On to Jerusalem
1 After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Kos. The next day we went to Rhodes and from there to Patara. 2 We found a ship crossing over to Phoenicia, went on board and set sail. 3 After sighting Cyprus and passing to the south of it, we sailed on to Syria. We landed at Tyre, where our ship was to unload its cargo. 4 We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. 5 When it was time to leave, we left and continued on our way. All of them, including wives and children, accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray. 6 After saying goodbye to each other, we went aboard the ship, and they returned home.
7 We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. 8 Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. 9 He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.
10 After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’”
12 When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 14 When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”
15 After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. 16 Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us and brought us to the home of Mnason, where we were to stay. He was a man from Cyprus and one of the early disciples.
Dig DeeperOne of the myths that I have discovered as it relates to marathon runners is that you can reach a certain level of conditioning where running a marathon becomes easy and doesn’t hurt at all. Although I would agree that you can certainly attain a level of fitness where being able to finish a marathon is not really in doubt, no runners that I know ever get to a point where finishing a marathon is easy. No matter how strong and well-trained you are, running 26.2 miles (42 k) is going to be physically unpleasant in one way or another, if you are running at your maximum speed potential for that distance. Yet every time there is a marathon, you see hundreds and even thousands line up at the starting line and undertake the adventure. They have learned that their commitment to undertake the race outweighs the physical pain and discomfort and so they don’t allow the negative to deter them from reaching their goal.
This same principle can be seen in many different ways in life whether it is a young student who undertakes a long and rigorous course of study because they feel called to a particular field in life, or a soldier who dutifully charges into battle knowing that he will likely die because his sense of duty and honor outweigh the normal human instinct to preserve one’s life. All around us we can see examples of people accepting varying levels of sacrifice for a cause that they consider higher than the sacrifice itself.
Yet, as a minister, I can’t tell you how many times I have sat down with someone who is despondent because they have been doing everything they knew to do and been as faithful as they could and yet they have found their life in Christ to be full of much more trial, struggle, and sacrifice than they could have imagined. Underneath the surface they have mistakenly accepted an erroneous belief that following God’s will in their life should lead them away from trials and into a life of perfect peace and even ease. If that’s the case, though, then Jesus and Paul had no idea of how to follow God’s will in their lives. Jesus perfectly followed God’s will and Paul is the best example this side of Jesus of a human committing their life to God’s will, and they both constantly ran into rejection and persecution.
It appears that following God’s will often leads us straight into trouble not away from it. But trusting in God brings unexplainable peace and joy despite those trials. This is what Paul knew well and lived out consistently in his life. He had died to himself and was completely committed to following God’s will wherever it took and regardless of how personally uncomfortable it might be. That is why in the face of guaranteed suffering and persecution Paul didn’t run the other way but set his face towards it marched towards God’s will despite the consequences. He had learned that dedication to God’s will far outweighed the negative consequences of being so devoted to his God. But Acts is not a book about Paul. It is all about the spread of the gospel through the power of the Spirit so we shouldn’t be caught up in thinking what an incredible guy Paul was (although he certainly was pretty amazing), but we should instead look at Paul’s resolve in moments like the one described in this passage and realize that Luke’s point was that this was the kind of resolve it took to spread the gospel as radically and quickly as it spread in the first century. That was what it took then and it is still what it will take today.
Paul knew that the road ahead of him was rife with suffering and opposition but that didn’t deter him from setting his face towards Jerusalem just as Jesus had set his face toward the same city despite knowing that he would die there (Lk. 9:51). Paul’s fate would not be the same as Jesus’ once he reached Jerusalem but his motivation was the same. He was locked into doing the will of God and would not let the prospect of discomfort keep him from embracing that with his life.
The church in Tyre had likely been planted by disciples who fled Jerusalem following the persecution that broke out after Paul (Saul) had approved of the stoning death of Stephen. It seems that Paul did not know this Christian community but had perhaps only vaguely heard of them as Luke tells us that they sought out the disciples, using a specific term (aneurisko) that referred to finding something after searching diligently for it. Once there Paul stayed with them for seven days waiting for his next ship. While there it appears that some brothers there felt that the Spirit gave them insight into the suffering that Paul would face in Jerusalem. Through this revelation of the Spirit, they interpreted this to mean that Paul should perhaps not go to Jerusalem and pleaded with him to not go. There is a bit of irony in the probability that a church created by persecution initiated by Paul in Jerusalem was now urging the very same man to stay away from Jerusalem where he might face his own suffering and persecution. What Luke is making clear is that Paul well knew what lie ahead of him. The Spirit made sure that it was clear to all what Paul faced but the Spirit had also made clear to Paul that this was his calling in Christ, so no matter how many brothers and sisters tried to lovingly protect Paul, he knew what he had to do. He was more committed to the Spirit’s call in his life than he was self-preservation or a life free of trouble. In fact Paul feared no evil even though he knew that God’s will often traveled directly through the valley of the shadow of death.
After being lovingly escorted out of Tyre by his family of believers there, Paul prayed with them and continued on his journey, spending a day with disciples in Ptolemais. That may seem like a short time and it is, but I can attest that through the power of the Spirit that brings us into supernatural fellowship with other believers in distant lands, you can grow very close in heart and spirit with brothers and sisters as you travel through their area despite spending just a few hours with them.
