Acts 13

Read: Acts 13

In the beginning of Acts 13, we see that the church at Antioch had many prophets and teachers.  Because of this, they saw the need to send out some of these leaders to carry the gospel message to new places.  They were led by the Holy Spirit to choose Barnabas and Saul for this task. In our churches today, we tend to forget this aspect of church.  Our goal is not just to keep building our church in size, number, and pastoral staff. The success of a church is not necessarily measured by such things.  The success of a church depends on submission to the Holy Spirit and a willingness to train others up as leaders in order to send them out. Because of the faithfulness of the Antioch Christians, Paul and Barnabas are freed to go and are encouraged in the mission that God is entrusting to them.  

As they went along their missionary journey, Paul preached and shared the message about Jesus.  Some people repented and believed; others became hostile. In verse 45, we see that as a result of their success, the Jews were “filled with jealousy.”  Jealousy is a powerful thing; it can make a person lose sight of what really matters.  These Jews were believers in the one true God. As best as they knew, they were trying to do the right thing.  But at the core, they apparently had a certain desire for attention. Maybe the synagogue was having low attendance and then all of the sudden the place is packed to hear this new teaching from Paul.  We can only speculate why they responded like they did, but because of their jealousy, they began to contradict Paul. Instead of coming to conclusions from logic and study, they contradicted Paul primarily because they wanted to discredit him because of their jealousy.  

Clearly we know very little about these Jews, but I imagine they were well intentioned.  Most individuals do not intentionally mislead people. They really did see Paul as a threat or they wouldn’t have reacted the way they did.  The problem is that they came to their conclusions because of an emotional response. Emotions can be a useful thing. They help us to empathize with people, guide our actions, and help determine the way we interact with others, but we must always be mindful of our emotions and make sure that we control them so they don’t end up controlling us.  If not, we may have unwanted consequences that we have to deal with.