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Reading Acts 14:23-28 where Paul and Barnabas retrace their steps, appointing elders in the churches they had planted, and returning to Antioch to report on the work of God. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Paul and Barnabas retraced their steps and went back through the churches that they had planted. What they did next was appoint elders, raised up pastors and overseers in those churches to continue to teach the saints When We Understand the Text.
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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come back to chapter 14, picking up where we left off yesterday and finishing up the chapter. Remember that Paul and Barnabas have been in Lystra.
Paul was stoned nearly to death. He rose up and went with Barnabas to Derbe, and then they've retraced their steps from there, going back through Lystra and Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the saints in the churches that they have planted and also preaching to them.
Through many afflictions, we must enter the kingdom of God. And that was where we ended yesterday. So let me pick up here in verse 23, and I'll read to the end of the chapter, verse 28. Hear the word of the Lord.
And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. And when they passed through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.
And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atalia. And from there they sailed to Antioch, from where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.
And when they had arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they spent not a little time with the disciples.
Meaning that Paul and Barnabas would have been with them for some time after that. And this concludes Paul's first missionary journey. When we get to the end of Acts chapter 14, that is the end of Paul's first missionary journey.
And this also sets the stage for the Jerusalem council coming up in Acts chapter 15. I'll kind of tease that out a little bit when we get to the end of the lesson today. But first, let's come back up to verse 23.
Yesterday I truly had intended to finish up the rest of chapter 14, just kind of rush through those final verses and go on to the Jerusalem council in Acts chapter 15. But something in verse 23 kind of hit me a certain way.
I thought, you know, we could spend a little more time learning from this. So let's do a review of this first missionary journey, since this is the way we're finishing this up here in chapter 14. Remember that all of this started in Antioch.
It began with Barnabas in Antioch preaching the gospel to people there. And he got this idea that Paul needed to be there with him. Paul was in Tarsus, which was a little bit to the northwest of Antioch.
So Barnabas left the work there to retrieve Paul and bring him back to Antioch. And for a year, they were preaching the gospel there. Now, Paul had been referred to as Saul in the book of Acts until he came with Barnabas back to Antioch.
And from there, he gets referred to as Paul, which is his Roman name. It's not that God changed his name. Saul is his Hebrew name. Paul is the name that he's going to go by since he is supposed to be an apostle to the Gentiles.
They're more likely to receive him by his Gentile name. So he's with Barnabas preaching in Antioch, and they are there for a year. From there, they are appointed to go out and spread the gospel elsewhere in this portion of the Roman Empire, which is Asia Minor.
Going up into Turkey, that's the region that's called Asia Minor. So they go over to the island of Cyprus. They go from there over to Perga and Atalia. Well, we read about them getting to Atalia today.
But they go to Perga and up through Pamphylia, which included visiting some portions of Galatia, Antioch and Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. And then retracing their steps, they go back that way.
So it's not that they do a loop. They just go back the road that they came. And they visit Lystra, Iconium, Antioch of Pisidia, and they encourage and strengthen the saints that are there after Paul had nearly been stoned to death in Lystra.
He's nearly killed in Lystra, goes to Derbe, comes back to Lystra, then Iconium and Antioch. And the word that they share with the disciples as they come back through those churches is to say, through many afflictions, we must enter the kingdom of God.
Paul shares his experience with them and saying to them that he had been persecuted severely, but this is for any saint to be prepared for. We must understand that on this side of the kingdom of God, we will be hated.
And it is through many afflictions that we must go through for this time until we enter into the kingdom of God. But then in verse 23, it adds this note about what Paul and Barnabas did in all those churches that they went back through.
It says, when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So this means that while Paul and Barnabas were going through those cities, preaching the gospel and planting those churches, they were not establishing elders in those churches.
And by the way, elder is synonymous with pastor or overseer. Those words that get used in Scripture are synonymous with each other. Typically, today we use the word pastor to describe an overseer of the church, at least here in the Western English-speaking world.
We use the word pastor, which is from the Greek meaning shepherd. So this is a person who shepherds the flock of God. Paul will say to the church in Ephesus in Acts 20, to shepherd the flock of God among you.
That is what a pastor is supposed to do. As an overseer, he shepherds the church. So they're appointing pastors, essentially. As they go back through these churches, they put pastors there for the first time.
Sometimes we have this mentality that if you don't have a pastor, well, you don't have a church. Like every church needs a pastor. If a church is going to get started somewhere, you got to put a pastor there, or who's going to teach the church?
Who's going to guide everybody? Well, the church is not the pastor, and the church does not begin with the pastor. The church is the people of God. They are saints who have come to faith in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, believing that he died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins and rose again from the dead.
Whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. And whoever believes in him has become a citizen of his kingdom, has been adopted into the family of God, has become a part of his church.
So you don't have to have the pastor first before you have the rest of the church. You just have a gathering of saints who believe in and worship our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, why didn't Paul and Barnabas go ahead and just appoint elders in those churches before they had gone off into the other places to preach the gospel and plant more churches?
Well, because the people who had come to faith were very, very new Christians. And Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3 .6 that for a person to be an overseer, he must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
So there just wasn't anybody yet who was mature enough to step into that role as an overseer and become pastors in these churches. And so Paul and Barnabas go on, they preach the gospel, they plant more churches, and then as they come back through, they are looking for those men who are now the most mature, the most mature believers who will model Christ-like conduct to the rest of the flock, who have a good handle on the word, who are gifted in teaching.
And these men having shown themselves genuine and growing are the men that Paul and Barnabas are therefore going to select and make them elders within those churches. Now, as far as we can tell, this would have been plurality eldership in these churches.
So Paul and Barnabas would have been raising up several men and appointing them to oversee these churches, not just one man, but several. Because as it says, when they had appointed elders for them in every church.
So every individual church, it appears, has a plurality of eldership. And then Paul and Barnabas pray with fasting. And it seems as if this praying with fasting is the ordination process, as you might understand it.
So these men have been selected, as you've probably seen, some sort of ordination process in which men have their hands laid upon or somebody gets called to be a pastor and the church lays hands on him and they pray, and then they approve his appointment.
It's that sort of a thing. So they are fasting together. It's not something that they're rushing through. They're spending time with them. They are fasting. They are seeking the Lord's will. And it appears to them that the Lord is revealing these are the men that are to be chosen to be overseers within these churches that have been planted.
So they commend them to the Lord. They commend the elders, these new elders and overseers, committing them to the Lord, in whom these elders and all the saints in these churches have believed. So it takes some time after the gospel has been preached in a place, a church has been planted, it takes a while until you find people, find some men who are mature enough that can step into that role of overseer.
Paul would also tell Timothy and 2 Timothy to entrust the gospel to faithful men, just as Paul had given it to Timothy. So Timothy would pass it on to other men that they also may be raised up as elders within their churches.
Now we see a similar kind of mission that's given to Titus in Titus 1. In Titus 1 .5, Paul says to Titus, for this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.
So already Paul and other missionaries have been on the island of Crete. They have shared the gospel there. Churches have been planted in the different cities that are on that island. And now Paul is sending Titus back to that island to do what?
The same thing that Paul and Barnabas do here at the end of Paul's first missionary journey. They retrace their steps. They go back through these churches. They look for the mature men, those who have shown themselves to be faithful and steadfast, those who have the gift of teaching, and they are being appointed as pastors in these churches.
Titus does the same thing in Crete that Paul and Barnabas did. So this appears to be a pretty regular pattern in the New Testament, that a church gets planted, but elders are not appointed right away.
That's something that will come later. Now I have heard taught, and this was taught to me years and years ago. It's something that I've repeated as well if you've gone through my lessons on 1 Corinthians, and you've probably heard me say this also.
The church in Corinth, at least when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to them, that church may not have had elders. Now consider that Paul addresses them as children, like weak in the faith, that they still need milk and not solid food.
There were certain things that I could not address you with, Paul says at the beginning of chapter 3, 1 Corinthians 3, because they were still infants in their thinking. And so since that is the disposition of this church in Corinth, it's very likely that when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to them, they did not yet have elders because they were so immature.
And there are some other hints that we find in that letter that seem to indicate that there were not elders in the church in Corinth when Paul wrote that letter and had to instruct them in certain things.
First of all, you don't see any elders addressed when Paul wrote to the Philippians. He addresses the elders right at the beginning of the letter. To all the saints in Christ Jesus who were in Philippi with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So Paul addresses the elders there. And when John writes in his epistles, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, he also addresses elders. No such address is given to the letters that are written to the Corinthians.
And that would lead you to believe that perhaps they didn't have them because they were not mature enough yet. There had not yet been men within that congregation that showed themselves to be faithful to the disciplines of the preaching of the word.
And one of the other indicators of this, I believe, is in 1st Corinthians 14, where Paul is talking about orderly worship. And it would be really easy for him to say, hey, there's pastors in your church, there's elders, you need to let them speak.
But that's not what Paul said. He said rather that let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all be encouraged.
And the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. So why would prophets need to be weighed in the church in Corinth if there were pastors there? I mean, the pastors are preaching the word, the overseers.