After his brief stint in Ptolemais Paul continued on towards Jerusalem and eventually landed at the house of Philip the evangelist in Caesarea. Philip had been one of the original six men apportioned by the Spirit for benevolent work in the church (Acts 6:3-6). He had also spread the gospel in Samaria and the coastal plain of Judea and Caesarea (Acts 8:40). But that was around twenty years earlier so we can assume that Philip had stayed in Caesarea and been instrumental in building a church there. This possibly indicates that evangelists in the formative church planted churches and sometimes moved on to the next planting, but they also sometimes stayed put for long periods of time if that was the Spirit’s will. As we reunite with Philip we find him with four young daughters, probably all in their teenage years. All four had been given the miraculous gift through the Spirit of speaking God’s word by prophesying (This was a gift that was needed in the young church where the New Covenant Scriptures had yet to be completed and spread throughout the churches.)
After a few days with the disciples in Caesarea, Agabus arrived from Judea. He had two things lending credibility to the prophecy that he would give while there. The first was that he had just come from the Jerusalem area and he well knew the atmosphere in the city. The second was that he was already a respected prophet (Acts 11:28) who had prophesied the terrible famine that would strike the Roman world.
Agabus would deliver this prophecy in the fine tradition of the acted prophecy, a technique used often by the Old Testament prophets (for example: Isa. 20:2; Jer. 13:4-11; 19:1-15; Ezek. 4-5) and quite possibly by Jesus as he cleared the Temple and acted out God’s impending judgment and his authority to declare that judgment upon Jerusalem. Agabus tied himself up with Paul’s own belt to demonstrate what would happen to Paul in Jerusalem. It didn’t wind up happening precisely the way someone listening to Agabus that day might have guessed but prophecy rarely does work that way. The Jews would bind Paul up and he would be handed over to the Romans though and that was the point. Hard times lay ahead for Paul in Jerusalem.
These were deeply committed, God-fearing, Spirit-led Christians that listened to Agabus that day but they were also brothers and sisters that deeply loved and cared for Paul. On hearing such a frightening future for Paul, they wept and urged him to avoid Jerusalem. Surely Paul had suffered enough and what if he died there? What would that mean for those to whom Paul meant so much? Their love for him and concern that they would never see him again if he went to Jerusalem broke Paul’s heart for he cared for them just as deeply. But the threat of being bound in chains would not deter Paul. In fact, if the Spirit was leading him to his own death, then Paul had already accepted that long ago. He had died already (Gal. 2:20) and the life he lived was all about Christ and the gospel so physical death would not intimidate Paul one bit. He was fully committed to the heart that Jesus had prayed for in Gethsemane; God’s will be done. And if that will led him to die in the same city that his Lord had died then sobeit.
Throughout the book of Acts Luke consistently gives us the picture of an ever-advancing gospel despite the constant opposition and persecution that Jesus said would be the fate of his people. Jesus knew that his death awaited him and yet he resolutely marched straight towards that end so that God’s kingdom might be advanced. What happened there in Jerusalem through his death and resurrection gave birth to a people that were just as willing to march to theit own deaths so that glory could be brought to good, his will be done, and his kingdom advanced. The question that we must constantly ask ourselves is whether or not we truly stand in that tradition. Are we willing to imitate Paul as he imitated Christ? We may not be faced with our own physical deaths but it can be amazing how tightly we cling to our own lives even when the stakes are much less can’t it?
Devotional Thought
When we really commit ourselves to following the Spirit we will quickly find out that this will be a life for our ultimate benefit but it will not be one of comfort and ease. Are you truly willing to be led by the Spirit even if he leads you to do things you’d rather not do? He may not be calling you to suffer in Jerusalem but maybe it’s something as unpleasant as sharing your faith with someone in a situation that is extremely uncomfortable for you. Are you willing to go where the Spirit leads?
Monday, January 30, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Acts 20:28-38
28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.[b] 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
32 “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
Dig Deeper
When I was in high school I was privileged enough to be able to drive my own car. Technically it belonged to my parents but they pretty much let it be my car. I drove it and had total access to it but I had to pay for gas and otherwise take care of it. My car was a 1976 dark green Dodge Aspen and if you know anything about cars you know that this means that this beast was about the size of the Queen Mary and was made of solid steel. If you hit something with that car you would want to get out and see what destruction you had wrought on the other item but there was little danger of doing anything to mess that car up. In short, this thing was what we called a “beater.” You couldn’t really do any serious damage to it but it was such an old ugly car that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Because of that I didn’t mind letting anyone drive it. I wasn’t that concerned. Anyone could drive that car without worrying much about having to be super careful or damaging it because it just wasn’t worth much.
In contrast however, a few years ago a friend asked me to drive their very new and fairly expensive car for them for a weekend. To be honest I was quite nervous the entire weekend. When I drove, I was sure to drive extra carefully. I didn’t want to bring anything extra into the car for fear of spilling something and I took the care to even clean the bottoms of my shoes before swinging my feet into the vehicle itself. Throughout the weekend I went to great pains to make sure that I cared for that car because it was so valuable and meant so much to the owner. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth when it came to my old Aspen.
Behind these farewell words to the Ephesian elders lies something of that concept. Paul had put a great deal of effort, care, and tears into his ministry with them. He toiled and gave every ounce of energy and care he had because they were precious to him. He was careful in everything that he did and now he was urging the elders to take that same care and treat the congregation with the same love and tears that he had. But it was not because of how much they meant to him, although they meant a great deal. Paul understood how expensive and how valuable God’s flock was and knew that leaders should care for the flock very carefully because of how much it meant to God.
