What is the significance of Lystra in the Bible?

City of Lycaonia, in Asia Minor. Paul and Barnabas fled thither from Iconium, and there cured a cripple, which caused the inhabitants to think they were gods, to whom they would have offered sacrifices had not the apostles restrained them. Soon afterwards however, being incited by the Jews, they stoned Paul and left him for dead. The labours of the apostles were not in vain, an assembly of saints was gathered there. It was again visited by Paul on his second missionary journey, when he met with Timothy, and attached him to his mission. Acts 14:6-21; Acts 16:1-2; 2 Tim. 3:11.

Jews then appeared coming from Iconium and Antioch and stirred up the people against them. The mass of people who were ready to worship Barnabas and Paul changed quickly and stoned Paul. Most likely the fury turned against him because he had been instrumental in healing the crippled man. As the stones fell upon him, must he not have remembered Stephen? And may he not have prayed as Stephen did? And after they thought him dead, they dragged his body out of the city. But the Lord, who had announced such suffering for him, had watched over his servant. He was in His own hands, as every child of God is in His care. The enemy who stood behind the furious mob, as he stood behind the attempt to sacrifice unto them, would have killed Paul. But he could not touch Paul's life, as he was not Permitted to touch the life of another servant of God, Job (Job 2:6). His sudden recovery was supernatural. He refers in 2 Corinthians 11:25 to this stoning, "Once I was stoned." Another reference to Lystra we find in his second Epistle to Timothy: "Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions I endured; but out of them all the Lord delivered me" (2 Timothy 3:11). Blessed be His name, He is the same Lord still and Will deliver them that trust in Him.

At Lystra a remarkable miracle was wrought through Paul. A man lame from birth was healed; a miracle almost the exact counterpart of the one wrought by Peter, which we read of in chapter 3. That was done in the very heart of Judaism, and while it gave a great opening for testimony it also brought upon the Apostles the wrath of the Jewish leaders. This was done in the presence of the heathen, who interpreted the wonderful happening in the light of their false beliefs, and would have made an idolatrous festival, had not the Apostles protested, seizing the opportunity to declare to them the true and living God, who is the Creator. The Lycaonians would have done exactly what Paul charges the heathen with doing in Romans 1:25, saying they "worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever."

The fickleness of men is illustrated in verse 19. The people who would have deified Paul are very easily persuaded against him by certain Jews who followed his footsteps, and they stone him, as they thought, to death. Paul now undergoes the very thing he had helped to bring upon Stephen. In the case of Stephen God did not intervene; in Paul's case He did. Whether Paul was really dead, or whether only battered nearly to the point of death, we have no means of knowing: whichever it was, his restoration, almost in an instant, to ordinary health and strength, was a miracle. The next day he journeyed forth to preach the Gospel in another city, just as though nothing had happened to him.

During this first mission among the Gentiles, a great and blessed work was done. Compare Acts 13 & 14. Many places were visited, churches were planted, elders were appointed, the hostility of the Jews manifested, and the energy of the Holy Ghost displayed in the power and progress of the truth. At Lystra, Christianity was confronted, for the first time, with paganism; but in every place the gospel triumphs, and the various gifts of Paul as a workman, most blessedly appear. In addressing either the Jews who knew the scriptures, or ignorant barbarians, or cultivated Greeks, or enraged mobs, he proves himself to be a chosen vessel divinely fitted for his great work.

THIS CHAPTER OPENS with Paul back at Derbe and Lystra, back, that is, to the scenes where he had suffered the stoning. In those very places he now finds Timothy, who was to become in his latter years such a comfort to him. A happy illustration of how God's government acts in favour of the godly. We are apt to think of it only as acting against the ungodly. Out of the place of Paul's sufferings sprang one of his greatest comforts.

But God had further work for him. While the disciples stood around him, no doubt deeply grieving (for it is not even said they were praying), he not only moved as showing evidence that he was alive, but stood up and walked with them into the city. In a case like this too we should expect more than a brief period of recuperation, but after a night's rest he was ready to walk with Barnabas to Derbe and preach the gospel there God's miraculous intervention is evident in this. How long they remained in Derbe we are not told, but they taught many.

Though Paul had been stoned and left for dead at Lystra, he and Barnabas boldly return there after their stay in Derbe, undoubtedly guided by God. We may wonder how the citizens of Lystra felt in seeing this man they had stoned to death now preaching again in their city. Did they wonder if he was Mercury after all? Very likely Timothy was converted on either the first visit to Lystra or on this second occasion (Compare Acts 16:2, 1 Tim.1:2, 2 Tim.3:10-11).

As at Iconium there was seen the power of Him who was with His word, so now at Lystra is demonstrated the fickleness of the multitude, who presently stone the man whom at first they would have worshiped as a god. The healing of the impotent man suggests the latter; yet is all incompetent to commend to the mass the blessed truth brought to them by the healer, which should have been its own commendation; while the tale of his traducers finds its way to the very bottom of their hearts! Both ways one touches boundaries here, but finds good nowhere. Men will idolize you, perhaps; for God has lost His place with them, and it is easily given to another. They will destroy their idol too, as easily. This is the creature, man, to whom nevertheless God has sent a message of infinite grace, the story of a work more wonderful than ever blessed before the ears that hear it; but over this he has the greatest difficulty! What but the power of the Spirit could one trust to make way for the gospel in a world like this?

