Greetings

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to Monday’s edition of EDiBS, and God’s abiding grace and peace to each of you in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks for joining in for our daily Bible study time, where as we begin another week we’re also beginning our look at Acts 16. I’m glad you’ve come along, and as always, I invite you to join me as we ask God’s blessing on our learning together.  Let’s pray:

Prayer 

Almighty and everlasting God, because of your great love for us and your desire to be with us for all eternity, you have delivered us from the darkness of our sin and into the kingdom of your marvelous light through the sending of your Son. We thank you for this amazing gift, and we ask that you would help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Savior as we look to your Word today. Thank you for this time – please bless it and help us to use it profitably. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. 

Getting Started 

As we get started today, Paul – without Barnabas now, but with Silas instead – is on the move and in the region of Derbe and Lystra. Our focus: meeting a disciple named Timothy. 

Acts 16:1-5 

He came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. 2The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. 

When I first brought our puppy, Mittens, home from the grocery store many years ago, introducing her to our other two dogs was a bit of a challenge. Robin and Maggie were standoffish and territorial, and they grumbled and growled at Mittens every time she tried to join in with them. She wasn’t allowed to eat with them, sleep next to them, hunt with them, or anything else, and each time she tried to be part of things, she was shut out. But things change with time. One night when it was time to call the dogs in for the evening, I went out onto the porch and found Maggie and Mittens curled up together on one of the patio chair cushions. Maggie had mud all over her paws, and Mittens had mud all over her nose – evidence that they had been hunting gophers with each other earlier in the day. When it was time to feed them some table scraps – yes, I’ve always fed my dogs table scraps – Robin and Mittens ate together off of the same plate, and when they were done, Mittens laid down at Robin’s feet while Robin groomed her. At bedtime that evening, all three went into the laundry room together with no problem whatsoever.

Though through the years there were still occasional tizzies over who got the best blanket or whose bone was whose, after some training, adjustment, and a breaking in period, our three canines ultimately became a tightly knit unit. Looking back, it’s hard to remember how the two older dogs ever got on without the youngster in their midst. 

Today, in the aftermath of a difficult parting with Barnabas and the retention of a new partner is the person of Silas, Paul now begins his second missionary journey. Traveling from Antioch to the regions of Syria and Cilicia, he, Silas, and other traveling companions with them go about the work of strengthening the churches that Paul and Barnabas had founded about five years previous. The main portion of our passage in this session is set in Derbe and Lystra, where you will recall from chapter 14 is the place Paul and Barnabas were worshipped as gods and where Paul, after a change of heart on the part of the crowd, was ultimately dragged out of the city in Lystra and stoned. 

Here is where things become very interesting for us in a historical sense. Why? Because it is in Lystra where we are introduced to a young man – likely just a teenager – named Timothy. In the time since Paul and Barnabas had first been to Lystra, young Timothy had been serving the Lord and growing in the faith. We know this to be the case because our Bible says that Timothy is well spoken of by the church in Iconium and Lystra. Timothy has a believing mother with a Jewish background, but an unbelieving Greek father, which is important for our understanding of what happens next. 

First, we see that upon vetting him, Paul is impressed enough with Timothy to decide to take him along as a helper on this present missionary journey. Second, however, we see that prior to doing this Paul takes and circumcises Timothy because of the Jews in that region. Why in the world would Paul do something like that? 

Isn’t one of the main purposes of this trip to go from town to town and deliver the good news of the Jerusalem council to the Gentiles so that they will be strengthened, encouraged, and blessed in their relationships with Jewish believers? 

Isn’t the main message coming from the apostles and elders in Jerusalem the fact that Gentiles are not subject to circumcision or the other demands of the Law for salvation? 

How, then, does this add up? Many people read this and ask a legitimate question: “Doesn’t this contradict the decree which was determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem?” 

The answer is that in actuality, it doesn’t at all.

For just a moment, we need to think, understand, and view the world through the eyes of a Jewish person. Scholar F.F. Bruce is extremely helpful in helping us to see the rationale behind this action. "By Jewish law,” he writes, “Timothy was a Jew, because he was the son of Jewish mother, but because he was uncircumcised he was technically an apostate Jew. If Paul wished to maintain his links with the synagogue, he could not be seen to countenance apostasy." 

Do you see the point here? Paul had Timothy circumcised not for the sake of his salvation (Paul would never do something like that) but so that there would be less to hinder his ministry among the Jews. This is not about legalism at all, but very much about the way of love, which we talked about together last week. 

Wrapping Up 

We’ll have more to say about this development in our next session, but wrapping up for the moment, let’s just note that the result here is a happy one: the churches — Jewish believers and Gentile believers together — are strengthened in the faith, and God’s Word tells us that they increase in number daily. Paul, Silas, Timothy, and others are doing what needs to be done so that the Gospel can become more and more deeply rooted in the lives of God’s people. They don’t get it right all the time; they’re sinners in need of God’s grace and forgiveness just like the rest of us. But how beautiful are the feet that bring Good News, and beautiful it is to see the Spirit of the Lord at work in the world! Take care, everyone, and as I said a moment ago, we’ll pick this up tomorrow. God’s peace, and have a great day!