Acts: Lesson 7

Study Guide Questions for Ch. 13-14

If you are looking for the beginning of this study you can start HERE with the brief introduction. At the bottom of that introduction will be the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. For this study the English Standard Version is the translation that is being utilized and you can read it online HERE or pick up the copy of your choice from Amazon or your local book store. I find THIS EDITION to be useful for deeper study and annotation.

Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Being Chosen, Freedom vs. Bondage, Faith, Religion, Fortitude

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. Who commanded that Barnabas and Saul be “set apart” for missionary work?

2. How did Paul deal with Elymas the magician and how did this affect Sergius Paulus, the proconsul?

3. Who invited Paul and Barnabas to speak in the synagogue?

4. What story did Paul narrate to the members of the synagogue?

5. How many Old Testament passages did Paul quote while demonstrating to the synagogue of Perga that Jesus is the Christ?

6. What was the people’s initial response to Paul’s preaching at Perga?

7. To whom did Paul start preaching the gospel once many of the Jews started rejecting the message of salvation?

8. How did the Lord bear “witness to the word of his grace”?

9. The man whom Paul healed at Lystra, what had been his situation before that day?

10. Whom did the Greeks at Lystra mistake Paul and Barnabas for after the man was healed?

11. What did the men at Lystra later do to Paul after “Jews came from antioch and iconium”?

12. What did Paul and Barnabas appoint “in every church, with prayer and fasting” as they returned to Antioch?

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. Why is Acts 13:1-3 helpful for establishing the personhood and deity of the Holy Spirit?

2. Why might Bar-Jesus (Elymas) want to keep the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, from believing the gospel Paul is preaching?

3. How was Paul’s act of blinding Bar-Jesus similar and different to what happened to him on the road to Damascus?

4. Why did Paul quote the Old Testament so much when trying to prove that Jesus was the Messiah/Christ?

5. Why did Paul preach to the Jews first and then the gentiles thereafter?

6. What does it mean when the text says, “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed”?

7. Why did the Lord enable Paul and Barnabas to do “signs and wonders”?

8. Why would the Greeks have thought Paul was Hermes and Barnabas was Zeus? Why not some other gods?

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. What is the virtue of fortitude and how do we see good examples of this virtue in our present reading?

2. Narration is part of the progymnasmata (classical writing exercises) and it involves the retelling of a story as part of a speech or written work. How do we see Paul giving a narration in this reading?

3. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in each church they planted. What is an elder and how important is it to have elders in each local church? Can there be a local church without elders? Explain your answer carefully.

4. Paul and Barnabas went from having to try to stop the people from worshiping them to Paul being stoned and thrown out of the city. What makes people so fickle? How is it that at one moment someone can believe something and act one way and then the next moment they behave completely contrary to that? What can help keep us from being just like that?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. The church at Antioch had “prophets and teachers”. According to Ephesians 4:11-12 why did God give such people to the church? What other kinds of ministers did he give to the church?

2. Read 1 Timothy 3. List three qualities of an Elder and three qualities of a Deacon. What separates the two offices as distinct from one another?