And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, (22) strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”  (23) So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.  (24) And after they had passed through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.  (25) Now when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia.  (26) From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed. (27) Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.

The Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke who was often a first hand witness to the missionary journeys of the apostle Paul. In our verses today Luke gives us a sense of the astounding – and clearly divine – growth of the early church.  The gospel Paul and Barnabas preached to the gentiles upended conventional thinking and cultural values.  Paul’s practice was to go to a strategically placed city and preach the gospel first in the synagogue, using the Old Testament to teach Christ Jesus as Savior.  Most usually the Jews would throw them out of the synagogue and often out of the city as jewish influence eroded. The Jews stirred up the people against Paul and Barnabas and on this first missionary journey Paul was even stoned and left for dead.  Those two men traveled the ancient world and God was with them. The sense that God is sovereign, understated but crystal clear, comes through in every verse we study today.

Paul acted boldly in the face of threats and bodily harm  – he counted all danger as nothing and preached with God’s full and perfect authority as God’s grace in the form of signs and miracles accompanied them.  The word of grace is that salvation is offered to the world through Christ Jesus.  The first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas was at first evangelizing and then pastoral as they returned to the cities where the church had taken hold.  There  they confirmed the beliefs of the disciples and warned of certain inevitable tribulation  – BUT  to mitigate suffering we are led to the kingdom of God.

Acts tells us that the early church was being organized under leadership of elders who were appointed in conjunction with local members of the church and Paul and Barnabas.  Then they returned to the mother organization in Antioch where they gave an accounting of the first missionary journey.  This was really accountability to God. Paul and Barnabas didn’t report what they had done but what God did through them.