Preaching in Pisidian Antioch

While in Paphos, a city on the southwest corner of the island of Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas preached the gospel to the proconsul Sergius Paulus. Hearing the truth of God’s Word and seeing the magician Elymas temporarily blinded by Paul’s rebuke, Sergius Paulus became a Christian (Acts 13:4–12). The gospel was making further inroads among the gentiles, even converting important government officials.

After ministering in Paphos, Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark traveled north, leaving Cyprus and entering Pamphylia, a district in the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia, a territory that took up much of modern-day Turkey. Luke tells us this in today’s passage, recounting how the men went first to Perga and then to “Antioch in Pisidia” (vv. 13–14). This was a different city named Antioch, not the same Syrian Antioch from which Paul and Barnabas departed on their missionary journey (vv. 1–3). (There were some sixteen cities named Antioch in that part of the world.) John Mark left Paul and Barnabas in Perga and returned home to Jerusalem (see 12:12). Luke does not make much of Mark’s departure here, but later we will learn that it was the occasion of a dispute between Paul and Barnabas that led the men to go their separate ways for a time (see 15:36–41).

Pisidian Antioch was a leading city in south Galatia, and many Jews lived there. As they had done on Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas went to the synagogue in Antioch on the Sabbath day. According to Jewish practice at the time, prayer services in the synagogue included a reading from the Old Testament Law and Prophets, followed by an exposition from one of the men present. Luke reports that Paul and Barnabas were invited to speak the word of exhortation, probably because they were visitors (13:14–15).

Paul’s sermon in the synagogue, like the other sermons preached to a Jewish audience in the book of Acts, placed the life and work of Jesus within the context of the history of old covenant Israel. Starting all the way back with the patriarchs, Paul briefly described the election of Israel, its increase in Egypt, the exodus, the wilderness wandering, and the conquest of Canaan. This summary of the books of Exodus through Joshua noted that God “put up with” His people in the wilderness, alluding to Israel’s rebellion there (vv. 16–20a). By the end of the message, Paul would make clear that to reject Jesus would be to repeat that rebellion (vv. 40–41).