Acts 13 & 14
In the church at Antioch were several important prophets and teachers, and while they were fasting and working, the Holy Spirit told them to set apart Barnabas and Saul to be the first missionaries. They didn't take this lightly, so they fasted some more and prayed about it, then they laid hands on them in ordination and sent them out.
The first missionary journey: Barnabas and Saul. And they also brought John Mark along with them.
Saul is first called Paul on Cypress (13:9), and ever after remained Paul. (Saul means Great One, Destroyer, and Paul means Small One, Worker.)
Mark left the company of the missionaries to return to Jerusalem from Perga at Pamphilia (13:13). From what I've read, it seems that this road they were taking was extremely rugged, and not even a road in some places. Evidently it was all physically too much for Mark, which prompted him to give up and go home.
13: 46
It was necessary that the Word of God should be spoken to you (Jews) first: [but] since you repudiated it, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.
This became the pattern they would follow whenever they went to a new city. They would first go to the local synagogue, and when they were thrown out, then they preached to Gentiles, too.
14: 8ff
At Lystra they healed a lame man and were proclaimed to be gods--Zeus and Hermes! (v. 18) And They with difficulty restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.
But then they stoned Paul and left him for dead, but he got up and went back into the city, and the next day he was traveling again! (Vs. 19-20).
How fickle are the crowds!
O my Father, You planned out this whole church business even before You made this Earth. You knew that even though You gave Your people all the clues and pictures of what Messiah would do and accomplish, You knew that they would mostly reject You, so that the door would be thrown wide open to all the Nations and people groups and languages over the whole World to hear the Good News of Your Love.
And You knew it would take all these centuries of generations to fill Your House, and occupy every seat at Your great banquet Table! You even gave Daniel the whole list of how the Nations would be constituted from his time all the way down to our time today, and we are running out of all that future history.
So Jesus' coming again must be very soon.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