There is a great deal of shepherd imagery throughout the Old Testament where God is held up as the perfect shepherd (Psalm 23 for example), but he regularly calls the leaders of Israel to shepherd his flocks and tend for them well. In light of that call God often used his prophets to denounce judgment upon those leaders for not shepherding his people in a loving or selfless fashion. Standing most clearly behind the imagery and language that Paul uses here in his exhortation of the Ephesian elders was Ezekiel’s warning to Israel’s shepherds: “Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezek. 34:2-4). Israel had failed to Shepherd God’s people and he didn’t take kindly to that, so as shepherds of God’s family in the new covenant, Paul warned these elders to guard the flock.
Their motivation for this watchful care was simple. The sheer value of the flock to God was inestimable. God had paid the highest price imaginable for his people; his very own blood, or more specifically, the blood of Jesus Christ. God had purchased his family at the steepest of prices and therefore expected those that he made overseers of the flock to handle with special care. The flock was no beater car but God’s prized possession and he wanted them shepherded with the same care and concern that he himself would love his people.
This was such a vital concern because Paul knew that savage wolves would come from within the flock and ravage it with selfish leadership and false teaching (Matt. 7:15-19; 2 Peter 2:1-22). Paul had given his blood, sweat and tears for three years, knowing that this was not just a possibility within the flock but a probability. No shepherd is above having wolves attack; no flock is safe. Sadly, it appears a possibility that at least some of the leaders standing there that day did not heed Paul’s words and may have even become wolves themselves. Just a few years later Paul would write Timothy, who was leading the church in Ephesus by then, on how to deal with the false teachers that had arisen. He goes on to instruct Timothy on how to choose elders and other leaders well, quite possibly because some of these very elders had abandoned the truth of the gospel and taken up teaching things that they did not even understand (1 Tim. 1:6-7). Not long after that, John wrote and praised the church for their dedication in testing false and true teachers and having stayed clean from false teaching, yet he did go on to rebuke them for having become unloving and passionate about their Christian faith (Rev. 2:1-6). By the close of the first century, however, the church leader Ignatius would write and affirm that Ephesus had indeed repented and had regained their first love and passion as well as still holding firm to the true gospel. It had taken some challenges, but they had learned Paul’s lessons well.
Paul knew the importance of holding to the word of God as the standard of obedience and the acid test for God’s people because it was the only thing that would give them the inheritance of being God’s family. Paul’s words here are not all that different from Peter when he urged that elders should “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Pet. 5:2-4).
But Paul’s words were not empty. The call to be such careful shepherds had weight precisely because Paul could point to the way that he had carried himself among them as a shepherd. His life echoed Peter’s exhortation. Paul had shepherded them because he was willing and full of the love of God, never “pursuing dishonest gain” or leading for his own advantage as the shepherds of Ezekiel 34 had done.
Everything about Paul’s ministry exhibited love for others and he was confident in reminding them of that. He was confident in calling them to that way of life as their example. He had lived the life of Christ among them and could now, with a clean conscience, urge them to that same dedication in life. But Paul was no cock-eyed optimist. He understood that all of this was hard work. That is exactly why he felt the need to call them together one last time and urge them to keep their eye on the ball. Ministry and leadership must never become about the leaders being exalted, honored, or taken care. Shepherds are not in the business of shepherding so that the sheep can make the shepherd’s life easier. Shepherds are caretakers. The minute the focus of ministry is taken off of the sheep and put onto the shepherd is the minute it ceases to be godly ministry. But we must be on guard constantly. Poor shepherds don’t just come in the form of blatant false teachers and those that seek to become rich on the backs of members. Self-focus in ministry is usually far more subtle than that. It begins when we start to notice all the things we lay down and the many things we do to care for the sheep and we start to expect that the sheep start showing a little gratitude and appreciation for how difficult and demanding shepherding can be. The moment we start down that road as shepherds, Satan has gained a foothold of which he will not let go easily.
For that very reason, Paul reminded them of the words of Jesus himself that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This sentence doesn’t come from any of the gospels but must have been a well known oral memory or teaching of Jesus (or it possibly could have been something that Jesus said directly to Paul during their initial confrontation in Damascus). This principle should not be reduced to some pithy Christmas-time saying, though. Paul’s direct context was that of ministry. It is all about giving of our lives and not just receiving. Guarding the flock means that leaders stand ever-vigilant against the subtle temptress of getting just a little back in reward for their work.
As a true testament to Paul’s deep relationships with the elders in Ephesus was the tears that were shed after his words and their final prayer together. Paul had shed many tears with them and for them in ministry and now it was their turn to weep as they realized that they would not see him again. It was Paul’s deep and emotional relationship with them, in fact ,that allowed him to warn them so sternly and straightforwardly. Without the relationship his words would have seemed biting and bitter indeed but they embraced it as loving words of their brother because he had loved them so well. We must never forget, however, that the tears in a relationship don’t come easy. They must be worked for. Perhaps we will begin to see more shepherds in our churches today of the type that Paul called them to be when we start to see more tears.
Devotional Thought
How much effort do you put into your relationships within the body of Christ? Does it come even close to the level of tears? What would it look like for you to put that kind of effort into building deep relationships within the church family? What would be the rewards if you did put that type of effort in?
32 “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
Dig Deeper
When I was in high school I was privileged enough to be able to drive my own car. Technically it belonged to my parents but they pretty much let it be my car. I drove it and had total access to it but I had to pay for gas and otherwise take care of it. My car was a 1976 dark green Dodge Aspen and if you know anything about cars you know that this means that this beast was about the size of the Queen Mary and was made of solid steel. If you hit something with that car you would want to get out and see what destruction you had wrought on the other item but there was little danger of doing anything to mess that car up. In short, this thing was what we called a “beater.” You couldn’t really do any serious damage to it but it was such an old ugly car that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Because of that I didn’t mind letting anyone drive it. I wasn’t that concerned. Anyone could drive that car without worrying much about having to be super careful or damaging it because it just wasn’t worth much.
