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About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Section - Chapters 14 Previous Section - Chapters 13 ch. 14:1-7 ch. 14:8-20 ch. 14:21-28
Verse
one confirms what we have said about Paul’s way of ministry.
It says that “Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish
synagogue” to preach. To
me it is interesting to note that even though Paul said that he was going
to take the gospel to the Gentiles in the last chapter, the first thing he
does in Iconium is to go to the Jewish synagogue.
He must still feel that the synagogue is a good place to start
preaching when entering a new city. Luke
says that Paul and Barnabas spoke “so effectively that a number of Jews
and Gentiles believed”. Two
things to note here. One is
that the way Luke puts it, both Paul and Barnabas did the speaking.
The second thing is his mentioning of “effective speaking”.
Luke is basically saying that they did a great job in delivering
the message, although we know that behind this great message was the Holy
Spirit. As
in everywhere Paul and Barnabas went, some Jews did not believe their
message. In this
case those “who refused” to believe, as Luke puts it,
“stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the
brothers”. This time the
Jews didn’t stir up other Jews, but they stirred up Gentiles. Verse
3 tells us that Paul and Barnabas stayed around Iconium for a while
preaching the gospel, confirming what they were saying with miraculous
signs. At
this point the whole city was divided, some for the Jews and some for the
apostles. This is the first
mention that Paul was considered an apostle. Both
Jews and Gentiles decided that they would stone Paul and Barnabas.
Somehow the two men found out about this plot and fled to Lystra
where they continued to preach the good news of Jesus. Thus
God's will for Paul, that is, a suffering preacher is well underway.
In Lystra And Derbe (ch 14:8 - 20) While
preaching in Lystra Paul glanced over to see a man that was lame from
birth. Luke notes that Paul
felt that this man “had faith to be healed”.
Paul did not pray for him, nor did he lay hands on this man.
He simply said, “Stand up on your feet”. (ch. 14:10)
This
event tells us a few things. One
thing is that Paul had the ability to bring healing to this man.
He did not ask Jesus to heal him, but as Jesus’ representative,
acting in the place of Jesus, Paul just pronounced this man healed.
Obviously Paul had the gift of healing, one of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. The
fact that Paul just said the word and the man was healed tells us that
there is no real formula when it comes to healing.
Sometimes a simple word is said, as in this case, and as in the
case of Peter and the lame man in chapter 3.
Sometimes people lay hands on the sick and they are healed.
Sometimes there is special prayer to the Lord that brings forth the
healing. There
is a differences between this man being healed and the lame man in chapter
3. In chapter 3 Peter
pronounced healing, yet it appears that it was Peter’s faith that caused
the man to be healed. In this
case, Paul saw that the lame man had faith to be healed.
So once again, there is no special formula. One man had faith, one
man didn’t seem to have faith. Verse
11 says that those who saw this miracle felt that the “gods had come
down in human form”. “Barnabas, they called Zeus, and Paul they called
Hermes”. This miracle so
impressed the people that even the priest of Zeus’s temple brought bulls
to sacrifice to Paul. These
are pretty important Greek gods, but that did not mean anything to Paul
and Barnabas. Paul and
Barnabas had a choice to make here. They
could have accepted the superstar mentality of the crowd and have it go to
their heads, or they could have, as they did, deflected it to follow
Jesus. In our superstar
Christian mentality today, many would not have done that.
The
reason why they called Paul Hermes was because “he was the chief
spokesman”. So we see here
that Paul was indeed the one who did most of the speaking. Paul
and Barnabas’ response to this worship of themselves was seen in a
traditional act of ripping their clothes.
Most likely they ripped their inner tunic, which would be a thinner
material than their outer cloak. They
would rip it from top downward about 6 inches or so.
This would signify to others that something blasphemous
had occurred to them. Being
thought of as gods was intolerable to
Paul and Barnabas. Upon
ripping their tunic, they ran out into the street and told the crowd that
they were just men, and nothing more. Paul said, “we are bringing you
good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living
God.” What were the
worthless things Paul was telling these people to turn from?
The worthless things were the very gods they claim Paul and
Barnabas to be. These people
should stop their worship of multiple gods and worship the one and only
true God who created all things. Verse
16 is interesting. It says,
“in the past, He has let all nations go their own way”.
Paul says that God has stepped back, at least to some degree, from
the affairs of nations. He has
let them go their own way. This
is similar to what Paul says in Romans 1 and 2 when he tells his readers
that God has given sinful men over to their sin.
