The Journey Home - Acts 14:21-28

© September 14th, 2025 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Acts

If you’ve ever had the experience of going on a big trip, you know there’s something special about the journey back home, even if it’s been a great time. I think about when I chaperoned Grace’s school trip to Washington, DC. I had a great time with her and her friends throughout the week. It was a unique trip I’m glad I got to experience. But I was also looking forward to going home, even though I knew that going home meant a 16+ hour bus ride!

I suspect that was the case for Paul and Barnabas as they wrapped up their missionary journey together. It had been a tremendous experience where they had experienced incredible highs and deep lows. We don’t know how they decided that Derbe would be their last stop on their journey, but we do know that they decided to retrace their steps to check on all the converts they had made and help those churches get solid footing for the future.

It's that journey home that we’re going to look at today. Though we are only looking at a few verses this morning, these verses give us insight into what it means to care for the church, and some insight into how the church ought to function.

Derbe

We mentioned last week that while Paul and Barnabas had faced hardships in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, they apparently didn’t face hardships in Derbe. We see Luke’s summary in verses 21-22.

21 After preaching the Good News in Derbe and making many disciples, Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia, 22 where they strengthened the believers. They encouraged them to continue in the faith, reminding them that we must suffer many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God. (Acts 14:21-22, NLT)

All we are really told about their time in Derbe is that they made many disciples. Apparently, the people there were receptive to the gospel message, so they had the opportunity to really pour into them. It is noteworthy that Luke mentions they made many disciples and not merely converts in Derbe. This would suggest that they were able to spend a bit more time with the believers there and help them get off on the right foot in the Christian life.

Retracing

After they left Derbe, Luke tells us that Paul and Barnabas retraced their steps. They went back to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia, strengthening the believers in each place. We don’t know how much time had passed since they had last been to these places. Maybe it had been months, but it is not difficult to imagine some fear about returning to cities where the people had just recently tried to kill you! Given the treatment they had received in these towns, this says a lot about Paul and Barnabas!

They returned to these towns because they recognized their job wasn’t over yet. They had made converts there, but they didn’t want to leave them without solid instruction and a plan to help them succeed. These people had embraced the message of the gospel but had probably not been able to receive a lot of instruction about what they were supposed to do next. Paul and Barnabas wanted to do everything they could to help these new believers grow and become who God wanted them to be.

This is a good reminder to us that the process of discipleship doesn’t end when a person believes. We (rightly) put a lot of emphasis on sharing the message of the gospel with people who do not believe, but we aren’t always good about following up with them once they trust in Christ. The early days of your walk with Christ are important, because they help you set the tone of the rest of your life. We must not neglect the important work of discipling new believers.

What does this look like? What kinds of things do new believers need to know? I think there’s a few points we should emphasize.

First, we need to teach doctrine. Many people look down on theology. They think talking about God’s character and how He works are boring things that only the “professionals” need to worry about. But each of us has certain beliefs about God and what He desires from us. Those beliefs have a profound effect on how we view ourselves, how we view others, and how we view God. So it is important to help people establish a good base of understanding of the truth. A lot of the struggles faced by new believers can be headed off by ensuring they have a proper foundation on which to build.

Specifically, we need to help them understand doctrines of:

· Scripture—we need to teach them that the Bible is God’s Word, and it is authoritative. It is inspired by God and should alone be our guide for life. God’s Word trumps our views or the prevailing “wisdom” of our world.

· The Church—we need to help people see that God has intended us to need one another, and He has ordained the Church as the way we encourage and strengthen each other. We must help new believers get connected to a solid local church.

· Salvation—hopefully every believer has a decent grasp of the essentials of the Christian faith, but we need to remind people that our hope of salvation is not based in our goodness, but God’s grace. We must encourage new believers to trust in (without presuming upon) God’s grace, even when they mess up or don’t seem to be making progress as quickly as they might hope.

· Right living—sometimes we communicate that God loves you just as you are (which is true, in a sense), but we fail to communicate that He doesn’t want you to stay where you are! God desires much better for us. So we need to help people understand what God says about how we are to live for Him, and that His way is always better!

