Acts xiii. 46 — 48. Then Paul and Barnabas ivaxed bold, and said, It ivas necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you : but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the
Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they ivere glad, and glorified the word of the Lord : and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.
WHEREVER the word of God has been faith- fully dispensed, it has created a diversity of sentiment amongst the hearers ; some receiving it with grati- tude, and others rejecting it with disdain. Even when our Lord himself preached, " some said he was a good man ; whilst others said, Nay, but he deceiveth the people." Such also was the reception which the Gospel met with when ministered by the Apostles : " The multitude was divided ; and part held with the Jews, and part with the Apostles3." Our blessed Lord foretold this, and declared, that the effect of his Gospel would be, " not to bring peace on earth, but a sword ;" and " to set even the nearest relatives against each otherV The division occasioned by it at Antioch was exceeding great ; the Jews, almost universally, " rejecting it," whilst the Gentiles, in vast multitudes, took the liveliest interest in it ; insomuch that the Apostle now for the first time made the instruction and conversion of the Gentiles the great object of his ministrations.
In the words which we have now read, we see,
I. The necessity to which he was reduced —
[The obstinacy of the Jews was attended with the most distressing consequences. They, in the first instance, dis- regarded the Gospel ; but, " when they saw almost the whole city come together to hear it," they set themselves against it, with the utmost violence, " contradicting" it as false, and " blaspheming" it as wicked. With such inveteracy did they put it away from them, that they pronounced sentence, as it were, against themselves0, as altogether unworthy of eternal life. On this account, the Apostles, without any further delay, put into execution the commission they had received, and made a free offer to the Gentiles of the blessings which were thus despised by the .Tews.
a Acts xiv. 4. >' Matt. x. 34 — 36.
c This is the meaning of Kplvere tavrovg.