📖 Acts Intensive — Unit 6: The First Journey and the First Council (Acts 12:25–16:5)

I. Hands Laid On in Antioch

Open Acts 13. Antioch is now the center of gravity in the new movement. Jerusalem still has the apostles and James the Lord's brother, but the cutting edge has moved three hundred miles to the north. Five men are leading the church there. Luke names them in the order they sat in the room. "Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul" (Acts 13:1, NKJV).

Stop and look at that list. A Cypriot Levite. A black African nicknamed Niger. A North African from Cyrene. A man who had grown up in the very palace of the Herod who beheaded John the Baptist. And a former persecutor from Tarsus. The first multi-ethnic, multi-class leadership team in church history sat together in one room in Antioch and listened to the Holy Spirit. They had been fasting and ministering to the Lord. And then the Spirit spoke. "Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2, NKJV). Brothers, the way the Spirit calls people into missions has not changed. He still calls them out of a praying, fasting, ministering church.

The Antioch leaders fasted, prayed, laid hands on Barnabas and Saul, and sent them away. Notice how Luke phrases the next sentence. "So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia" (Acts 13:4, NKJV). Antioch sent them. The Holy Spirit sent them. Both are true at once. Every legitimate missionary call is endorsed both vertically and horizontally — by the inward voice of the Spirit and by the outward affirmation of a local church. Beware the missionary who says God called him personally and never let his church confirm it. Beware the church that sends out a missionary the Spirit has not first called. The two confirmations sit on top of each other like a cornerstone. Antioch had both.

II. Cyprus and a Showdown with a Sorcerer

Barnabas and Saul, with John Mark as their assistant, sailed to Cyprus, Barnabas's home island. They preached in the synagogues across the island until they came to the western city of Paphos, the seat of the Roman proconsul. The proconsul, Sergius Paulus, was an intelligent man who wanted to hear the word of God. But his court astrologer, a Jewish sorcerer named Bar-Jesus — also called Elymas, "the magician" — kept getting in the way, trying to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Then Saul, who from this point on Luke calls Paul, fixed his eyes on Elymas and pronounced one of the harshest sentences any apostle ever gave. "O full of all deceit and all fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease perverting the straight ways of the Lord? And now, indeed, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a time" (Acts 13:10–11, NKJV).

The hand that had given Paul his sight back on the Damascus road took the sight away from the man who was opposing the gospel. Mist and darkness fell on Elymas, and he went around looking for someone to lead him by the hand. Sergius Paulus, watching this, believed. The first Roman governor to convert in the Acts narrative did so because he watched a sorcerer go blind. The hand of the Lord is the same hand in every century, and it sometimes opens eyes by closing them.

Notice that at Acts 13:13 Luke stops calling them "Barnabas and Saul" and calls them "Paul and his party." From here on he usually names Paul first (13:43, 46, 50), though at Lystra and in Jerusalem Barnabas is still named first (14:14; 15:12, 25). The senior partner has stepped back, and the new convert from Tarsus is leading the team. Barnabas the Encourager has done what every great mentor eventually does — let the protégé take the lead. May we have grace enough to do the same when the day comes.

III. The Defection of John Mark

From Cyprus the team sailed north to the mainland of Asia Minor and landed at Perga. And here Luke drops a sentence that will sting later. "Now when Paul and his party set sail from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia; and John, departing from them, returned to Jerusalem" (Acts 13:13, NKJV). Mark went home. Luke does not tell us why. Maybe Mark was homesick. Maybe he thought the mission had taken a wrong turn when Paul replaced his cousin Barnabas as the leader. Maybe the road through the Pamphylian malarial swamps to the Pisidian highlands looked too dangerous for a young man from a comfortable Jerusalem home. Whatever the reason, Mark quit.

I want to stop here, because Mark's failure becomes one of the most beautiful recoveries in the New Testament. Two chapters from now Paul will refuse to take Mark on the second journey, and that disagreement will split him from Barnabas. But the long game ends differently. Twenty years later, writing his last letter from a Roman prison and waiting for his execution, Paul will dictate, "Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11, NKJV). The young man who quit at Perga ended up writing the second Gospel and dying for the Lord whose work he had walked out on. And along the way somebody had to refuse to give up on him. That somebody was Barnabas. There is a splinter in Mark's foot at Perga, and there will be a sermon written by his hand in Rome twenty years later, because his cousin would not throw him away. There are Marks all around you tonight. Don't throw them away.

