Join us as we read the scriptures and a daily devotion written by Don Crisp. We pray these messages will bless us all at this time.
Acts chapter 14 v 19-23:
Categories: Don’s Daily Devotions
Acts chapter 14 v 19-23:
V19: Everything changes, with the arrival of antagonistic Jews from Antioch in Pisidia and Iconium, who must have pursued the missionaries from their own district, such is their bitterness against the Gospel. They turn the crowds against them, and Paul in particular, whom they drag outside the city and stone – leaving him for dead! How fickle and easily manipulated crowd emotions are, as with the crowds who welcomed Jesus on Palm Sunday and howled ” crucify Him” 5 days later.
V20: Believers – clearly there has been ministry in Lystra not recorded in this record, which has brought some to faith – gather around Paul, and he comes to, and is able to get up and go with them into the city. Some suggest he was dead and the Lord has restored him, but there is really no suggestion of this in the text. In 2 Corinthians 11 v 25 Paul speaks of how, among his sufferings in Christ’s service, ” once I was stoned”, perhaps referring to this occasion. Then Paul and Barnabas travel on to Derbe.
V21-22: As they preach in Derbe, God blesses their ministry and many are saved. No more detail is given here, but ch 16 v1 suggests Timothy was one of them, and perhaps his mother too. The Apostles now begin their return journey back to Antioch in Syria, but first they revisit the new believers in Lystra ( despite the recent persecution there ) and then in Iconium and Pisidian Antioch. They seek to encourage them in the faith, warn them of hardship they will surely face for Christ’s sake ( Remember His own words in John 16 v33.) and exhort them to remain steadfast. Such ” after-care” for new Christians should always mark church-planting ministries.
V23: They appoint Elders in the churches, surely with specially Holy Spirit given discernment, for these men themselves can not have been Christians for long, or have received much teaching themselves as yet – yet they must have shown evidence of the gifts needed for their new offices, all in the hands of the Lord, to whom Paul commits them.