? Mark wanted in on this adventure when he heard about it, but he was not prepared. Fortunately, the two men who pressed ahead were. After packing in some supplies, Paul and Barnabas set out, probably walking about 12 to 15 miles a day, from sunup till heat of the afternoon became unbearable. After dark, it grew cold once inland as they climbed in elevation.

But by the next day at noon, it was sweltering hot again. There was danger from wild animals too. If you look carefully, you can see a couple of wolves lurking near their trail in this slide. Also, danger from attacks by robbers. This mountainous area was not populated enough for the Romans to even police it. Looking back on these experiences, Paul later wrote, I was constantly on the move, in danger from rivers and in danger from bandits.

I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst and have gone without food. That’s 2 Corinthians chapter 11. No, this was not for Mark at this stage of his game. This was no vacation. But it was through challenging experiences like this that Paul also wrote, I’ve learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself.

I’ve learned the secret of having plenty, facing hunger, of having abundance and being in want. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. That’s Philippians chapter 4. Look at this view. Coming down out of the mountains, the last three days of travel would have been following the shoreline of this beautiful lake called today Lake Eğirdir in south central Turkey. Finally, they reached their destination, a good-sized Roman town called Pisidian Antioch.

Here’s Paul and Barnabas posing next to the Welcome to Pisidian Antioch sign. This is not the Antioch in Syria, obviously, where their home church was. There were several towns named Antioch spread throughout the Roman world. They were all named after a third century B.C. Greek king called Antiochus Epiphanes, no different than now when we have many places in America, say, called Washington, for example, because of someone famous in our history. The apostles’ strategy was to first visit the synagogue of the Jews in any city they targeted, if it had one.

Jews from the dispersion were scattered all over the Roman Empire. Larger cities had enough Jews to form a synagogue. So here’s where the apostles could meet people who would have some frame of reference for their message, people exposed to the Old Testament teaching. On the first Sabbath day in this town of Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas attended a synagogue service and sat in the seats designated for visiting rabbis. Look at this. Paul is all dressed up in his white Pharisee outfit.

Why would he do that? Because it was the Jewish custom to invite visiting rabbis to speak, to share some words with the congregation. Paul, as you can imagine, would want to seize upon that opportunity. Standing up and motioning with his hand, Paul got everyone’s attention there, Men of Israel and you Gentiles here to worship God, listen to me. And then Luke records for us in verse 16 a synopsis of Paul’s message that day. We’d have pictures of him speaking there in the synagogue, but, you know, no cameras are allowed inside for the service.

Paul gave quite a review of God’s past dealings with the nation of Israel, zeroing in in particular on King David and the promise of a Messiah to come from his descendants. Imagine everyone’s surprise when then Paul said the long-promised Son of David, the Messiah, had recently come to Israel. He said, God has brought to Israel the Savior, Jesus, just as he had promised. Brothers, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles here, it is to us that this message of salvation has come. However, the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus. In fact, they condemned him, fulfilling the words of prophets that are read every Sabbath day.

Though they found no proper ground for death sentence, they asked the Roman governor Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. Throughout his message, Paul wove in prophetic quotations from the Old Testament that Jesus specifically fulfilled. I imagine he let the enormity of what he had just told his audience about the Messiah being killed sink in for a moment, like, the promised Son of David, the Messiah has finally come, and the Jews in Jerusalem not only didn’t recognize him, they killed him? He was crucified? As his listeners wondered at that, Paul announced the good news in ringing tones, But God has raised him from the dead, he assured his audience, and there were many witnesses of this fact, he told his audience.

He was seen alive for many days, he told his audience. Then Paul shared the gospel. Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through this Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is now proclaimed to you. Through him, everyone who believes can be justified from everything you could have never been justified through the law of Moses. I love that Luke includes this actual message of Paul’s, or at least a very good portion of it here. Isn’t this exactly the same message we should bring?

Today, this is the exact same message that we share on Share the Word podcast. Jesus, the promised Messiah, appeared in real time as a real man in the first century of Israel. He was killed by the people there who didn’t accept him or recognize him. But to prove he was the Savior, God raised him from the dead. And now, forgiveness is available to everyone because he has paid the price for our sins. That’s the gospel.

That’s what Paul was preaching in Pisidian Antioch 2,000 years ago. Still what I’m trying to preach today, and what anybody who’s faithful to God’s Word is sharing today. Paul’s audience wanted to hear more here and invited him to speak again the next Sabbath. In fact, many didn’t even want to wait that long. Luke says after the service, they followed Paul and Barnabas to dialogue with them more about what they had just heard. Here’s the inn where Paul and Barnabas were staying.

Not fancy. I’m sure all week they were busy there doing follow-up work with those who wanted to come and learn more. And then the next Sabbath, they were back at that same synagogue. This time, there was a much bigger crowd awaiting them, a crowd made up of many more Gentiles than Jews. But at this service, things didn’t go as they hoped. When Paul tried to speak, he was met with determined resistance by the jealous, unbelieving synagogue leaders who kept arguing with him, insulting him, trying to contradict him.

And after a while of that, he had had enough. He finally stood and said, It was our intention to share the good news with you first, you Jews, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves, we will now turn our attention to the Gentiles. And with that, he and Barnabas strode out of the synagogue. It says a large number of Gentiles and even some of the Jews followed him. From then on, they directed their efforts in that city to those who wanted to receive their message. Here’s a group shot of those new believers at Pisidian Antioch who heard the gospel and responded to it in faith, people Paul would call the firstfruits, the first good results of their missionary work.

I don’t know how long Paul and Barnabas stayed on in Pisidian Antioch, but apparently it was a good long while, because Luke writes at verse 49, From there, the word of the Lord was spreading throughout this whole region. That sounds like a pretty successful venture, doesn’t it? But their success was hard-earned, let me remind you. If you think you want to get into ministry as a vocation, you better be prepared. If you are preaching the truth about sin, about salvation, about Jesus, you’re going to encounter opposition. But what makes it worthwhile are the smiling folks in that last photo, those who respond to the gospel whose lives are changed by it.

More than their lives, really, their destinies are changed by it. But it was not easy. Paul and Barnabas were run out of this town, Luke tells us, after a while. And Luke says at the end of this chapter, at verse 50, that some influential opponents stirred up a persecution against them and then expelled them from their region. The apostles remembered Jesus’ words: Be on your guard against men. They will hand you over to local councils.

They will flog you in their synagogues. If you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. That’s what Jesus had said. And that’s exactly what Paul and Barnabas did. But they left behind now a good number of believers in the province of Galatia, founding members of Christian church in that area, a hard-won first success for this mission team carrying out the objectives of the Great Commission. And oh, here’s a picture of me turning off my microphone now, and here’s one of Tony, who’s about to ask you to share our podcast with others who might want to learn the New Testament.

Until next time, this is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. So here’s me telling you that Share the Word is a Great Commission project and that we share the big idea of the New Testament chapter by chapter. And here’s Paul holding up a sign about the fact that we’re on most podcast sites. Oh, and to remind you that you should let everyone know about Share the Word and visit sharetheword.org. And here’s me simply in awe that I’m part of such an amazing project alongside with amazing teachers.

Thanks for joining us. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.