It's hard to know just how long
it took the Apostle Paul and Barnabas to complete this journey
that they made, but it's clearly quite a distance that they traveled. And we're going to just think
a little bit about the end of that journey and the fulfillment
The Bible calls it, it's fulfillment. They fulfilled this first missionary
journey. So let's read together about
this fulfillment of the missionary journey in Acts chapter 14, and
we'll go to verse 21. Right at the end of verse 20,
it says, the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe, And when
they had preached the gospel to that city and had taught many,
they returned again to Lystra and to Iconium and Antioch, that's
Antioch in Pisidia, confirming the souls of the disciples and
exhorting them to continue in the faith and that they must,
through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God. And when they had ordained them
elders in every church, and had prayed with them, and had prayed
with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they
believed. And after they had passed through
Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia, and when they had preached the
word in Perga, they went down to Atalia, and then sailed to
Antioch, so this is the other Antioch, Antioch in Syria, from
whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work
which they fulfilled. When they were come and had gathered
the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them,
and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles, and
there they abode long time with the disciples. So here we are,
we can see something of this map of the journey of the Apostle
Paul and Barnabas. And we've come to that point
where the disciples had been, or the apostles had been, harshly
abused in Antioch and Iconium and Lystra. Paul had been stoned
and they had come to Derby and then from Derby they were going
to be making their way back again. And I find it very interesting
to think about this journey that the apostles made. As I've said,
it's hard to know just how long it took. Some people estimate
that it may have taken them between a year and almost two years to
make this journey. They travelled about 500 miles
by sea and about 700 miles by land. Of course, those are just approximations,
but it seems that they were well over a thousand miles that they
had traveled. And this is certainly a big undertaking
that these men went forward and participated in. It was a big
journey to a lot of places. They were in many cities, many
towns, on many roads, in many dangers. They had been challenged
and tried and persecuted and here we find them now beginning
to make their way back I wonder if you notice with me where Derby
is in that picture, right? Almost sort of in the middle
towards the top, that little place of Derby, just where the
arrow under seven is pointing. And do you see where Tarsus is,
right in the middle? Do you remember where the Apostle
Paul was from? He was Saul of Tarsus. And so
there's Derbe, and there's Tarsus, and over there on the right is
Antioch, where they're heading back to. And I looked at this
map and I thought to myself, why didn't they just drop down
to Tarsus? Now there's a range of mountains
between them there, but there's a big pass, it's called the Silesian
Pass or the Silesian Gates. And it's a very famous pass,
and it was used by the Apostle on a number of times, it would
seem. And he would know it was there.
It was a major route across the mountains, and it would have
been an easy journey, probably just 100 miles, for the Apostle
to go from Derby down to Tarsus, and then get a boat from Tarsus
across to Antioch. And it would have cut out a big
part of their journey home. But it's interesting that the
Apostle Paul and Barnabas, they knew that they had more important
work to do on their way home. And it's a delight to see just
how brave and committed these men were. Let me just say this,
Christianity and following the Lord Jesus Christ is not for
cowards and it's not for scaredy cats. Some of you might know what a
scaredy-cat is. Well, the Apostle Paul and Barnabas
were not scaredy-cats. They had been persecuted in all
of these cities on their way to Derby. And now do you know
what they do? They turn around, and instead
of going home the quickest, easiest way, they went back through all
the towns where they had previously been persecuted. You need to
be dedicated and you need to be bold if you're going to be
standing for the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not for those who are
frightened, but the Lord gives us courage and the Lord helps
us stand. And that's what he did with the
apostles here. They went from Derbe back to
Lystra, to Iconium, to Antioch, Pisidia, to Pamphylia, to Perga,
to Atalia, and then ultimately back to Antioch in Syria. And wherever they went, they
went preaching the gospel, and they went back to the very places
where they had been stoned, where they had been persecuted, and
where they had been oppressed. And this shows us something of
the dedication and courage of these men and their party as
they went about the business of preaching the gospel. So I
want you always to remember that the heroes of the faith are indeed
that. They're heroes and they showed
as much tenacity, as much boldness and courage as anybody has ever
done. This was the purpose of them
going back through all of those towns. They wanted to confirm
the believers in the towns where they had been. And by that word
confirmation, I believe that they mean to strengthen their
