The Bible Study Podcast, episode 150. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of Acts

with Acts chapter 13. Welcome to the Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

Today we continue the study of Acts, and we begin the main portion of this book, which is the missionary journeys of Paul.

In particular, this is the start of the first missionary journey, which is the missionary journey of Barnabas and Saul.

In the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simon called

Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manayan, who was brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.

While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me,

Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which I have called them. So after they had fasted

and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. The two of them went on their way,

by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived

at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as

their helper. And so we're

starting off on this missionary journey, and basically they're going off in a missionary journey

because God tells them to. The prophets have a prophecy that say to send off Barnabas and Saul.

And so they head off first to Cyprus, which is relatively close to Antioch,

and they take with them this young man, John, or John Mark, as we talked about in the last chapter.

And they begin a pattern that you will see throughout Acts, which is when they begin in a city

to try and plant the church there, they start with the Jewish synagogue,

in part because they're Jewish, but in part because here's a set of people who understand

the Old Testament and were looking forward to a Messiah.

And so as they brought in the word, they had a context to deal with.

And so that is something that we'll see them doing almost every place, and there'll be an exception to that in acts.

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