When God works a town becomes divided, those who are in and those who don\u2019t want anything to change.\u00a0 Many Jews and Gentiles come to Christ.\u00a0 Notice that Paul and Barnabas stayed through opposition and continued to preach.\u00a0 But they were led to run when physical harm came upon them.\u00a0 The Scripture does not say why they stayed at times and faced death and why they left at other times.\u00a0 I personally believe it would be how the Holy Spirit leads them in that specific\u00a0situation.\u00a0 Nowhere in scripture are Christians called to seek out deathly situations.\u00a0 Later in the chapter we see Paul getting stoned in Lystra.<\/p>\n
In Lystra Paul and Barnabas have trouble and it is not one\u00a0from persecution but of idol worship.\u00a0 They both were very disturbed that the people worshipped them as gods.\u00a0 Nothing like the so called faith healers today who seek fame and worship, Paul and Barnabas did not want anything to do with it. Paul preached the creator God, not the God of Abraham because these people knew nothing of God\u2019s Word.\u00a0 Beware of worshiping anything or anyone besides the God of Scripture.<\/p>\n
The last part of the chapter gives us a missionary plan.<\/p>\n
First, Antioch is the sending church: vs 26.\u00a0 I pray God will have us send missionaries and church planters around the world.<\/p>\n
Second, the missionaries went with the purpose of making disciples, vs 21.<\/p>\n
Third, they were to establish churches and appoint elders, vs 23.<\/p>\n
Forth, they came back and reported to the sending church.<\/p>\n
This has been the pattern of missions and needs to be our desire in sending missionaries.\u00a0 Each missionary in our Cooperative Program is sent by a local church.\u00a0 They are approved by the CP and then the CP reports back to the churches on the behalf of our missionaries.<\/p>\n
This is our goal as a church to make disciples, plant churches, send missionaries and help win our world to Christ.\u00a0 Any humanitarian effort must include the gospel.<\/p>\n
Have a great day and go make disciples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1198,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions\/1198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}