Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER XVI.
TIMOTHY ENTERS THE MINISTRY.
1-3. God gave Paul Timothy at Lystra, where they stoned him, — a memorable fact, as Timothy
was his favorite preacher throughout all his ministry, and, of course, God’s greatest blessing to him,
though received at the place where they stoned him, thus reminding us that calamities are but
blessings in disguise, and that where the devil fights hardest God gives us the brightest victory.
Timothy has a wonderful record, involving doubt as to his ever having lost his infantile justification,
owing to the invaluable blessing of his godly mother Eunice and grandmother Lois, who from his
infancy had taught him “the Holy Scriptures, which made him wise unto salvation.” Hence we have
no record of his conversion, doubtless lost sight of in his early childhood. Here we see a significant
fact that, while Paul everywhere defended the Gentile converts against the imperious demand of the
Jews to impose on them the Mosaic ordinances, here he circumcised Timothy simply to gratify the
Jews, so that he would be the more useful among them, illustrating his favorite maxim, “All things
to all men, that he may save some.” We should be perfectly limber on all questions of church rites
and ceremonies, to receive them or forego them pursuant to the glory of God through our humble
instrumentality, led by the Spirit.
4. In their evangelistic peregrinations, to the unutterable delight and edification of the Gentile
converts, they everywhere read to the churches the apostolical decrees, liberating them from all the
burdens of ecclesiasticism and conferring on them all the privileges of free grace anticipatory of
heavenly glory.
5. This proclamation of universal Gentile freedom from all burdens of Jewish ritualism, gives a
universal impetus to the gospel church throughout the Gentile world.
PAUL’S CALL TO EUROPE.
We Americans are all of European extraction. Hence this was really the evangelization of our
ancestors.
6. We find here Paul again travels through Galatia and Phrygia, where he had preached the gospel
about A.D. 35-38, during his stay at Tarsus, whither he was sent by the brethren at Jerusalem to save
his life. “Being forbidden by the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia.” This was from the simple
reason that God wanted him now to leave Asia, where he had spent all his life, go and establish the
gospel in Europe.
7. Here we see the tardiness of the human will to respond to the Holy Ghost, and at the same time
a reluctance on the part of Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke to leave Asia, their nativity, and embark
on the sea for a country they had never seen. Bithynia is back towards the interior, hence we see their
indisposition to go directly to the sea, and consequently an effort on their part to turn east and