Acts 13:13
Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia: and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem. Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia: and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem.
Paul and his company went by sea from Paphos to Perga in Pamphylia by a toilsome way that was difficult and dangerous and beset on every side with hardships and privations and dangers and persecution, while Paul and Barnabas trusted God to deliver them and kept laboring for the salvation of those who had strayed from God. John Mark had joined Paul and Barnabas during their visits to his mother in Jerusalem, whose home as a Christian convert was an asylum and place of welcome and rest where the disciples rallied from fierce persecution. He had proposed to accompany them after witnessing the power attending their ministry and miracles setting the seal of God upon their work, feeling God's favor in his own heart, seeing his mother's unwavering faith tested under trial, preaching the faith himself, longing to devote himself fully to gospel ministry, and rejoicing as their companion in the success of the mission.
At Perga in Pamphylia Mark departed from Paul and Barnabas and his company and returned to Jerusalem to the peace and comfort and safety of home, just when his help and services were most needed. He turned back because he was unused to hardship and, frightened and intimidated and disheartened and discouraged by the hardships and dangers and privations of missionary travel and by still greater difficulties expected ahead, his fear and discouragement overcame his resolve so that he refused to go farther. Like many young ministers who shrink from hardship, he preferred the comfort and safety of home to the travels and labors and dangers of the missionary field.
His departure was a failure of courage and endurance, not an abandonment of the Christian faith, and he later remained eager to serve in the ministry. His desertion caused Paul to judge him unfavorably and severely for a long time and to distrust his steadiness of character and devotion to the cause of Christ. The Lord will not encourage false theories and a low standard, and it is required of God's people to seek the Lord most earnestly, to study the light given in the book of Acts, to humble their hearts before God, and to uphold a higher moral standard in every line of the work.