IV. The Pisidian Antioch Sermon

Paul and Barnabas pressed on inland to Pisidian Antioch — a different Antioch from their sending church, a Roman colony in the highlands of central Asia Minor. They went into the synagogue on the Sabbath and after the reading of the Law and the Prophets the rulers of the synagogue invited any visitor with a word of exhortation to share. Paul stood up, motioned with his hand, and preached the first sermon of his Luke-recorded ministry.

The sermon is structured almost identically to Stephen's defense in Acts 7. Paul walked his hearers through Old Testament history — the patriarchs, the Exodus, the wilderness, the judges, Saul the king, David the king, then forward to a son of David named Jesus — His baptism by John, His rejection by the rulers, His crucifixion, His burial, His resurrection on the third day, His appearances to the disciples. Paul ended with the line that distilled the apostles' message into one sentence. "Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38–39, NKJV). Forgiveness preached. Justification offered. Two doors the law of Moses had never opened. Paul opened them in one paragraph.

The synagogue begged Paul to preach the same things the next Sabbath. By the next Sabbath almost the whole city had come out to hear. The Jewish leaders, seeing the crowds, became jealous and contradicted Paul. So Paul announced the great pivot of his ministry. "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:46, NKJV). The Gentiles of Pisidian Antioch heard that sentence and rejoiced. Luke says one of the most quietly thunderous things in the New Testament. "And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48, NKJV). The doctrine of election is in the bedrock of Acts. The Lord knows His own, and He calls them when the gospel comes through town. Reformed Christians read Acts 13:48 as teaching unconditional election; Arminian Christians understand it in relation to God's foreknowledge and a response enabled by grace. These are interpretations of the verse, not a requirement to adopt one denominational system. Explain your reading from the text and its context.

V. Iconium, Lystra, Derbe — and a Stoning

The Jewish leaders ran Paul and Barnabas out of Pisidian Antioch. The two missionaries shook the dust off their feet and traveled east to Iconium. The same pattern repeated. Synagogue preaching, many Jews and Greeks believing, opposition arising, an attempt to stone them, and Paul and Barnabas slipping out before the stones fell.

At Lystra Paul healed a man who had been crippled from his mother's womb. The crowd, looking up at the foreigners who had just done what no Lystran had ever seen, decided Paul and Barnabas must be Hermes and Zeus walking among men. The temple priest of Zeus came running with garlands and oxen to offer sacrifice. Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes, ran into the crowd, and shouted "Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God" (Acts 14:15, NKJV). They had to argue the crowd out of worshiping them. With great difficulty, Luke says, they restrained the people from offering sacrifice.

Then the same Jewish opposition that had pursued Paul from Pisidian Antioch arrived in Lystra. The crowd that had wanted to crown him as a god half an hour earlier turned on him in a moment, and the same hands that had lifted garlands picked up rocks. Paul was stoned, dragged outside the city, and left for dead. Read the next sentence carefully. "However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city" (Acts 14:20, NKJV). What disciples? The new converts of the past few weeks. The man they thought was Hermes was lying in a heap of stones, and the Lystran believers gathered around him and prayed, and he stood up and walked back into the city that had just tried to kill him. The next day he and Barnabas were on the road to Derbe to keep preaching. There is no other religion on earth whose front-line workers have done this kind of thing for two thousand years. Christianity is not a hobby. It is a war, and the Lord supplies the marching orders and the wounds and the resurrections.

From Derbe Paul and Barnabas turned around and retraced their steps — Lystra, Iconium, Pisidian Antioch — back through the very cities that had thrown them out. Why go back? "Strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, 'We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God'" (Acts 14:22, NKJV). The cost of discipleship preached at every stop. They appointed elders in every church, prayed and fasted, commended them to the Lord, and finally sailed home to Antioch in Syria. Luke notes that they reported to the sending church "all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles" (Acts 14:27, NKJV). The first missionary journey was over. The door was open. And the door was about to be tested.

VI. The Jerusalem Council

Some men from Judea came down to Antioch and started teaching, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1, NKJV). That sentence is the most dangerous sentence ever spoken inside the early church. Notice the two killer words: cannot be saved. The Judaizers were not asking the Gentile converts to be culturally Jewish for fellowship purposes. They were saying that without the surgical mark of the Mosaic law on their bodies these Gentiles were not actually Christians. Paul and Barnabas had no small dispute with them — the Greek says they had a stásis, a riot, a public clash. The Antioch church sent the issue up the chain. Paul, Barnabas, and others were dispatched to Jerusalem to settle it.

