Welcome back to week two of the blog!!
Today I will be covering chapters 13-15 of Acts. At the beginning of this chapter Saul and Barnabas begin their journey with the church of Antioch. They fast and are prayed for before the Holy Spirit sends them off to Cyprus. They traveled a very long journey keep in mind... There was no such thing as cars back then. Saul and Barnabas run into someone I find to be very interesting, because of what does happen to him, as well as his name (Bar-Jesus). That just speaks evil to me against our Lord and Savior, not to mention he is a sourcer :O. His punishment for his lies and deceit was blindness, which has more than one meaning behind it. Not only does it show that he could now no longer see the light of day, but he was also spiritually blind. And the only way that he was going to fix that was to learn who the true Lord is.
Now I know it can get confusing sometimes with all the names that get thrown around, but why do you think that in the book of the Bible it was important to mention Paul being called Saul, but then to also switch between names throughout the chapter?
Most of this chapter is focused around Paul aka Saul speaking to the people about the life of Jesus, and what God did for us by sending his son to die on the cross for us. Towards the end of this chapter in verse 45 we see that the Jews have now entered the picture, jealous of the attention that Paul and Barnabas are getting. 45 When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him.
We then see Paul answers boldly and tells them that they are the chosen ones and were to be spoken to first, however sadly they do not believe in Jesus and rejected him. So Paul and B. return to the Jews. If you were a Jew during that time, try and think of how it would have been to live in their shoes, imagine believing that your Messiah still hadn't come and that Jesus was not the one.
Acts 14
In chapter 14 of Acts things start off violent, and don't seem to get much better among the Jews and Gentiles. After learning of a plot against them B. and P. fled Iconium, to protect them selves against the plotted stoning. Could you imagine living somewhere or going somewhere and talking about Jesus, only to learn that people were plotting to kill you with rocks? Crazy. After escaping the Lystra Paul and B. met a lame man who had never walked, 8 In Lystra there sat a man who was lame. He had been that way from birth and had never walked. 9 He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed 10 and called out, “Stand up on your feet!” At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.
I find these 3 verses very important for healing in our own lives. Verse 9 states that Paul saw that the man had faith and healed him, and this is important because without faith and trust in God we can accomplish nothing, and cannot be healed.
Unfortunately the people of the town learned of the healing and began to worship P. and B. as gods in stead of praising the true God. So, P. and B. began to explain that they were just people too, and the true healer was God. The provider of rain and crops for the nations. Then, the Jews returned and won over the crowd and stoned Paul to what they believed was death and dragged him out of the town. But, through the power of God he got up and lived. The next day P. and B. left the city and proceeded to travel around more and preach the Word. They gathered many more disciples and the disciples learned that they would have to go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.
Acts 15
This chapter jumps right into debates and disputes about whether all of these Gentiles had to be circumcised in order to be truly saved. P. and B., after much debate were appointed to go seek the council of the elders and the apostles. This goes to show, that not even Paul and B. had all the answers, which shows that it is okay for us to ask questions about God, and our beliefs. Once they returned they spoke of how the Gentiles were saved through faith and instead of judging them, they were to accept them and tell them to refrain from worshiping idols and sinful habits. Chapter 15 ends with a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over who to bring with them to visit the new believers, and it ends with them parting ways. Its interesting to see that even among the two of them, not everything they believed personally aligned with the other.
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