In contrast however, a few years ago a friend asked me to drive their very new and fairly expensive car for them for a weekend. To be honest I was quite nervous the entire weekend. When I drove, I was sure to drive extra carefully. I didn’t want to bring anything extra into the car for fear of spilling something and I took the care to even clean the bottoms of my shoes before swinging my feet into the vehicle itself. Throughout the weekend I went to great pains to make sure that I cared for that car because it was so valuable and meant so much to the owner. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth when it came to my old Aspen.
Behind these farewell words to the Ephesian elders lies something of that concept. Paul had put a great deal of effort, care, and tears into his ministry with them. He toiled and gave every ounce of energy and care he had because they were precious to him. He was careful in everything that he did and now he was urging the elders to take that same care and treat the congregation with the same love and tears that he had. But it was not because of how much they meant to him, although they meant a great deal. Paul understood how expensive and how valuable God’s flock was and knew that leaders should care for the flock very carefully because of how much it meant to God.
There is a great deal of shepherd imagery throughout the Old Testament where God is held up as the perfect shepherd (Psalm 23 for example), but he regularly calls the leaders of Israel to shepherd his flocks and tend for them well. In light of that call God often used his prophets to denounce judgment upon those leaders for not shepherding his people in a loving or selfless fashion. Standing most clearly behind the imagery and language that Paul uses here in his exhortation of the Ephesian elders was Ezekiel’s warning to Israel’s shepherds: “Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezek. 34:2-4). Israel had failed to Shepherd God’s people and he didn’t take kindly to that, so as shepherds of God’s family in the new covenant, Paul warned these elders to guard the flock.
Their motivation for this watchful care was simple. The sheer value of the flock to God was inestimable. God had paid the highest price imaginable for his people; his very own blood, or more specifically, the blood of Jesus Christ. God had purchased his family at the steepest of prices and therefore expected those that he made overseers of the flock to handle with special care. The flock was no beater car but God’s prized possession and he wanted them shepherded with the same care and concern that he himself would love his people.
This was such a vital concern because Paul knew that savage wolves would come from within the flock and ravage it with selfish leadership and false teaching (Matt. 7:15-19; 2 Peter 2:1-22). Paul had given his blood, sweat and tears for three years, knowing that this was not just a possibility within the flock but a probability. No shepherd is above having wolves attack; no flock is safe. Sadly, it appears a possibility that at least some of the leaders standing there that day did not heed Paul’s words and may have even become wolves themselves. Just a few years later Paul would write Timothy, who was leading the church in Ephesus by then, on how to deal with the false teachers that had arisen. He goes on to instruct Timothy on how to choose elders and other leaders well, quite possibly because some of these very elders had abandoned the truth of the gospel and taken up teaching things that they did not even understand (1 Tim. 1:6-7). Not long after that, John wrote and praised the church for their dedication in testing false and true teachers and having stayed clean from false teaching, yet he did go on to rebuke them for having become unloving and passionate about their Christian faith (Rev. 2:1-6). By the close of the first century, however, the church leader Ignatius would write and affirm that Ephesus had indeed repented and had regained their first love and passion as well as still holding firm to the true gospel. It had taken some challenges, but they had learned Paul’s lessons well.
Paul knew the importance of holding to the word of God as the standard of obedience and the acid test for God’s people because it was the only thing that would give them the inheritance of being God’s family. Paul’s words here are not all that different from Peter when he urged that elders should “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Pet. 5:2-4).
But Paul’s words were not empty. The call to be such careful shepherds had weight precisely because Paul could point to the way that he had carried himself among them as a shepherd. His life echoed Peter’s exhortation. Paul had shepherded them because he was willing and full of the love of God, never “pursuing dishonest gain” or leading for his own advantage as the shepherds of Ezekiel 34 had done.
Everything about Paul’s ministry exhibited love for others and he was confident in reminding them of that. He was confident in calling them to that way of life as their example. He had lived the life of Christ among them and could now, with a clean conscience, urge them to that same dedication in life. But Paul was no cock-eyed optimist. He understood that all of this was hard work. That is exactly why he felt the need to call them together one last time and urge them to keep their eye on the ball. Ministry and leadership must never become about the leaders being exalted, honored, or taken care. Shepherds are not in the business of shepherding so that the sheep can make the shepherd’s life easier. Shepherds are caretakers. The minute the focus of ministry is taken off of the sheep and put onto the shepherd is the minute it ceases to be godly ministry. But we must be on guard constantly. Poor shepherds don’t just come in the form of blatant false teachers and those that seek to become rich on the backs of members. Self-focus in ministry is usually far more subtle than that. It begins when we start to notice all the things we lay down and the many things we do to care for the sheep and we start to expect that the sheep start showing a little gratitude and appreciation for how difficult and demanding shepherding can be. The moment we start down that road as shepherds, Satan has gained a foothold of which he will not let go easily.
For that very reason, Paul reminded them of the words of Jesus himself that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This sentence doesn’t come from any of the gospels but must have been a well known oral memory or teaching of Jesus (or it possibly could have been something that Jesus said directly to Paul during their initial confrontation in Damascus). This principle should not be reduced to some pithy Christmas-time saying, though. Paul’s direct context was that of ministry. It is all about giving of our lives and not just receiving. Guarding the flock means that leaders stand ever-vigilant against the subtle temptress of getting just a little back in reward for their work.