The Jerusalem council that resulted is the first church council in recorded history, nearly three centuries before Nicaea, the first of the ecumenical councils. Acts 15 is its minutes. After much debate Peter stood up and reminded everyone that God had made no distinction between Jew and Gentile when the Spirit fell on Cornelius's household. Then he asked the question that should have ended the meeting in three minutes. "Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?" (Acts 15:10, NKJV). Even the Jews, Peter is saying, never could keep the Mosaic code perfectly. To require a Gentile to bear that yoke as the price of admission into Christ is to charge him a higher entrance fee than the Jews had ever paid.

Then Paul and Barnabas reported what God had done among the Gentiles on the first journey. And then, last of all, James the Lord's brother stood up. James was the senior pastor in Jerusalem. James was the most rigorously Torah-observant Jew on the platform. James was the one whose nickname inside the church was Old Camel Knees because he prayed so much for Israel. If anyone was going to insist on circumcision, it was going to be James. James opened his mouth, quoted the prophet Amos, and pronounced the verdict. "Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God" (Acts 15:19, NKJV). The Gentiles were not to be required to be circumcised. They were asked to abstain from a few practices that would make table fellowship with Jewish believers impossible — meat sacrificed to idols, blood, things strangled, sexual immorality. Four small concessions, not a yoke. The Council wrote a letter, the church at Antioch read it and rejoiced, and the question that could have split Christianity at its roots was settled.

VII. Paul, Barnabas, and the Sharp Disagreement

Acts 15 ends with one of the most painful scenes in the Bible. Paul wanted to go back and visit the churches from the first journey. Barnabas wanted to take John Mark again. Paul refused — Mark had walked out at Perga. Barnabas insisted. The dispute, Luke says with his usual restraint, was a paroxysmos, a sharp contention. The two men who had sat together in the Antioch leadership meeting, sailed together to Cyprus, been stoned together, defended the gospel together at Jerusalem, parted ways. Barnabas took Mark and sailed home to Cyprus. Paul took Silas and went overland through Syria and Cilicia.

I do not pretend to know which man was right. The text does not tell us, and good men have argued on both sides for two thousand years. What I do know is that the Lord used the disagreement to multiply the missionary force. Where there had been one missionary band, there were now two. Where one mentor had been pouring into one new man, two mentors were pouring into two. Mark eventually became useful enough that Paul wrote 2 Timothy asking for him. The Lord turned a quarrel into a doubling. He still does that. If you are estranged from a brother in ministry, do not give up praying for the relationship. The Lord buried Paul and Barnabas in the same Bible.

VIII. Timothy and the Strengthening of the Churches

Paul, with Silas at his side, traveled through Syria and Cilicia, then up the highland road into the cities he had visited on the first journey. At Lystra — the same Lystra where Paul had been stoned — the apostle met a young man named Timothy, son of a believing Jewess named Eunice and a Greek father, raised by his grandmother Lois on the Hebrew Scriptures. Timothy was already well spoken of by the brethren in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to take him along. He had Timothy circumcised "because of the Jews who were in that region" (Acts 16:3, NKJV) — not because circumcision was now required for salvation; the Jerusalem Council had just settled that — but so that Timothy's mixed parentage would not become a needless obstacle in the synagogues. The same Paul who had refused circumcision for Titus on theological grounds permitted it for Timothy on missionary grounds. Paul was a master at picking which battles to fight.

Acts 16:5 closes the unit with a one-sentence summary that ought to be the goal of every pastoral ministry on the planet. "So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and increased in number daily" (Acts 16:5, NKJV). Strengthened. Increased. The two right verbs. May the Lord put both of them in the report of every church we serve.

IX. Three Lessons Home

First, missionary work begins on its knees. The first cross-cultural missions sending in church history happened because five men in Antioch were fasting and praying and the Holy Spirit spoke. The first missions agency was a prayer meeting. The Lord is still calling out workers from prayer meetings. Pray earnestly for laborers, and do not be surprised if He calls you.

Second, do not throw away your John Marks. Mark walked out at Perga. Barnabas took him back to Cyprus. The Lord turned the quitter into a Gospel-writer. There are people in your church who have failed publicly, who have walked away, who are sitting on the fringes wondering whether anyone will ever extend them a hand again. Be a Barnabas. The kingdom is full of Marks who came back.

Third, the gospel saves by faith and the gospel saves by faith alone. The Jerusalem Council settled in one paragraph what every reformation in church history has had to settle again. Salvation is not Christ plus circumcision. It is not Christ plus the sacraments. It is not Christ plus a denominational membership card. It is Christ alone, received by faith alone, by sinners alone. Anything more is the yoke neither our fathers nor we are able to bear. The Council fathers refused that yoke for the Gentiles. May we refuse it for ourselves and for everyone the Lord brings into our pulpits.

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