· Trials and hardships—we need to prepare people for the fact that while the Christian life is far better than anything the world has to offer, following Christ does not guarantee that nothing bad will happen. Many people start on the path of faith, but then turn away when things get hard, because they don’t think it’s what they signed up for. We need to prepare people for these hard times and give them the framework they need to understand that while God is in control, He often doesn’t work on our timetable, nor in the way we might expect.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I think each of these are essential doctrines that will help young Christians avoid many common pitfalls of life with Christ. These doctrines seem to be part of what Paul and Barnabas emphasized in these fledgling churches as well.

Second, we need to teach them to feed themselves. People do not suddenly know how to study the Bible simply because they’ve become a Christian. Many have never even opened the book and have no idea how to even approach reading something so massive. I like to get someone a good study Bible in a translation they can understand. Show them how to look up verses and use the table of contents. Explain the difference between the New Testament and the Old Testament. Teach them the basics of how to read scripture, to ask questions like: who’s writing, who were they talking to, what was the message the writer was trying to convey? And then once they’ve got those things down, teach them to ask, how do I apply that message to my life?

We cannot expect people to be good students of the Bible if we do not teach them how to be. Of course, this assumes that we know these things already! So, step one might be making sure you know how to feed yourself, so you can teach others to do the same.

The same is true for the discipline of prayer. Teach them that prayer is a conversation with God, not a rote recitation of words or a wish list we present to a cosmic genie. Prayer involves speaking but also listening for the whispers of the Holy Spirit.

If you’ve ever tried to teach a child to feed themselves, you know it’s a messy process, especially at the beginning. The same is true as we teach new believers how to feed themselves spiritually. There will be missteps, there will be times of confusion, and there will likely even be times of frustration. But it’s important for us to teach people where they can go for answers and how they can go about finding them. If we help them with this at the beginning, they’ll be better equipped for the days that follow.

There are surely many other lessons we can teach new believers, but these should be the some of our top priorities. Paul and Barnabas recognized that it was not enough to simply get people to believe in Christ, they needed to help them get off on the right foot in the Christian walk. It seems that they worked to instill some of these truths in the new believers in the towns they’d visited before. We would be wise to follow their pattern.

Elders

Not only did they help instruct the new believers, they also helped establish some structure for these churches to continue.

23 Paul and Barnabas also appointed elders in every church. With prayer and fasting, they turned the elders over to the care of the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. 24 Then they traveled back through Pisidia to Pamphylia. 25 They preached the word in Perga, then went down to Attalia. (Acts 14:23-25, NLT)

The first thing we should notice here is that they were establishing churches. There is a pernicious notion among some Christians today that a local church is unnecessary, and in fact, isn’t even the pattern the apostles established. I think these verses show us that simply isn’t the case. While it’s true that in the early days of the church they likely did not have their own buildings, it would be wrong to say that a local church body is not something we see in Acts.

Why is this important? It shows us that the apostles recognized that local churches are essential to helping Christians grow in their faith. Paul consistently uses the analogy of a body to describe the church, indicating that we all need each other. The church is an essential part of the life of a Christian. The notion of “going it alone” as a believer is thoroughly unbiblical.

Part of the process of establishing these local churches was to also appoint elders. There is a great deal of debate over what this word (presbuteros) means. The word literally just means older person, but it seems clear from the rest of scripture that age was not the primary concern for elders. In 1 Timothy and Titus, Paul lists several characteristics churches should be looking for when appointing elders. While it is beyond the scope of this message to dig deeply into all these characteristics, we can summarize them. Paul says an elder must:

· Exercise self-control (be faithful to his wife, not be a drunkard, etc.)

· Have a good reputation with outsiders and respected by his family

· Be gentle in the way he deals with others

· Be able to teach

Notice that most of these characteristics are not about skill, but about character. The only skill that is mentioned is being able to teach. The most important thing is that these be people who are trustworthy, committed to the faith, and will lead by example. Sometimes people read that one of the characteristics is that elders are supposed to be “above reproach” and think that means pastors or church leaders are supposed to be perfect. If you’ve known many church leaders, you know that can’t be the case. What being above reproach means is that a person is honest about their failures and is open to correction when necessary. Maybe even more importantly, when they become aware of sin in their lives, they seek to correct it—even if they do so imperfectly.

The point here is that God has gifted certain people to serve as leaders in churches. Churches need leadership structures that ensure they stay on track and are seeking the Lord above all else. Pastors are part of that leadership structure, but there is wisdom in having multiple leaders in a church. We see that in each church they appointed multiple elders. I think this is by design.

