Beginning of World Missions

Acts 12:25; 13:12

GOLDEN TEXT: “And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation.”—Mark 16:15

ANTIOCH was the first church of believers, so far as we know, outside of Palestine. Its members were mostly Jews, and these chiefly foreign-born. A previous lesson showed us Barnabas and Paul meeting with the brethren at Antioch for a considerable time, in the worship of the Lord and in the study of His Word. The result of these studies was to develop the church as a whole and to bring it to the point of considering and praying about means for the service of the truth—the spread of the Gospel.

This is always the case with those who receive the truth into good and honest hearts. Properly enough they desire to feed themselves and to grow strong in the Lord, but just so surely as the truth is received, with its Spirit, it gives us strength and a desire to use that strength. This is as true today as it was then; the consecration which the truth brings precedes begetting of the Spirit; and the energy for service corresponds to the quickening of the Spirit.

The church at Antioch apparently had an over-supply of teachers, as compared with its requirements. Serving, and fasting, and doubtless praying as well, they came to the conclusion that they were to send forth two of their number, Barnabas and Paul, as representatives of the church in mission work. The missionaries went from Antioch, a distance of eighteen miles, to the seaport town of Seleucia where they took ship for the nearest large city in the Island of Cyprus. It was probably as good a place to begin as any, and had the advantage of being the home country of Barnabas, who would be familiar with the dialect of the people, their customs, etc.

John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark, cousin of Barnabas, and son of one of the Marys at Jerusalem (Acts 12:12-25), is noted as being their minister, attendant or servant. This, together with the fact that he was not sent out by the church as a missionary with the others, shows clearly that while all brethren are to be very highly esteemed as brethren, this does not signify that they have all one office or one work.

In 1st Corinthians the 12th chapter, the Apostle Paul compares the church to a body and points out the various members, the eyes, ears, etc., all necessary to the welfare and service of the body as a whole. The lesson here is that each of us should seek to find the position in which the Lord is pleased to use us, and, finding this, we are to exercise ourselves therein as best we are able, thankful for the privilege of serving the body of Christ in any capacity.

The missionary tour probably consumed considerable time, as the three went from village to village, preaching Christ, until they reached the city of Paphos at the far end of the island. At Paphos they found Sergius Paulus, the governor of the island, representative of the Roman Senate. He had a hearing ear even before the apostles got there; and the Adversary, noting this, was at work upon him through one of his servants, Elymas, sorcerer or magician.

When the Proconsul heard something respecting the teachings of Paul and Barnabas, he sent for them, desiring to know more. Then came a conflict between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, between the truth and the error. Truth and error are always opponents, and so in this case, as soon as the magician discovered that the Proconsul was coming under the influence of the truth, he used his every power to dissuade him, to turn him away from the truth.

This furnished the occasion for a remarkable manifestation of divine power through the Apostle Paul, who denounced the magician and pronounced upon him, in the name of the Lord, a curse, that is, a blight—blindness for a time. The apostle, especially authorized to exercise supernatural powers for the establishment of the church, upbraided the magician by a plain statement of his case—that he was full of cunning deceit and villainy, and that as a punishment the hand of the Lord (not the hand of Paul), the judgment of the Lord, was upon him.

We are not to think of the apostle as pronouncing this sentence in any harsh attitude of mind. We believe, on the contrary, that he was full of sympathetic interest and kindly desire for the wrong-doer, hoping that the result of his experience would be profitable to him. Doubtless Paul remembered his own case, and what blessing had come to him when he was blinded, and doubtless he hoped for the magician a similar recognition of the Lord and similarly the opening of the eyes of his understanding, as well as his natural eyes.

This manifestation of the Lord’s power was evidently convincing to the Proconsul, the statement being that he saw what was done, believed, and was astonished at the doctrine of the Lord. It may not necessarily mean that this incident converted him, but in any event he was relieved through this evidence of the power of God, from the misrepresentations of Elymas and his false teachings.

QUESTIONS:

Did the church at Antioch act in harmony with the Lord’s will in seeking to extend its sphere of influence by sending out its ministers to spread the Gospel?

Are all members of the church of Christ commissioned to render the same kind of service?

How was the struggle between Divine truth and Satanic error manifested as a result of the missionary effort at Paphos?

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