As a true testament to Paul’s deep relationships with the elders in Ephesus was the tears that were shed after his words and their final prayer together. Paul had shed many tears with them and for them in ministry and now it was their turn to weep as they realized that they would not see him again. It was Paul’s deep and emotional relationship with them, in fact ,that allowed him to warn them so sternly and straightforwardly. Without the relationship his words would have seemed biting and bitter indeed but they embraced it as loving words of their brother because he had loved them so well. We must never forget, however, that the tears in a relationship don’t come easy. They must be worked for. Perhaps we will begin to see more shepherds in our churches today of the type that Paul called them to be when we start to see more tears.
Devotional Thought
How much effort do you put into your relationships within the body of Christ? Does it come even close to the level of tears? What would it look like for you to put that kind of effort into building deep relationships within the church family? What would be the rewards if you did put that type of effort in?
Monday, January 23, 2012
Acts 20:13-27
13 We went on ahead to the ship and sailed for Assos, where we were going to take Paul aboard. He had made this arrangement because he was going there on foot. 14 When he met us at Assos, we took him aboard and went on to Mitylene. 15 The next day we set sail from there and arrived off Chios. The day after that we crossed over to Samos, and on the following day arrived at Miletus. 16 Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia, for he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost.
17 From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. 18 When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. 19 I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. 20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
22 “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.
25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.
Dig Deeper
Now days you can walk into virtually any Christian bookstore and find shelves full of books on how to grow a church, build a ministry, and be as successful as possible as a leader of a church. A vast majority of these books are packed with inspirational ideas and concepts of how businesses or groups become successful in our world. They then give example after example of how you can follow a few easy steps to build your own successful ministry in a similar manner. They usually contain several good spiritual tips and reminders but at the heart of most of these types of books are rules on strong leadership, developing tight organizational skills, and having and communicating a clear mission and vision for your church or group. Some of these books are so focused on following a corporate model of success that you can read them and barely notice that they are spiritually minded books at all. They might have a veneer of Christian faith on them but the principles are almost entirely built on what it takes to be successful in the Western world in the realm of business.
Paul’s ministry success stands in stark opposition to these trendy type of books that are full of corporate wisdom and wit. I tend to wonder that if Paul wrote a book on ministry and how to build one that was released today it wouldn’t be very successful in the current climate of following the latest inspirational trend that will help you to attain explosive growth in your own church. Paul well knew that Jesus said that his church would be identified and built on the simple act of loving one another (John 13:34-35). That is not to say that things like having a plan and holding to true doctrines, beliefs, and practices aren’t incredibly important. A church must be built on truth in Christ, but then it must be a constant display of the kind of love that only the Holy Spirit can inspire.
Paul didn’t build his ministries on slick ideas, programs, and corporate structure. He built them on nothing more or less than the simple truth of strong relationships and brotherhood. Paul loved people first and foremost, just as Jesus had, and that will always lead to the true kind of success. Perhaps it doesn’t always lead to explosive numerical growth, for this type of model takes time and much effort, but it will always be the best and only way of building God’s church.
Paul continued to make his way towards Jerusalem where he was hoping to arrive before Pentecost, so his time was definitely tight on this trip. As he arrived in Miletus Paul decided that he did not want to take the time to travel to Ephesus which was about 30 miles away but he did desire to see the elders of the church and to encourage them one more time. Luke doesn’t tell us why Paul did not want to go into Ephesus although it probably was not solely related to saving time, as he could just as easily and quickly traveled to Ephesus and back to Miletus in the amount of time that it took for a messenger to make the trek to Ephesus, gather up the elders in Ephesus and bring them back to Miletus. It is quite possible that one of the factors in Paul’s decision was the massive trouble that he faced previously in Ephesus. It might have caused quite a ruckus had he returned which could have delayed his return to Miletus and caused him to miss the ship to Jerusalem. Paul thought it wiser to have the elders come to him, though he no doubt wished that he could have seen all of his brothers and sisters in Ephesus.
This was no easy trip to make on the spur of the moment but the Ephesian elders clearly valued their relationship with Paul and were willing to sacrifice to see him. As they arrived Paul gave them a farewell address, something that was fairly typical in the ancient world (see Gen. 47:29-49:33; Deut. 31:14-33:29; Josh 23:1-24:30; 1 Sam. 12:1-25; 2 Ki. 2:1-14; Matt. 28:18-20; John 13-17; 2 Tim., etc.) when someone was drawing to the end of their life, a relationship, or a specific period in their life. Paul seemed to sense that this would be his last words face-to-face with his dear brothers in Ephesus.
As such, Paul will remind them that because he did his best to live as an example of the life in Christ for them to follow and emulate. The first thing that he mentions is that he lived among them, identified with them, and served them. His words in verses 17-18 serve as a reminder of how he lived when he was with them (see 1 Thess. 2:1-2; 5:10-11; Phil. 4:15 for similar examples). Paul reminds them that the main thing he did among them was to build relationships. He didn’t approach them as a leader building a large religious structure for his own benefit, rather he served with great humility (2 Cor. 10:1; 11:17; 1 Thess. 2:6) and tears. His work was not just work, though, it was serving the Lord (Rom. 1:1; 12:11; Phil. 2:22) despite constant opposition from his Jewish opponents (2 Cor. 11:24, 26; 1 Thess. 2:14-16). He did the hard work of building relationships and that’s what he was calling them to do.
