Title: Paul Takes Timothy / Acts 16:1-5
We are now looking at Paul's second missionary journey.
Paul's second missionary journey has several characteristics.
One is that the period of outreach was the longest.
Another is that they started evangelism on the European continent. We'll look into this next week.
And another is that he got Timothy, who is often called Paul's successor or son of faith. Today we will look at this.
Paul meets Timothy at Lystra and takes him on a missionary journey.
Lystra was the place where Paul healed a man who was crippled when he was born during his first missionary journey. It was a place where people saw it and thought that Paul and Barnabas were gods and wanted to offer sacrifices, and it was a place where Jews thought they were stoned to death.
Timothy seems to have believed in Jesus at this time. In the middle of verse 16, Timothy is called “disciple”.
Timothy received evangelism during Paul's first missionary journey, believed in Jesus, and his faith grew during that time. Verse 2 introduces Timothy as “a man praised by his brothers.”
So, Paul reaped the fruit of the seed he had sown on his first trip.
We must know that when we sow a seed, there must be a fruit. Church school teachers here, please remember these words.
If you look at several places in the Bible, especially 1 and 2 Timothy, you can see that Paul had great love for Timothy.
The meaning of the name Timothy is ‘honor of God’ or ‘honor of God’.
Timothy's mother is Jewish and his father is Greek. In other words, it is an international marriage.
To put it in a bad way, it is a person who has a mixed marriage. Timothy is of mixed race.
The Jews hated this very much. One of the reasons the Jews despised the Samaritans was that they broke the purity of their blood by marrying Gentiles.
But in Lystra, Timothy's hometown, this seems to have been a bit loose.
Ladies and gentlemen, what would you do if your children got married internationally?
Before, I hated that. It is still not so welcome.
However, as we are in the era of globalization, we need to have an open-minded attitude toward these issues.
Now, there are more and more opinions that it is not desirable to cling too much to the ‘uni-ethnic’ or ‘uni-ethnic’.
One of the weaknesses of our people, especially in missionary work, is that we have no experience of living with other peoples.
Korean churches in the United States hold the ‘Korean World Missionary Conference’ once every four years on the campus of Wheaton University near Chicago. Korean-American believers gather there and say, “We have become accustomed to other cultures by living in a foreign country, and we have the experience and wisdom of living in harmony with other peoples. And they do missionary work really hard.
There is a saying in the mission of the Korean church that it is 7 to 3, and if the church in Korea is in charge of the 7, the Korean churches abroad will be in charge of the 3, and that is happening.
I attended the Korean World Mission Conference, and my friends living in Chicago asked me to meet. People living abroad are thirsty for news from Korea, news from friends, etc., so when we meet, the story becomes longer.
After talking for a long time, at the end, a friend sneakily said, ‘Hey, I have a blue-eyed daughter-in-law this time. So, another friend is ‘I got a Chinese son-in-law this time’. The strange thing is that the friend who had a blue-eyed daughter-in-law was envious of the friend who had a Chinese son-in-law. He said, ‘It’s okay if my Chinese son-in-law is the same Asian as me!’
I said, 'It's all right! Now is the era of globalization!’ I don't know if it was more because I was attending a missionary conference.
In verse 3, Paul does something that seems very contradictory. Circumcision before leaving Timothy.
Timothy was half-Jew, but his father was a Gentile, so he wasn't circumcised.
At the Jerusalem meeting, it was officially decided that “it is not necessary to be circumcised” and “it is not necessary to try to keep all the laws.” And Paul preaches that fact while visiting the area he evangelized during his first missionary journey. Look at verse 4. “As they went through the cities, they gave them the ordinances that the apostles and elders in Jerusalem had set for them to observe.” But Timothy was circumcised. Circumcision is a painful thing to do for an adult.
That's why I said 'a seemingly contradictory thing'.
Why?
If Timothy was a complete Gentile, Paul would not have been circumcised. Titus who preached like Paul was Greek, but Paul did not circumcise Titus.
Timothy was half Jewish. Jews were to be circumcised. “As a Jew, we must observe what we must observe,” Paul thought.
If Timothy had gone to preach without being circumcised, the Jews would have said, 'You wretch!' Also, he must have said, ‘He must have believed in Jesus because he did not want to be circumcised!
Paul circumcised Timothy to show that “believing in Jesus does not mean being a bad Jew.”
‘This man is a Jew who kept everything he had to keep!’ This is what he showed.
This also teaches us a great lesson. “Coming to church does not mean being a bad member of society.”
“As a member of society, I have to keep everything and believe in Jesus.”
I hope that you will keep everything you want to keep and become people who believe in Jesus.