They're the ones that have the care and the charge of everybody. So why would it have to be that prophets are standing up and speaking and let the other prophets weigh what it is that he's speaking? Well, again, likely because the church in Corinth did not yet have any elders.
And it would probably be from these people who would reveal themselves to be prophets. Like they're actually speaking a word that came from God. It could be through that practice then who God had chosen for them to have as elders would be revealed.
I'm rather fond of that theory, especially considering the timing of the events and everything like that going on during this apostolic period as the gospel is spreading around the world. So I am on the side of the theory that there were not elders in Corinth.
They had not yet been appointed because there weren't men who were mature enough yet to fill those particular roles. Whenever we read about the appointment of elders and overseers in the church in the New Testament, these are men who have shown themselves worthy.
They are mature believers. They are models to the rest of the body of what a mature Christian looks like. And again, it's stated plainly that if a person is a new convert, then he must not be appointed to the position of elder.
So this is another reason why Paul and Barnabas go back through the cities where these churches have been planted. And now what they're looking for, they're looking for those men who have shown themselves to be qualified to fill the role of an overseer in the church.
They appoint for them elders in every church. They pray with fasting. And then they commend them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So that is the final work that Paul and Barnabas are doing as they're retracing their steps on Paul's first missionary journey here.
They strengthen the souls of the disciples. They encourage them in the faith. They say through many afflictions, we must enter the kingdom of God. And they appoint elders for them in every church. Going on from there, verse 24.
When they had passed through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atalia. And from there, they sailed to Antioch. Now that was their first visit to Atalia because previously when they came from Cyprus, from Paphros, which was on the western side of Cyprus, and they sailed up into Pamphylia, they landed at Perga.
So here they're setting sail from Atalia. And they're going back along the southern route or rather, well, it's a northern route, but it's along the south coast, the southern coast of what is today modern day Turkey.
So this time they're sailing between Turkey and Cyprus, rather than before when they had sailed around the south side of Cyprus, or they sailed to Cyprus, traveled along the south side of the island, and then went from Paphros up to Perga.
But this time they're sailing back to Antioch and going between what is Asia Minor and the island of Cyprus. They land back at Antioch. And while they are there, they recall all of the things that God had done through them in the work that they were commissioned to go and do.
Remember, they had set sail from Antioch because Paul and Barnabas were set apart. The Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Paul and Barnabas for the work that I'm going to have them do. So they lay hands on them and pray, and then Paul and Barnabas set sail.
Now they're returning to Antioch to tell them, all right, here's what we did. Here was what we were assigned to do, and here is what we witnessed. So they sailed to Antioch from where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.
End of this missionary journey. And when they had arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all the things that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
All indications are here that this is at Antioch. Paul and Barnabas are now giving a mission report after having been, well, I was going to say on the road, but they sailed a good portion of that. Having been out and about, traveling for the last few years, now they come back to Antioch and give their report about how God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
That was the very thing that they saw happening in Antioch, Gentiles coming into faith. And since the spirit was moving in this way, Paul and Barnabas were sent out to preach the gospel to Gentiles and many have come to faith.
Now, like I said, this sets things up for the Jerusalem Council, which we'll begin with tomorrow in Acts chapter 15. So here we have in Acts 15 .1, some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
And when Paul and Barnabas had not a little dissension and debate with them, the brothers determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue.
The beginning of Acts chapter 15 is still at Antioch, but because now there are Judaizers who are trying to tell these new Christian converts, especially those who are Gentiles, they're trying to tell them you have to be circumcised or else you cannot be saved.
Well, now this has become a source of debate. Well, what do we do here then? Do we have to tell Gentiles that they have to be circumcised in order to be saved? Then the power is not in the gospel. It's not in faith in Jesus Christ.
It's still in the law. So what do we do here? And that's what's going to prompt Paul and Barnabas to come down to Jerusalem and we have the first official church council in church history, which we will begin reading about tomorrow.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here and I thank you for the good news of the gospel that has come to us that we may hear and believe and be saved. We also thank you for those mature men that you have put in our lives to teach us more about the gospel or what it means to be a Christian.
They model for us mature Christian behavior and they direct us in the way that we should go according to the word of Christ. The Bible tells us that we should respect men who are in those positions for our sake.
Hebrews 13, 7, Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you and consider the result of their conduct and imitate their faith. That's good for us all that we would regard our elders with respect for those of us who are elders like myself.
May we hold fast to the word of life. May we discipline ourselves that we may not be disqualified and continue preaching the gospel of Christ for the sake of your name, your body, until your kingdom come.
It's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.