Okay, so St. Paul, wow, doing this in two hours is going to be very difficult. St. Paul is one of the greatest, right?
He's the goat, really greatest of all time. He traveled so much. There's a lot of people have said he's traveled over 10,000 miles in all his various journeys. He has three missionary journeys, a trip back to Jerusalem, and then a trip to Rome.
And that's just what's recorded, of course, and as I'm going to share with you at the end of the next lecture, our final lecture of the series, this class, he went to Spain and we don't know any details about that before he died back in Rome. So he's tremendous, his theological expertise, the Holy Spirit guiding him to found all of these churches and bring the gospel to the Gentiles. He wrote to the majority of the New Testament. It's just incredible.
It's just really, really incredible. So we'll entrust this lecture next lecture into a special way to St. Paul as well. Okay, so this is really the second half of Acts of the Apostles.
So you've got St. Peter, we spent some time, of course, looking at the ministry of St. Peter in the last two lectures, looking at the introduction to what he was doing in his ministry in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land, before he ends up in Rome, of course. So now we're transitioning to the second half of the St.
Paul, who continues Jesus's command. If you go back, flip all the way back to chapter 1 verse 8, it's worth repeating. Remember, Jesus says to the Apostles, before his ascension, you shall receive power, Dunamis dynamite. Remember, when the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and then you've got this roadmap, so to speak, where you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, then Judea, in Samaria, okay, and then finally to the ends of the earth.
So you could really think of St. Paul beginning the third faith, not so much beginning. I mean, really St. Peter with Cornelius launching, of course, bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, but St.
Paul in a very special way, kind of as in charge, kind of the leader of this third phase, bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth. And as we're going to see through these missionary journeys, he just is so relentless, he's so tenacious, he's so passionate, bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth, being Christ's witness to the ends of the earth. So that's kind of where we are right now. Now, I want to really clarify, St.
Peter and St. Paul, we've always honored them as the two great apostles of the early church, in fact, in the church, we have the Feast of St. Peter and Paul together, we put them together. Now, it's interesting that Luke really wants to demonstrate St.
Paul's authority given by Christ, his calling by Christ in various parts of his ministry, in parallel with Peter. Now, Peter is the grand poo-ba, right? Peter has the keys of the kingdom, and we've seen that demonstrated over and over and over again in actually apostles, and even of course during our time in the gospels, we're going to see a lot of other evidence about that here today, especially when we get to Acts chapter 15. But Peter and Paul, they're right there next to each other.
Peter does have the keys, but Luke really wants to demonstrate a lot of parallels between Paul and Peter. Remember, Paul did not walk with the Lord. He did not, he's not a witness of the resurrection. His calling as an apostle, as Paul says many times, is very unique and very special.
So the Ignatius-Catholic study Bible, a resource I really encourage people to pick up and keep on their bookshelves, has a few, lists, enumerates a few of these parallels, added a couple of them myself here too. And they're here in your notes, so let's just go through those and you can see how Peter and Paul really stand as two parallels, right? Two pillars of the early church. Again, of course, noting that Peter does have the keys.
He is the vicar of Christ. So I'll let her hear in your notes. Both Peter and Paul deliver inaugural sermons to Israel, focusing on the Davidic covenant. That's really, really important because Jesus is the son of David.
He is going to fulfill the promises of covenant, really that God established with David that we saw way back in our Old Testament section. Next, both quotes, Psalm 1610. This is a very important song that is used by both apostles to defend and explain the resurrection of Jesus. We'll look at that in a little bit.
Both Peter and Paul heal cripples, the cured diseases. Both are filled with the Holy Spirit, said to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Both are renewed for their extraordinary miracle. There's some cool stuff that we're going to be talking about as we go along here.
Both confer the spirit on others by the laying on of hands. In two instances, really, there's going to be confirmation, but there's also the ordination to the priesthood, the elders, the presbyderoy. We'll talk about that. Both confront and rebuke magicians, right?
These false teachers, charlatans, they're going to put them in their place. This is Paul doesn't in a very interesting way, very funny way, I think. And then next, both raise the dead to life. Again, there's so much humor.
You really got to appreciate the humor of scripture. I'm a big fan of humor, wherever you can find it. And there's some funny stuff here with how Paul raises a dude from the dead. Both refuse to find worship.
