Would you blame God for broken bones?

Paul and Barnabas stayed in Lystra long enough (as v. 20 indicates) for a number to believe and become disciples (and, as always, to be baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2:4). Then some (unbelieving) Jews from Pisidian Antioch (about one hundred miles away) who had thrown Paul out of their city and some from Iconium (about thirty miles away) who had wanted to stone him heard of Paul’s success at Lystra. They came and persuaded the pagan crowds to help them, or at least to permit them, to carry out their plot. (Some of the pagans may have felt they were disgraced when Paul and Barnabas did not let them sacrifice to them. They did not forget this, so they listened to Paul’s enemies.)

This time they did stone Paul and “dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead” (cf. 2 Cor. 11:23, 25). Clearly he was not dead; however, he was probably unconscious and no doubt severely bruised and bloody—as well as having broken bones.55 Paul never blamed God for such sufferings. He spoke of them as “light and momentary troubles” that “are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:17).

As soon as the crowd left, the disciples formed a circle around Paul. Undoubtedly they were looking to God, who did not disappoint them. Suddenly, in what must have seemed like a resurrection, Paul stood up, obviously completely healed, “and went back into the city” with them. But, knowing the mood of the crowds, he and Barnabas left the next day for Derbe (now identified as a ruin called Kerti Hüyük, about sixty miles southeast of Lystra, near the border of the Roman province of Galatia).

Horton, S. M. (2001). Acts: A Logion Press Commentary (pp. 255–256). Springfield, MO: Logion Press.