8-10 There was a man in Lystra who couldn’t walk. He sat there, crippled since the day of his birth. He heard Paul talking, and Paul, looking him in the eye, saw that he was ripe for God’s work, ready to believe. So he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Up on your feet!” The man was up in a flash—jumped up and walked around as if he’d been walking all his life.
11-13 When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they went wild, calling out in their Lyconian dialect, “The gods have come down! These men are gods!” They called Barnabas “Zeus” and Paul “Hermes” (since Paul did most of the speaking). The priest of the local Zeus shrine got up a parade—bulls and banners and people lined right up to the gates, ready for the ritual of sacrifice.
14-15 When Barnabas and Paul finally realized what was going on, they stopped them. Waving their arms, they interrupted the parade, calling out, “What do you think you’re doing! We’re not gods! We are men just like you, and we’re here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God himself, the living God. We don’t make God; he makes us, and all of this—sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.
16-18 “In the generations before us, God let all the different nations go their own way. But even then he didn’t leave them without a clue, for he made a good creation, poured down rain and gave bumper crops. When your bellies were full and your hearts happy, there was evidence of good beyond your doing.” Talking fast and hard like this, they prevented them from carrying out the sacrifice that would have honored them as gods—but just barely.
19-20 Then some Jews from Antioch and Iconium caught up with them and turned the fickle crowd against them. They beat Paul unconscious, dragged him outside the town and left him for dead. But as the disciples gathered around him, he came to and got up. He went back into town and the next day left with Barnabas for Derbe.
Jesus healed a paralytic; Peter healed a man who was crippled since his birth; and now Paul performed the first miracle and healed a man who was crippled since his birth, just like the miraculous work of Jesus and Peter. By the same Spirit, Jesus, Peter, and Paul performed miracles of healing in confirming their preaching works. Nevertheless, the enemy at the same time carried out the deception work. The audience, though seeing the miracles but without an inspired understanding of the truth by the Holy Spirit, thought that Paul and Barnabas were Hermes and Zeus, their divinities and tried to worship them as gods. Persecution were also aroused to oppose the apostles and even beating Paul nearly to death in Lystra. This mission experience was what Paul described as handing himself over to Jesus in his death but also at the same time living the life of Jesus in this severe persecution.
Dear Holy Spirit, continue to speak to me through meditating your words, and cultivate in me a life like the apostles - unite my life with Jesus in his death, but also unite with Jesus in his resurrected life in my future ministry. The reward of a Christian life is not so much the gain of the worldly rewards, like honor, material prosperity, power, fame, etc., as the gain of the resurrected life of Jesus that is manifested in our holiness, the power of life transformation, and the future glory with our Lord.
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