Preserved from it at Iconium, Paul is permitted to be stoned at Lystra; how, amid it all, his mind must have gone back to Stephen! but that he should abide in the flesh was needful yet for many; and this, and not the wills of lawless men, governs all: while the disciples stand round him, he rises up, and returns into the city. "Fear would have said, Go anywhere else just now. Self would have said, Stay there, and see what a future triumph for the gospel! But the thoughts of man are in neither suggestion the mind of Christ; and this the apostle had and acted on." (W. Kelly.) "On the morrow he went away with Barnabas to Derbe."

But idolatry was not the only danger at Lystra though others entered the scene characteristically to oppose, calumniate, and persecute. This is mostly the work of men who know some truth, but are jealous of more and better. These are the men who stifle conscience and are athirst for blood — blood of God's saints and Christ's servants, whom their ill-will blinds them to regard as the most wicked of men. So it was, and so it is. 'But Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium; and having persuaded the crowds and stoned Paul, they dragged him without the city, supposing that he was dead.' These adversaries were not wholly ignorant of God's testimony in the gospel. They knew enough to feel how immeasurably it rose above the law, and that it exceeded in glory was enough for their hard and proud hearts, which disdained to own their ruin, any more than God's righteousness which can and does justify the ungodly through the faith of Christ. To the law they adhered, because it was theirs rather than because it is God's, to the law, even though it can, as such, show no mercy to the guilty, and itself bears witness to the Messiah, the only Saviour of the lost. But to this witness they were wholly blind, being only alive to the pride of possessing it from God to the exclusion of all others. Yet when the gospel went out to others, they were eager to persuade these poor despised heathens that the word of God's grace which Paul preached was nothing but imposture. Alas! they found the crowds there, as ever since, ready victims. And why? That very refusal of homage, which the Lystrans were ready to pay, is most offensive to man, and disposes him to believe the most odious misrepresentations of those he was about to worship. Men exalt themselves by human adoration, and to be balked of it soon turns to the hatred and perhaps death of those who seek the honour of the only God. So it was here. Instead of changing their minds like the Maltese (who from a murderer regarded Paul as a god, Acts 28:6), they listen to Jewish calumny though ordinarily despised, and stone as a false prophet him to whom they had been so lately wishing to sacrifice, leaving him dragged without the city as a dead man.

But his life was in him, as he himself said later of Eutychus; and as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up and entered into the city (ver. 20). Paul's work was only beginning, not done. To abide in the flesh was needful for many sinners as for all saints. It could not be that he was to expire thus, though Jews had incited Gentiles to do their worst, and imagined all was over. Grace had called him to its own great work of salvation, as well as of edifying the body of Christ. Nor was it enough that he rose up; he entered into the city, from which he had just been dragged outside as a corpse. Such was the faith and love of this more than martyr soul. Of him, if of any, we may surely say that the world was not worthy. Christ alone was and is the worthy One Paul could say, as he did, 'To me to live is Christ' — not the work only but Himself, of all things the most elevating, purifying, and strengthening of motives in that work. It is the spring of lowliness as of love, of courage as of faith. So rising up Paul entered into Lystra. Fear would have said, Go anywhere else just now. Self would have whispered, Stay there and see what a future triumph for the gospel! But the thoughts of man in neither suggestion are the mind of Christ, and this the apostle had, and acted upon. May it also be ours in His grace!

The heathen priest of Jupiter brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and would have done sacrifice to the servants of the Lord. Paul and Barnabas were terribly distressed at this turn of events, rent their clothes, and cried out that they were men of like passions to themselves, that they proclaimed the LIVING God, who made heaven and earth and sea, who cared for His creatures by giving rain and fruitful seasons. Their desire was that they should forsake such vanities as worshipping gods of man’s making. With difficulty they restrained the people from sacrificing to them. How soon the attitude of men can change! One day wishing to offer sacrifice to Barnabas and Paul as gods; a day or two passed by, and these same people allowed stranger Jews to stone Paul and drag him out of the city, where he was left, as they supposed he was dead.

What happened was this. Their Jewish persecutors followed them from Iconium, distant about 30 miles, and from Antioch, distant about 100 miles. Does it not show the malignity that men are capable of, that they would travel such distances to oppose the Word of God? Once these persecutors arrived in Lystra, they persuaded the people that Paul was not fit to live. So they stoned him. He would remember, surely the day when he helped to stone Stephen. Look at the insensible body of the Apostle as it lay on the ground, blood streaming from many a wound. Paul could not forget that day. “Once I was stoned” (2 Cor. 11:25), was his comment to the Corinthian church.

Faithful as the servants of the living God, they thus, though with difficulty, restrained the multitudes from sacrificing to them. A new experience now awaited Paul. He had escaped for his life from Damascus. He had fled with Barnabas from Iconium, when an onset was made to use them despitefully. Now pursued by Jews from Antioch and Iconium, with the cognisance of the people of Lystra, they succeeded in stoning him. Had they accomplished their purpose and silenced for ever the voice of that man whom they could not overcome by their arguments? It seemed like it when they dragged him out of the city supposing that he was dead. Thus far had they been allowed to go. But his life was in God's hands. Something of the great things that he must suffer for Christ's sake he had now experienced. Stoned, and left for dead, his enemies were satisfied. Now the Lord worked and raised up His servant. For, when surrounded by the disciples, with sorrowful hearts we may well believe, and doubtless to the surprise of all, he rose up and re-entered the city. On the morrow able to travel, he went with Barnabas to break new ground at Derbe. His life seemed a charmed one. Not only did he revive, but he was able for the twenty miles journey on the next day, and to begin in a new place to preach the glad tidings of salvation.