The Bible Study Podcast, Episode 151. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of Acts with Chapter 14.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We continue on with what is the second part of what is

commonly known as Paul's first missionary journey. It's really Barnabas and Paul's first missionary

journey, and the Bible doesn't tell us more about Barnabas' journeys, and therefore it received

the title that it does in common usage. Acts 14 starts this way.

At Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue.

There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed.

But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their mind against

the brothers.

So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace

by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders. The people of the city were divided. Some sided

with the Jews, others with the apostles. There was a plot of foot among the Gentiles and Jews, together with

their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them, but they found out about it and fled to the

Lyconian cities of Listra and Derby, and to the surrounding country, where they continued to preach

the good news. At this point, Paul and Barnabas have hit what is now Turkey in the southern coast of Turkey and there in what is at that time the province of Asia or Asia Minor.

And they're continuing, as we saw in the last chapter, to speak first in the synagogue to those who are Jewish and then basically building a church around first those Jewish believers and then the Gentile believers.

An iconium is a very similar pattern that we see where they speak, they're heard, they're received, they're rejected,

and then there is a threat of violence and they move on, and that is what happens here.

And the other thing that we do get here is that they are given the power by the Holy Spirit to perform miraculous signs and wonders. And this is a pattern that we will see repeated. And so let's go on. In Listera and Derby, in Listerra, there was a man crippled in his feet who was lame from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking.

Paul looked directly at him,

saw that he had faith to be healed and called out,

Stand up on your feet.

...