Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 97
13:44–14:13
L UK E – A cts
85
The following week almost the entire city turned out to hear them preach
the word of the Lord. But when some of the Jews saw the crowds, they
were jealous; so they slandered Paul and argued against whatever he said.
Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and declared, “It was necessary that we first preach the word of God to you Jews. But since you have
rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we will offer it
to the Gentiles. For the Lord gave us this command when he said,
‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles,
to bring salvation to the farthest corners of the earth.’”
When the Gentiles heard this, they were very glad and thanked the Lord
for his message; and all who were chosen for eternal life became believers.
So the Lord’s message spread throughout that region.
Then the Jews stirred up the influential religious women and the leaders
of the city, and they incited a mob against Paul and Barnabas and ran them
out of town. So they shook the dust from their feet as a sign of rejection
and went to the town of Iconium. And the believers were filled with joy
and with the Holy Spirit.
The same thing happened in Iconium. Paul and Barnabas went to the Jewish synagogue and preached with such power that a great number of both
Jews and Greeks became believers. Some of the Jews, however, spurned
God’s message and poisoned the minds of the Gentiles against Paul and
Barnabas. But the apostles stayed there a long time, preaching boldly
about the grace of the Lord. And the Lord proved their message was true
by giving them power to do miraculous signs and wonders. But the people
of the town were divided in their opinion about them. Some sided with
the Jews, and some with the apostles.
Then a mob of Gentiles and Jews, along with their leaders, decided to
attack and stone them. When the apostles learned of it, they fled to the
region of Lycaonia—to the towns of Lystra and Derbe and the surrounding area. And there they preached the Good News.
While they were at Lystra, Paul and Barnabas came upon a man with
crippled feet. He had been that way from birth, so he had never walked.
He was sitting and listening as Paul preached. Looking straight at him, Paul
realized he had faith to be healed. So Paul called to him in a loud voice,
“Stand up!” And the man jumped to his feet and started walking.
When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in their local dialect, “These men are gods in human form!” They decided that Barnabas
was the Greek god Zeus and that Paul was Hermes, since he was the chief
speaker. Now the temple of Zeus was located just outside the town. So the