Peter is worshiped. If you remember back with Cornelius, now Paul is going to be worshiped. He's going to refuse that. And then both are miraculously delivered from prison as well.
So on and on, it goes. All these great parallels between Peter and Paul. So that's why when teaching this introduction to the Acts of the Apostles, I wanted to do Peter's ministry, then Paul's ministry, and then the nation-cathic study bible with some other resources shows you these parallels that God's power, it's for Peter and Paul. So the Peter and Paul's power, they're preaching, their protection comes from God.
Okay. All right. So that kind of serves a little introduction here. What I'd like to do is we left off on Acts 13.
Let's flip there. Now let me just read the first few verses here. There's a lot to cover. So I'll read some verses here and there, but I'll stick closely to the notes here as we try to summarize this great, great Apostles life in teaching.
Okay. So chapter 13 verse 1, now in the church Antioch, they were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, sinion, who was called Niger, Lucius, Menina, member of the court of Herod, a Tetrac. That's really interesting. A member of Herod's court is part of the believers here in Antioch.
That's pretty awesome. And then of course Saul, and they were worshiping the Lord and fasting them. The Holy Spirit said, set apart from the Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. And after praying and fasting some more, they laid their hands on them and then they sent them off.
All right. So this is the beginning of Paul's first missionary journey. There's a half here in your notes. It runs from here, chapter 13 verse 1, all the way through chapter 14.
It's a short, short journey in the late 40s. And we know that because as we're going to talk later on, the Council of Jerusalem is right there on 50 or 51 AD. Okay. So as we go through these journeys, it's a lot of these towns and cities and we don't know where they are.
So it's really important to have a map. And we even have to have study of stuff so much. I just can't keep it straight in my p-brain, right? So I gotta have a map and I've included a simple map.
I pulled off public domain online, which you can see in your notes here. But if you have a great Atlas, like the Holman atlas is great. There's all kinds of great atlas is out there. It's really, really fruitful to go.
If you have the time, you can spend some time with you. I encourage you all do. Why don't you read his missionary journeys while following along on that? I can't do that with you here in this format, but it's going to be very fruitful for you to do that.
So this is his first three missionary journeys into the territories of modern Turkey and Antioch here really becomes the home base for the missionary work to the Gentiles Jerusalem, and so Antioch is a great launching pad for these various missionary journeys, not just with Paul, but for others as well. And what I like to point out is his first missionary journey is clearly laid out by the will of the Holy Spirit. And the context is that they're worshiping and praying and fasting. That's really important.
If we want God to speak to us, you know, we can't be sitting there at the binge watching Netflix, although God can speak us at any time, but I think that we need to put ourselves in a position of prayer, of worshiping, of God, of fasting on a regular basis, like on Fridays, for example, when we're not out of Lent, really embracing fasting during Lent. And then the Holy Spirit will speak to us. And that's what happens here. So the Holy Spirit calls out Barnabas and Saul to go begin to bring the gospel to the nations.
Now, one thing that you're going to notice, Paul's tactic, right, his methodology, is to go first to the Jews and then afterwards go to the Gentiles. Okay, because this is God's plan of redemption, like redemption, as Paul says, salvation is from the Jews. So this is what he does a lot. In fact, when he's read for you, having your notes, this great quote Romans chapter 1 verse 16, let me just read that for you quickly.
Very famous quotes, very beautiful. It's worth memorizing. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is a power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.
The Jew first is also to the Greek. Okay, and he goes on the context is fantastic, but the Jew first is into the Greek and the Jesus and Mary and the apostles are all Jews. Paul is a Jew. So the Jews are the recipients of the great blessings of God, but they're supposed to go from the Jews to the Gentiles.
Remember all of the work that we did in the Exodus accounts where God says in Exodus 4 22, Israel's my firstborn son, the firstborn son of many sons, all nations are called to be God's children, but it's going to come through the Jewish people first because God called Abraham, okay, to reverse the effects of sin and the tower of Babel and all that stuff that we talked about so many lessons ago. So this is going to be his methodology and I'll point out many times as we go through his journeys. So here Barnabas is his first companion, even a mark, the evangelist mark, he's also known as John Mark, that'll be clear later on. John Mark accompanies him for a short time as well.