In both of these cases God has basically said, “if that is the
direction you want to go, then go, but you will reap the consequences of
your decision”. If
God has let nations go their own way in the past, it appears to me that He
could do the same today. He
won’t make nations or individuals do His will, but for those who do want
to follow Him, He will take care of them. Yet
even when God steps back from nations, He has not stepped back to the
degree that He commands the rain not to fall, or the sun not to shine.
God in His kindness, Paul says, still blesses nations with these
important things of nature. Thus
there is no such thing as “mother nature”.
God is behind nature. Remember
Paul is speaking to Gentiles at this moment of time.
He speaks of things that they would understand.
He does not talk to them about the Law of Moses or Jewish history.
He speaks to them about the rain, and crops in the field.
These are things that these people would understand. This
is important for those who want to preach the gospel.
It is important in your preaching to use analogies that those to
whom you are preaching to will understand, and that varies from place to
place, and culture to culture.
Yet
in verse 18 Luke records that the people still had a hard time not wanting
to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas. The
crowd must have been pretty fickle because Luke tells us that some Jews
from The
Return To At
this point Paul and Barnabas head back to Luke
calls these Christians disciples. The
simplest definition of a disciple is one who is in the process of
learning. Of course these
people would be learning from the Lord Jesus Himself.
Paul specifically encouraged them to “remain in the faith”.
This would suggest to me that if he wanted these people to remain
in the faith, it may be possible for them to leave the faith.
If this indeed is the case, then the doctrine of “once saved
always saved” is not right. If
we enter salvation by faith, and then we lay aside this faith, then
logically speaking, we lay aside our salvation as well.
As I have always said, “only faith gets us saved, not good works,
and only laying aside our faith, not bad works gets us unsaved.
"Staying
in the faith" simply means to continue on trusting Jesus because
faith is trust. I believe in
today's world we've lost the true meaning of faith.
We still know what trust means, and I like the word trust better
than faith at this point for this very reason.
Not that the word "faith" is no longer acceptable,
because it is. We need to be
re-educated when it comes to the meaning of faith, and many other words as
well that have lost their original meaning.
In
verse 22 Paul and Barnabas told these new converts that “we must go
through many hardships to enter the It
may be debatable to know just what Christians
are to represent to the world the Kingdom
of God. God's kingdom is foreign to
the world because it is presently a spiritual kingdom, yet when Jesus
returns the Messianic Kingdom will be set up on earth and Jesus will rule
from Jerusalem. Another
reason why Paul and Barnabas came back to these cities was to
“appoint” elders. The word
“appoint” here is translated from the Greek word “cheirotoneo”.
This word literally means “to stretch forth ones hand”.
This word was used in the Greek world for the voting process.
Did Paul and Barnabas have a congregational vote?
We don’t know the answer to this for sure. Some commentators say
there was a vote. I do believe
we can safely say that the disciples had a say into who were to be elders
or else Luke would not have used this Greek word.
It appears then that Paul and Barnabas saw those who
were actually caring for God’s people and affirmed them.
That was normally what Paul did. Remember, Paul and Barnabas had
returned to Also
note that after Paul and Barnabas prayed and fasted for these elders they
left the city and also left these people in the hands of the Lord.
For those who believe in strong apostolic authority we should see
that Paul could not be with these people very often.
He had to leave them in
the hands of the Lord. We thus should know that apostolic authority has
its limitations. In the final
analysis the Lord is the one who causes the disciples to mature.
Note
that they chose more than one elder. The
leadership of the local church consisted of a body of men.
The local church was not led by one man.
This was how Paul structured all of the churches he was involved
in. This is the first time
appointing elders are mentioned in the book of Acts. If
you want to know what qualifications an elder must possess, you can read 1
Tim. 3 where Paul lays out what kind of man an elder must be.
Luke
says that elders were appointed “for the church”.
To me this suggest the role of elders is a serving job, and not a
job of prestige. After
appointing these elders there was a time of prayer and fasting for these
men. Luke says that they
“committed these men to the
Lord, in whom they had put their trust”.
Paul and Barnabas would leave these cities not knowing when or if
ever they would return. The
best they could do was to appoint elders and hand over the situation to
the Lord Jesus. This is what
is meant when Luke points out that after ordaining these men, they put
their trust in the Lord. As
I've said before, Paul put his trust in Jesus to keep these people in the
faith. We too often today put our faith in ourselves to keep people in the
faith. Paul
and Barnabas worked their way back to Luke
records that upon completing their
work, that is their trip, they stayed in
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