The second thing that he reminds them of is that he was a true teacher of the gospel. He went from house to house and taught the people the things that they needed to live as the people of God (Rom. 16:5; Col. 4:15; Philemon 21). He spent the time and did the hard work of building up the people according to their needs in Christ (Gal 4:16; 2 Cor. 4:2).
The third reminder is that he was a bold witness to the gospel to all people; both the Jews and Greeks (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 9:20). Paul never got comfortable in building up a small little group of believers and then hunkering down satisfied with that. He never stopped teaching and building up the community but he also never stopped proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers despite the fact that this would bring continued opposition and persecution. The hallmarks of response to the gospel that Paul expected was repentance, which was dying to self (Gal. 2:20), and faith in the Lord Jesus (Romans 10:9-13).
His fourth reminder was that his suffering came as a result of obedience to the Father. Paul was uncertain of his future (Rom. 15:30-32) but he knew that the Spirit was compelling him to get to Jerusalem and he knew that wherever he went, the Spirit had already ensured him that he would face prison and hardships. It cannot be stated with certainty, but I do think that a strong case can be made for identifying this with the thorn in the flesh that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Three times he asked the Lord to remove this reality but God refused, knowing that it would continue to drive Paul back to the Lord’s strength in humility. Bolstering the thought that Paul’s “thorn” was this constant persecution comes from the fact that on three separate occasions in the Old Testament, opposition from the enemies of God and his people is referred to as as being “thorns” (Num. 33:55; Jud. 2:3; Josh 23:12-13). It seems that everywhere Paul went he faced opposition, persecution, and riots and he very well could have viewed this as his humbling thorn in the flesh.
It might seem strange that Paul could both believe that the Spirit was calling him to Jerusalem and that he would likely suffer harsh persecution when he arrived. The answer lies in verse 24. Paul’s focus was not on his life. He considered his life to have been forfeited when he died to himself at baptism and took up his total and complete commitment to the life of Christ (Gal. 2:20). His aim was to finish the course that the Lord had laid out for him and spread the gospel as far and wide as the Spirit would allow and direct him to. Paul realized that his suffering and persecution came as a result of his obedience to God’s will not because he had spurned it.
Because Paul’s sole focus was on his mission as a kingdom announcer and not his own security or comfort, he found great significance in the simple action of doing his duty and proclaiming the whole will of God. He had watered down the message to be more popular, he had not exalted sentimentality over the truth. He had boldly, fearlessly, and tirelessly preached the entire will of God to them. Like the watchman of Ezekiel (Ezek. 3:16-21; 33:1-9) who was charged with the responsibility of adequately warning the people of coming danger, so Paul was innocent of their blood. This gives us important insight into just how vital the role of evangelism was for Paul. It had been one of his priorities during his time in Ephesus and should continue to be a major focus for the Ephesian elders and the family of believers in Ephesus.
As almost an aside here, Paul mentions that he will not see any of them again. Whether this was due to a desire on his part to turn his eyes further West towards Rome and Spain and regions even beyond that, Lord willing, or a creeping revelation from the Holy Spirit that his time was short, we do not know. The fact that he would tell them such a thing, however, is evidence of the closeness of their relationship. At every turn he had acted out of gratitude for his relationship with God and had in turn built deeply genuine relationships with them. Telling someone that you had a shallow relationship with that you would be leaving and never see them again would hardly be cause for much of a response. But as we will see in the next section, Paul’s declaration of his impending absence caused his friends much sorrow. The church in Ephesus had grown and would continue to grow because it was a family of relationships not a collection of religious people. It is incredibly important for God’s people today to be constantly reminded of the fact that we are not a religion, but members of God’s family.
Devotional Thought
Look around at your own relationships in Christ. Are they shallow and business-like or have you done the difficult work of building deep and loving relationships in the body of Christ. Are your best friends in the body of Christ? Do you work hard at creating and building those relationships? Have you built deep and long-lasting friendships among God’s people? This is, after all, what being part of the body is all about.
17 From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. 18 When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. 19 I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. 20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
22 “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.
25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.
Dig Deeper
Now days you can walk into virtually any Christian bookstore and find shelves full of books on how to grow a church, build a ministry, and be as successful as possible as a leader of a church. A vast majority of these books are packed with inspirational ideas and concepts of how businesses or groups become successful in our world. They then give example after example of how you can follow a few easy steps to build your own successful ministry in a similar manner. They usually contain several good spiritual tips and reminders but at the heart of most of these types of books are rules on strong leadership, developing tight organizational skills, and having and communicating a clear mission and vision for your church or group. Some of these books are so focused on following a corporate model of success that you can read them and barely notice that they are spiritually minded books at all. They might have a veneer of Christian faith on them but the principles are almost entirely built on what it takes to be successful in the Western world in the realm of business.
Paul’s ministry success stands in stark opposition to these trendy type of books that are full of corporate wisdom and wit. I tend to wonder that if Paul wrote a book on ministry and how to build one that was released today it wouldn’t be very successful in the current climate of following the latest inspirational trend that will help you to attain explosive growth in your own church. Paul well knew that Jesus said that his church would be identified and built on the simple act of loving one another (John 13:34-35). That is not to say that things like having a plan and holding to true doctrines, beliefs, and practices aren’t incredibly important. A church must be built on truth in Christ, but then it must be a constant display of the kind of love that only the Holy Spirit can inspire.
Paul didn’t build his ministries on slick ideas, programs, and corporate structure. He built them on nothing more or less than the simple truth of strong relationships and brotherhood. Paul loved people first and foremost, just as Jesus had, and that will always lead to the true kind of success. Perhaps it doesn’t always lead to explosive numerical growth, for this type of model takes time and much effort, but it will always be the best and only way of building God’s church.
