Acts 13:1-21

¹There were some good Christians in the church in the town called Antioch. They were men that told God’s messages and taught God’s word to people. They were Barnabas, and Simeon (his other name was Niger), and Lucius from the land called Cyrene, and Manaen (he grew up with the big boss called Herod), and Saul.

²Those men had a special time when they stopped eating any food for a while and they prayed to God. At that time the Holy Spirit said to them, “Pick out Barnabas and Saul for me now. I have special work for them to do.”

³So those men kept on praying and not eating any food for a bit longer, then they put their hands on Barnabas and Saul, and prayed for them, and told them, “You can go now and do God’s work.”

⁴The Holy Spirit told Barnabas and Saul the way to go, so they went to the town called Seleucia, and then they got on a ship and sailed to the island called Cyprus.

⁵They took John Mark with them to help them in their work. They got off the ship at a town called Salamis, and they went to the Jewish meeting houses and told the people God’s message about Jesus.

⁶Barnabas, Saul and John Mark went over to the other side of the island, to the town called Paphos. The Roman boss of the island lived there. His name was Sergius Paulus. He had a good head, and he wanted to hear God’s message, so he sent men to bring Barnabas and Saul to him. (Saul had another name. They called him Paul.) There was a Jewish man there that worked for Sergius Paulus. His Jewish name was Bar-Jesus, and his Greek name was Elymas. He was a magic man, and he used to reckon that he was telling people God’s messages, but he was lying. Elymas tried to stop Barnabas and Paul from telling God’s message to Sergius Paulus. He kept telling his Roman boss, “Don’t listen to them.”

⁹But the Holy Spirit was with Paul, and gave him power. He looked straight at Elymas

¹⁰and said, “You are just like the devil. You are full of lies and bad tricks. You try to stop everything that is good. You try to change God’s true story and you lie about him, trying to trick people. Are you ever going to stop doing that?

¹¹God will punish you now. He will make you blind and you will not see the sunlight for a while.” Suddenly Elymas felt himself going blind, and he walked around asking somebody to hold his hand and lead him.

¹²The Roman boss saw all that happen, and he heard everything Paul said about our leader Jesus. He thought, “Wow. This is different, and it’s really good.” So he believed in Jesus.

¹³Paul and his friends got on a ship and left Paphos, on Cyprus Island, and they sailed to the town called Perga, in the country called Pamphylia. Then John Mark got up and left them there, and went back to Jerusalem.

¹⁴And Paul and Barnabas went on from Perga to another town called Antioch, in the country called Pisidia. Then on Saturday, the day the Jews get together to show respect to God, Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish meeting house and sat down with the men there.

¹⁵Some of the leaders in that meeting read from God’s book. They read words from the Law that Moses wrote, and they read other words that God’s men wrote. Then the leaders asked Paul and Barnabas, “Friends, do you have something to say that will help the people here? If you do, tell us.”

¹⁶So Paul stood up and lifted up his hand to get the people to listen to him. He said, “All you Jewish men and all you other people that respect God, listen to me.

¹⁷A long time ago the God of us Jewish people picked our grand-fathers of long ago to be his own people. They went to the country called Egypt to live, and while they were there, God made them strong, and they had a lot of kids. So they became a really big mob of people. Then God used his great power and took them out of that country.

¹⁸Then they were in the desert country for 40 years. Sometimes they didn’t listen to God, but he looked after them anyway.

¹⁹Then they came to the country called Canaan, and God helped them fight against 7 different tribes, and they won. They killed all their enemies, and God gave that country to his own people to keep.

²⁰All of that took about 450 years. Then God picked leaders to look after them, until the time that Samuel was their leader. He was a man that told God’s messages to the people.

²¹Samuel was their leader, but the people asked him to get a man to be their big boss, and God gave them a man called Saul. He was the son of a man called Kish. Saul belonged to the Benjamin tribe, and he was their big boss for 40 years.