They also prayed for these leaders and commissioned them. We must never overlook the importance of prayer in selecting and empowering good leaders. We would be wise to continue to pray for those who are tasked with leading the church, that they would lead well, and that the Lord would keep them close to Him. There are many temptations in leadership, so we can help our leaders by praying for their protection.

Back Home

After retracing their steps back through the towns they visited, Paul and Barnabas finally arrived back in Antioch, where they started.

26 Finally, they returned by ship to Antioch of Syria, where their journey had begun. The believers there had entrusted them to the grace of God to do the work they had now completed. 27 Upon arriving in Antioch, they called the church together and reported everything God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, too. 28 And they stayed there with the believers for a long time. (Acts 14:26-28, NLT)

They called the church together and reported to them all that had happened. Most people believe Paul and Barnabas had been gone for more than a year, possibly approaching 2 years. Imagine what it would have been like for this church to have gotten to hear all about their journeys. They would have heard about how Paul and Barnabas were worshiped as gods and then almost killed. They would have heard about the continual opposition they seemed to face everywhere they went. They would have heard about Mark’s abandonment, and possibly about the sickness they faced.

But they would have also gotten to hear about the myriad of new believers who had come to trust in Christ. They would have learned about the leader of the Roman empire who lived in Cyprus coming to trust in Jesus after seeing Paul in a showdown with a false prophet. They would have heard about Jews coming to recognize that Jesus was the promised Messiah and Gentiles turning from their pagan ways to the one true God. They would have heard about how this entire region now had the gospel established and that these new churches would be able to continue the work which they had started.

Luke says that Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch with the believers for a long time. After all the time traveling, I suspect being back in Antioch would be a welcome time of relief and rest. They surely continued to teach and share the gospel there, but they would have been free from the burdens of traveling as apostles as they had for the last year or so.

Many scholars believe that during this time in Antioch Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians, which likely was intended to strengthen the burgeoning churches in the region they had just left. Paul had the heart of a pastor, caring for these people, feeling a burden for them, and wanting to do what he could to help them succeed and grow in their faith. So, even though he was resting up in Antioch, he was still doing what he could to care for them.

In the next chapter, we will see Paul and Barnabas return to Jerusalem, where they will report on what happened and participate in the first church council, where they wrestled with how to deal with some of the issues of the nascent Gentile church. Their example continues to be instructive to us today.

Conclusion

So what lessons can we learn from these few short verses at the end of Acts 14? First, we need each other. I don’t know if it’s because we’re Americans, and therefore fiercely independent, or if it is simply a result of sinful pride, but we like to labor under the delusion that we can function just fine without other people. But God has designed the Christian life to be lived together. He has ordained the local church to help us grow, keep us accountable, and to give us strength to tackle tasks that we cannot on our own. When we choose to absent ourselves from the local church, we are cutting ourselves off from one of the lifelines God has given to us. And we do so at our peril.

Second, we must help new Christians build a solid foundation. While it’s important to focus on getting people to trust in Jesus, the work cannot stop there. Just because someone has made a declaration of faith, it does not mean our job is over. We must help people become established in their faith, so they are prepared to face whatever comes up in their lives in the days ahead. This should be one of the primary emphases of youth and children’s programs in our churches (as opposed to merely entertainment), but it should be a primary focus for adult believers as well. We must rally alongside those who are newer to the faith and help them establish good habits and foundational beliefs that will enable them to grow into all God would have them to be.

Third, churches need solid leaders. When we talk about churches having solid leaders, I suspect most of our minds immediately think of pastors. And it is vitally important to have pastors who are solid in their faith, their knowledge, and their character. But it is also essential that we have others who carry some of these same leadership responsibilities. Not every person will be able to devote their full-time focus to the work of the church, but each of us is called to serve in some capacity. We must be diligent in identifying those with the gifts and character to lead God’s church well. And we should strive to be worthy of such a calling too.

Paul and Barnabas sought to establish these local churches and get them started on the right foot. We know these churches bore fruit in the way the participated in what God was doing in that region. The torch has now been passed to us, and we are tasked with running our leg of the race. My prayer is that as we look at the example set by Paul and Barnabas and these early churches, we will serve with the same kind of faith, heart, and perseverance that they did, so that our churches, our believers, and our work will bear the same kind of fruit in our world today.

© September 14th, 2025 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Acts