What does Acts 14:1 mean?

Paul and Barnabas are in the middle of Paul's first missionary journey. They started in Syrian Antioch and sailed west to the island of Cyprus, where they exposed a Jewish false prophet and brought a Roman proconsul to faith in Christ (Acts 13:4–12). Then they traveled north to Pisidian Antioch, near the center of modern-day Asia Minor, and established a church there. When the Jewish synagogue leaders and the civil Gentile leaders grew antagonistic, Paul and Barnabas left their new converts and traveled about 90 miles southeast to Iconium (Acts 13:13–52).

Their experience in Iconium is very similar to that of Pisidian Antioch. They start in the Jewish synagogue, since Jesus came as the Jewish Messiah. Acts 13:26–47 gives us the only transcription of any of Paul's many messages in a synagogue so we can assume the others are similar. As did Stephen (Acts 7), Paul shows how Jesus of Nazareth fits the prophecies of the Messiah given in the Jewish Scriptures. Paul understands that the news about Jesus belongs to the Jews first and then the Gentiles (Romans 1:16), but some Gentiles are looking for a truer God than the Romans can offer. So, they attend the Jewish synagogue and follow the Jewish God. Many of these Gentiles, along with the Jews, accept Paul's words.

This is as Jesus planned (Acts 1:8). In Isaiah 49:6, God says of the Messiah, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." This will cause some growing pains for the mostly-Jewish church (Acts 15:1–2), but it is as God planned all along.