Once Was I Stoned
“And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil affected against the brethren. Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the multitude of the city was divided: and part held with the Jews and part with the apostles. And when there was an assault made both of the Gentiles, and also of the Jews with their rulers, to use them despitefully, and to stone them, they were ware of it, and fled imto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about: and there they preached the gospel,” etc. — Acts xiv. 1-21.
AN intimation occurs here, worthy of careful regard by all who undertake any work for Christ’s kingdom, — “They so spake that a great multitude believed.” We are often warned that the power of the gospel does not depend on excellency of speech, or mans wisdom — that the harvest is due to the vitality of the seed on the one hand, and the sun and rain of heaven on the other, not to the sower’s skill. All this is true; and yet it remains that, by Divine appointment, the instrument has a place, and the result is to some extent affected by the manner in which the ministry is conducted.
It is expressly announced that the manner in which the word was preached had something to do with the numbers who believed in Iconium. All preaching that is equally orthodox and faithful is not equally successful. The preacher should publish the gospel in “acceptable words;” and acceptable words should be “sought out” by careful study, if they do not readily leap to the lips. There must be labour, and skill, and perseverance; there must be the exhibition of human tenderness, as well as the possession of secret faith.
3oo We should ply the work of winning as if all depended odour own exertions; and yet cry to the Lord for power, as if we could do nothing. When it is intimated that the apostles so preached that a great multitude believed, great honour is put on the ministry, and great responsibility on the minister. In particular, it does not become any minister of Christ to fling out the challenge hard and dry to his audience, — Accept this message or reject it; if you reject it you perish, and your blood will be upon your own heads. It may be necessary to give that challenge, but he should give it “weeping:” if the expression of it do not rend the speaker’s heart, it is not likely to melt the hearts of the hearers.
The native heathen did not take the initiative in persecuting the apostles; they remained passive, until they were instigated to action by the more positive enmity of the Jews. Instead of being intimidated by the combined opposition of Greeks and Hebrews, the preachers of the gospel remained longer and spoke more boldly because the enmity was redoubled. They spoke boldly “in the Lord,” and so they were enabled to speak boldly for the Lord. Their courage sprang from their faith.
There was a division among the people, and a commotion in the city. There was peace in the neighbourhood before Paul and Barnabas arrived. It is probable that some accused these preachers as the cause of the strife. They would then remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, “I came not to send peace on the earth, but a sword.” When the community is dead in sin, to throw the word of life into the stagnant mass necessarily disturbs it. Although the Redeemer is Prince of Peace, he is not satisfied with the serenity of a dead sea. He casts in a solvent whose nature it is in the first instance to arouse and” Once was I stoned! separate. The peace which he values is the purity which is reached through conflict. People must take sides when the cross of Christ is preached in time, as they must take sides when the throne of Christ is set in eternity.
When the persecution reached such a height that it threatened their lives, the missionaries retired from the city, according to the law of the Lord for that case laid down — “When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another,” They took refuge in Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, whose site is not now accurately known. “There they preached the Gospel.” This was the work of their life; this was their ruling passion it was a passion, and it ruled them. They cared indeed for life, and fled when death threatened them; but they valued life, and sought to preserve it, mainly for the work that life enabled them to perform. They preserved life in order that they might preach; but they would not cease to preach in order that they might continue to live.
A cripple was healed at Lystra, and the act became the occasion of an incident characteristic of the prevailing idolatry. The imagination of the polytheistic Greeks immediately invested the missionaries with Divine attributes, and acknowledged them as human impersonations of two of their deities — Jupiter, the chief; and Mercury, his attendant minister. It is worthy of notice, in passing, that the primitive idea of making the tallest king still prevailed in that region. Barnabas, as the more commanding presence, was made to represent Jupiter; while Paul, whose spiritual supremacy they were unable to understand, was placed in the position of a subordinate.
Promptly following up their wild belief with an equally wild practice, they forthwith led garlanded oxen to the place of sacrifice at the gate, and were about to slay them as propitiatory offerings to the supposed celestial visitants, when the apostles, shocked by the blind and guilty superstition of the people, ran in among them, and summarily suppressed the horrid design. The address which the missionaries delivered to the idolaters of Lystra on that occasion was in substance and form the same with Paul’s more elaborate argument afterwards delivered on the Areopagus at Athens. It will be more convenient to notice the sentiments as expressed at a greater crisis and on a more prominent sphere.
Before they left Lystra, another event occurred which exhibits heathenism on its other and opposite side. Jewish emissaries from Antioch and Iconium, following the track of the missionaries like blood-hounds, so successfully incited the mob that “they stoned Paul, and drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.” It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord: “Hosanna” to-day; and “Crucify him!” to-morrow. As the Jews treated Jesus, the Gentiles at Lystra treated Paul: they worshipped him in the morning as a god, and at night stoned him as unfit to take his place among men.
