The Holy Spirit directed the Antioch church to send Barnabas and Saul on a mission trip to teach people about Christ. This trip is often called “Paul’s First Missionary Journey”. One of the stops on this journey was the city of Lystra, where Paul healed a man who had never been able to walk. A frenzied crowd first worshipped Paul and Barnabas as gods, then turned on them and stoned Paul. Despite this, Paul miraculously stood up after the crowd left as if not injured. After revisiting some of the previous stops, Paul and Barnabas returned to the Antioch church to tell them all of the things God had done.
Bible verses used in this episode:
Acts 14:8-23
Outline:
- Response to a Miracle (Acts 14:8-13)
- Paul’s Sermon (Acts 14:14-18)
- Paul’s stoning and exit (Acts 14:19-20)
- Strengthening the churches (Acts 14:21-23)
Tips for teaching children:
- Find Antioch, Lystra, Derbe and Iconium on a map
- Make a relief map out of salt dough
- Talk about how the crowd became angry and stirred up. Relate this to Proverbs 22:24-25
- Illustrate how one bad person can make a crowd turn bad. Build a tower of cards or blocks. Pull out one piece from the bottom and watch the tower fall apart.
Tips for teaching adults:
- Even though we only covered part of the 1st journey in this episode, I suggest you read the whole of ch.13-14. In a class, the best way to do this is to divide the text up and assign different readers. Reading the whole story makes it more compelling and helps to understand the context.
- Consult a map that outlines this 1st mission journey. There is an excellent series of maps here: https://viz.bible/journeys/ © Copyright 2018 Robert Rouse
- Ask a few people to calculate how many kilometres/miles they travelled on this journey. Ask a few others to Google the average travel time on foot between the cities mentioned in chapters 13-14, considering the average travel time with a small group with supplies.
- Here are a few questions you can ask: 1) What can we learn about God from this story? 2) What can we learn about how to tell others the good news from this story? 3) Why is strengthening churches and forming leadership important to Paul’s purpose in planting churches? What can we learn from this for our churches today?
Full teaching instructions free from Mission Bible Class:
Bible Lesson: An Angry Crowd in Lystra
Scriptures quoted from the International Children’s Bible®, copyright ©1986, 1988, 1999, 2015 by Tommy Nelson. Used by permission.
Excerpts from Mission Bible Class used by permission.
For questions or comments email: mary@missionbibleclass.org