Paul continued to make his way towards Jerusalem where he was hoping to arrive before Pentecost, so his time was definitely tight on this trip. As he arrived in Miletus Paul decided that he did not want to take the time to travel to Ephesus which was about 30 miles away but he did desire to see the elders of the church and to encourage them one more time. Luke doesn’t tell us why Paul did not want to go into Ephesus although it probably was not solely related to saving time, as he could just as easily and quickly traveled to Ephesus and back to Miletus in the amount of time that it took for a messenger to make the trek to Ephesus, gather up the elders in Ephesus and bring them back to Miletus. It is quite possible that one of the factors in Paul’s decision was the massive trouble that he faced previously in Ephesus. It might have caused quite a ruckus had he returned which could have delayed his return to Miletus and caused him to miss the ship to Jerusalem. Paul thought it wiser to have the elders come to him, though he no doubt wished that he could have seen all of his brothers and sisters in Ephesus.
This was no easy trip to make on the spur of the moment but the Ephesian elders clearly valued their relationship with Paul and were willing to sacrifice to see him. As they arrived Paul gave them a farewell address, something that was fairly typical in the ancient world (see Gen. 47:29-49:33; Deut. 31:14-33:29; Josh 23:1-24:30; 1 Sam. 12:1-25; 2 Ki. 2:1-14; Matt. 28:18-20; John 13-17; 2 Tim., etc.) when someone was drawing to the end of their life, a relationship, or a specific period in their life. Paul seemed to sense that this would be his last words face-to-face with his dear brothers in Ephesus.
As such, Paul will remind them that because he did his best to live as an example of the life in Christ for them to follow and emulate. The first thing that he mentions is that he lived among them, identified with them, and served them. His words in verses 17-18 serve as a reminder of how he lived when he was with them (see 1 Thess. 2:1-2; 5:10-11; Phil. 4:15 for similar examples). Paul reminds them that the main thing he did among them was to build relationships. He didn’t approach them as a leader building a large religious structure for his own benefit, rather he served with great humility (2 Cor. 10:1; 11:17; 1 Thess. 2:6) and tears. His work was not just work, though, it was serving the Lord (Rom. 1:1; 12:11; Phil. 2:22) despite constant opposition from his Jewish opponents (2 Cor. 11:24, 26; 1 Thess. 2:14-16). He did the hard work of building relationships and that’s what he was calling them to do.
The second thing that he reminds them of is that he was a true teacher of the gospel. He went from house to house and taught the people the things that they needed to live as the people of God (Rom. 16:5; Col. 4:15; Philemon 21). He spent the time and did the hard work of building up the people according to their needs in Christ (Gal 4:16; 2 Cor. 4:2).
The third reminder is that he was a bold witness to the gospel to all people; both the Jews and Greeks (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 9:20). Paul never got comfortable in building up a small little group of believers and then hunkering down satisfied with that. He never stopped teaching and building up the community but he also never stopped proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers despite the fact that this would bring continued opposition and persecution. The hallmarks of response to the gospel that Paul expected was repentance, which was dying to self (Gal. 2:20), and faith in the Lord Jesus (Romans 10:9-13).
His fourth reminder was that his suffering came as a result of obedience to the Father. Paul was uncertain of his future (Rom. 15:30-32) but he knew that the Spirit was compelling him to get to Jerusalem and he knew that wherever he went, the Spirit had already ensured him that he would face prison and hardships. It cannot be stated with certainty, but I do think that a strong case can be made for identifying this with the thorn in the flesh that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Three times he asked the Lord to remove this reality but God refused, knowing that it would continue to drive Paul back to the Lord’s strength in humility. Bolstering the thought that Paul’s “thorn” was this constant persecution comes from the fact that on three separate occasions in the Old Testament, opposition from the enemies of God and his people is referred to as as being “thorns” (Num. 33:55; Jud. 2:3; Josh 23:12-13). It seems that everywhere Paul went he faced opposition, persecution, and riots and he very well could have viewed this as his humbling thorn in the flesh.
It might seem strange that Paul could both believe that the Spirit was calling him to Jerusalem and that he would likely suffer harsh persecution when he arrived. The answer lies in verse 24. Paul’s focus was not on his life. He considered his life to have been forfeited when he died to himself at baptism and took up his total and complete commitment to the life of Christ (Gal. 2:20). His aim was to finish the course that the Lord had laid out for him and spread the gospel as far and wide as the Spirit would allow and direct him to. Paul realized that his suffering and persecution came as a result of his obedience to God’s will not because he had spurned it.
Because Paul’s sole focus was on his mission as a kingdom announcer and not his own security or comfort, he found great significance in the simple action of doing his duty and proclaiming the whole will of God. He had watered down the message to be more popular, he had not exalted sentimentality over the truth. He had boldly, fearlessly, and tirelessly preached the entire will of God to them. Like the watchman of Ezekiel (Ezek. 3:16-21; 33:1-9) who was charged with the responsibility of adequately warning the people of coming danger, so Paul was innocent of their blood. This gives us important insight into just how vital the role of evangelism was for Paul. It had been one of his priorities during his time in Ephesus and should continue to be a major focus for the Ephesian elders and the family of believers in Ephesus.