faith, to strengthen the faith and encourage the believers that
had been made when the gospel had been preached in each of
those towns as it were on the outward journey of this missionary
endeavour. And I wonder as I read these
verses whether that confirmation meant that they shared communion
with them and thereby perhaps just to a fellowship upon that
ground of the communion and the blood and the body of the Lord
Jesus Christ for that little fellowship. So that when they
met together again, in the absence of the apostles, they would be
able to meet together and fellowship both on the gospel that had been
preached to them, the witness and the testimony that Paul and
Barnabas had given of the Lord Jesus Christ and his salvation,
and the communion in the body and blood of the Saviour and
thereby their faith was confirmed. So verse 22 says, confirming
the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in
the faith and that we must through much tribulation enter into the
kingdom of God. It's not easy being a believer
and we will have tribulation and temptation and trials. It
is promised to us. We will have these things as
we enter into the kingdom of God. The other thing that we're
told about this journey home was that they ordained people
in the churches. They set in order the churches
and then they left them to God. Verse 23 says, when they had
ordained them elders in every church and had prayed with fasting,
they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed. So here
again we can see that the Lord was using these men in order
to establish and to build up and to strengthen these churches. They made the journey back in
order to confirm the believers in their faith and to ordain
elders and set up a structure in each of those towns, in each
of those congregations, so that they would be maintained and
so that they would be able to worship God on their own under
the leadership of the elders that had been established there. And again we see the care in
even the administrative provision that the Apostle Paul was making
there, no doubt under the direction of God the Holy Spirit. And then
we're told that when they got back to Antioch, where they had
been sent from, they did something else which I find is interesting.
They rehearsed all the things that had happened to them. Verse
27 says, when they were come and had gathered the church together,
that was the sending church, they gathered them together to
hear the story of what the Lord had done with them. And that
little word there, well, it's a big word, rehearsed. We sometimes
think about rehearsing when we are getting ready to do a stage
performance or practicing something before the real event. That's called rehearsing. But
it really means that you Say it again. You say it again in
the hearing of others. And that's what they were doing.
They were rehearsing. And that's what the apostles
did. How that God had opened the door
of faith unto the Gentiles. I think that's a lovely thing
because Paul and Barnabas here were recognizing that the sending
church at Antioch had an important role in this work. This wasn't
just Paul and Barnabas going out on a lonesome trail and doing
what they thought was good for them. This was them fulfilling
the will of the church and they went back and they gave an account,
they gave a report of the things that had happened. And this is
what they reported, that God had opened the door of faith. You know, faith is a gift. It
is given by the grace of God. If we're able to believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ unto salvation, if we're able to trust in the
Lord and trust in the power of his blood, trust in the power
of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ to save us from our sins
and bring forgiveness into our life and a relationship with
God and the Lord Jesus Christ. If we see the work of Christ
as being the source of that relationship, then that is a gift from God. Faith is a gift from God and
it is given freely by God. It's a sovereign work of God
in the life of an individual, whether we're older or whether
we're younger, God works in the lives of his people, old and
young, and he opens the door of faith. The door of access
to the Gentiles, because the message of the gospel had gone
to the Gentiles, but also the door of each individual believer. their hearts had been opened
just like Lydia's was in Ephesus. The Lord opened her heart and
here faith to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and forgiveness
of sin by his death is a work of God. God the Holy Spirit primarily
in that work of regeneration and that work of enlivening and
bringing to new life and conversion the soul of an individual and
then coming to a knowledge of the truth in the preaching of
the gospel. And it's lovely to see that the apostles had a little
bit of a rest after that because we're told that they stayed,
they abode a long time with the disciples. They stayed at Antioch
in Syria for a little while and they were able to meet there
and have fellowship with the church there and recover their
strength from such an arduous journey. And also I think they
probably had some challenges to face because there were some
troubles in the churches at this time as well and next week we're
going to read a little bit about one of the problems that there
were because of Jews and Jewish views and ideas from Judaism
that was coming into the early Christian church and how that
had to be withstood. So thank you for listening and
we trust that these stories, these accounts from the Acts
of the Apostles will be a blessing to us all.