Saturday Acts 9:26-31

Saul returns to Jerusalem.

Click here for an online Bible. Acts 9:26-31

After three years, Saul returned to Jerusalem. His desire was to meet the apostles. At first, all of the Christians were afraid of him. Barnabas stepped in and acted as an intermediary to take Saul to the apostles.

We see in Galatians 1:18 that he spent 15 days with Peter. Saul needed the legitimacy of his time with the apostles to gain the trust of the Christian community. He began to preach the gospel to the Hellenistic Jews. This was the same community that Stephen had tried to reach with the gospel. Their response to him was the same as it was with Stephen. They tried to kill him too.

The Christian community stepped in and protected him and sent him back to his home town of Tarsus. He spent the next five years there and we don’t really know much about what happened there.

Luke has been showing the expansion of the gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth both geographically and by demographic groups. He began with the Jews in Jerusalem and surrounding Judea. Next the gospel went to Samaria and then to “partial Jews” (the Ethiopian eunuch). Next he introduced us to Saul (Paul) who will be the main character to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

His next account will be back with the apostles as the gospel makes the unthinkable jump to the Gentiles.