“Once was I stoned,” wrote the apostle of the Gentiles, referring to this event. Yes, Paul; and once another thing happened, equally memorable. Once he stoned another, and once he was stoned himself. Strange revolution of the wheel! Now it is his turn to enact the martyr, praying for his murderers, and looking forward to rest. What a crowd of memories must have rushed up when he felt his spirit swooning away under the stone shower! This would seem the echo of his own dread act. Stephen’s heroic death must have left its mark deep on the heart of the converted Paul. Perhaps, when he felt what he believed to be the sleep of death creeping over his senses, he expected at his next awakening he would find himself in Stephen’s company.
“Once was I stoned!’
In all probability a young man, of whom we shall afterwards hear, stood among the mourners who assembled round Paul’s lifeless body at Lystra. The young man Saul looked on approving at J erusalem when the Christian hero Stephen died: a young man, Timothy, I believe, looked on weeping when Paul was stoned at Lystra; and afterwards, with unspeakable joy, saw the apostle awaking from his swoon. When Paul, after an interval of two years, visited Lystra again, he found Timothy residing there, a disciple of Christ, already well known and highly esteemed by all the brotherhood (Acts xvi. 1). At a later date he writes to him as his “own son in the faith” (1 Tim. i. 2). From these two facts, it results that Timothy was converted by the word of Paul on the occasion of his first visit to Lystra. Here then, as in many other cases, the work prospered while the workman was discouraged and persecuted. The missionary, when he left that place, thought that he had visited it in vain; yet the seed that fell from his hand there found soft soil in one young ingenuous heart, and brought forth fruit an hundredfold. We know (2 Tim. iii. 10, 11) that Timothy was intimately acquainted with the peculiar sufferings through which Paul passed on this occasion at Lystra; and we know also that from his childhood he had been trained in the Scriptures by the pious care of his mother and grandmother. Prom these circumstances we are enabled, in a good measure, to complete the history of the young man’s spiritual experience. With the Scriptures, in their evangelical meaning, impressed on his mind and memory, he heard Paul preach. While the word which presented the Christ as the fulfilling of the law was still sounding in his ears, he beheld the great preacher stoned, as he thought, to death for his testimony. The word preached and the sufferings endured, conspired to complete the victory, and the youthful Timothy was won.
The Church in the Hottse.
It was not till a subsequent visit that the apostle was cheered by the knowledge of this event; but the event sprang direct from the seed that has continued prolific down to our own day — the blood of the martyrs.
From Lystra the missionaries retired still eastward through the interior of Asia Minor. At Derbe, the extreme limit of their progress in that direction, they preached the gospel with great success, for they made many disciples there. The term literally means a sufficient number — that is, a group of believers was gathered there in numbers sufficient to constitute a Church, whose members might hold together and hold their own in the place after the departure of the apostles. These planters were afraid to plant one or two trees on the sea-shore, exposed to the blast; they greatly preferred, wherever it was possible, to plant a wood on the spot ere they left it, and then they expected that the wood would shelter the trees; — the community of disciples would support and cheer each other through evil days.
At Derbe they were close to a pass in the mountains, called “the Gates of Cilicia,” which led, by a short and direct route eastward, to Tarsus, the home of Paul. “If he had been mindful of that country from whence he came out, he might have had opportunity to have returned” (Heb. xi. 1 5). But his native place had no charm that could draw him aside from his mission. He had severely condemned Mark for going home before the work was done; and he will not himself fall into the same snare. He obtained grace to turn his back upon home when the work of the Lord beckoned him abroad. He turned his face westward again, and retraced his steps to that Lystra which was to him the place of blood. Luther, when his friends advised him to consult his own safety, declared he would enter Worms although every tile of its roofs were a devil! Paul will go straight back to
Through mtcch Tribulation.
Lystra, where he had been stoned for preaching Christ, that he may preach Christ there again. By such men God has done great things at various periods of the past; and when he has similar work in hand, he will, I suppose, raise up similar instruments.
“Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” — Acts xrv. 22.
I and travelled westward, revisiting in reverse order all the places where they had preached and founded societies of disciples. Their specific task this time was different. They set themselves on this occasion to confirm the souls of the converts, and exhort them as to their subsequent course. The Christians in those places were already born, but they needed to be nourished into strength. These are the two main points in a missionary’s work. On their former visit, they occupied themselves mainly with the first; and on the latter, mainly with the second. The first necessity is, to see that they are in Christ; and the next, to see that they grow strong in the Lord.
They valued the right and orderly constitution of the Churches, and this matter accordingly was not neglected; but they gave their first attention to the work of confirming souls. What boots a well- organised Church, if it consists of dead members? The living may live without organisation, but organisation is nothing without life. Let us remember the apostolic order of these two things: it is first, get souls