As almost an aside here, Paul mentions that he will not see any of them again. Whether this was due to a desire on his part to turn his eyes further West towards Rome and Spain and regions even beyond that, Lord willing, or a creeping revelation from the Holy Spirit that his time was short, we do not know. The fact that he would tell them such a thing, however, is evidence of the closeness of their relationship. At every turn he had acted out of gratitude for his relationship with God and had in turn built deeply genuine relationships with them. Telling someone that you had a shallow relationship with that you would be leaving and never see them again would hardly be cause for much of a response. But as we will see in the next section, Paul’s declaration of his impending absence caused his friends much sorrow. The church in Ephesus had grown and would continue to grow because it was a family of relationships not a collection of religious people. It is incredibly important for God’s people today to be constantly reminded of the fact that we are not a religion, but members of God’s family.
Devotional Thought
Look around at your own relationships in Christ. Are they shallow and business-like or have you done the difficult work of building deep and loving relationships in the body of Christ. Are your best friends in the body of Christ? Do you work hard at creating and building those relationships? Have you built deep and long-lasting friendships among God’s people? This is, after all, what being part of the body is all about.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Acts 20:1-12
Through Macedonia and Greece
1 When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. 2 He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, 3 where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. 4 He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. 5 These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas. 6 But we sailed from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas, where we stayed seven days.
Eutychus Raised From the Dead at Troas
7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. 8 There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. 9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. 10 Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” 11 Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. 12 The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.
Dig Deeper
Some years ago I had an opportunity to take my eldest son to hear a man speak on the topic of the creation of God. He had become a somewhat famous debater and speaker on the topic. The man spoke in over 300 cities per year which meant that he was speaking on the topic of creation in a different city nearly every day of the year. Add to that the fact that he occasionally spoke several times in one day and you realize that this speaker actually spoke to around 500 different crowds a year. Some of those groups were small but the vast majority of them were quite large, numbering in the many hundreds and even thousands. One can only imagine the number of people that he met at each speaking engagement, let alone each year. And the fact remains that despite some serious lack of judgment in the form of tax evasion that has since been revealed and resulted in a prison sentence, he was extremely skilled at speaking and debating (although his level of “expertise” is debatable) and drew large crowds wherever he went. He was also very skilled at keeping his eye on the big picture of spreading his message throughout the world through his personal appearances but also through television and videos.
Yet, as popular as this man got and as many places as he spoke at, he had an amazing ability to focus in on the personal element, which may help explain a lot of his popularity. Allow me to explain. Many entertainers or even traveling speakers and preachers become so focused on the larger mission and the big crowds or the “show” that they are largely uninterested or rather awkward when it comes to interacting with people on an individual basis. This particular man, however, had no such deficiency. He could talk to a crowd of thousands and then come and meet one individual and speak with them as though he knew them and sincerely cared about them. In fact, my son had an opportunity to talk to him before his presentation on the night that we attended. The conversation didn’t last for more than a minute but this man had connected with my some on such a personal level that when it came time for us to leave before the lecture was finished, my then eight year old (or so) son thought that we should find a way to tell him that we were leaving early because he was sure that this speaker would be concerned that my son had left. Here he was speaking to hundreds of people but had connected on such a personal level that this eight year old felt they were close friends.
In a way, Luke has this same skill as he tells the story of the advancement of the gospel in the early days of the church. At times the pace of Acts can leave us breathless as Luke scans the massive history of the early church and describes the highlight moments of the formation of the family of God. He can cover months and years in a few words and takes us through a period of decades from a bird’s eye view in a very skilled way. Yet, just when we think that we are racing through a survey of only the monumentally important events and will focus on just the “big players” in the Christian movement, Luke suddenly slows down and gives us a glimpse at encounters that are so simple, so real, and so authentic that it can catch us off-guard. Yet, without these personal moments, like a sleepy young man tumbling out of a window, we can’t help but think that we would be missing an important element of the story of the gospel. It is the narrative of God’s incredible work in spreading the good news of the Messiah to the ends of the earth but it is also a movement that happens one person and one story at a time. The gospel story is a grand epic and a personal memoir all at once. This is precisely what Luke has given us in the book of Acts.
Epic works like Luke’s travel narrative of the gospel of Jesus were not unknown in his day. Travel narratives like the Odyssey and Aeneas were, of course, quite popular in Luke’s day and although there is certainly a travel motif in both Luke (Jesus’ travel journey as he sets his face towards Jerusalem) and Acts, his heroes are very different than those of the typical Greek and Roman epics. Luke’s observant readers might have heard echoes of those stories in Luke’s work but would have, no doubt, been more struck by the stark differences in Luke’s epic account.
One big difference is that Luke is focusing on the spread of the gospel in his narrative and not on one person such as Paul. Luke is actually a bit sparse on many of the details of Paul’s travels during this time. We know from Paul’s letters that one of his primary focuses in his travels that Luke describes here was to collect money from the Gentile churches for support for the poor in the church in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:16-24) but Luke makes no mention of that here. We do know that Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians while in Macedonia. On arriving in Macedonia his urgent concerns over the reaction of the Corinthian church to his “painful letter” were quelled by the arrival of Titus with good news prompting his letter. During his three months in Greece is the most likely time that Paul penned his masterpiece letter to the church in Rome.
Yet, as Luke races through the details of the grand story of the spreading of the gospel he tells us of none of these details, though he did find it important to detail the men that accompanied Paul on the rest of his journey, a group that included a representative from each of the major regions where churches had bee planted by Paul. The reason for the large group of companions and the reason that Luke felt recording all of the traveler’s names was important was probably two-fold. The larger group served as a means of safety for Paul and a verification that all of the money collected reached its destination. It also served as a personal testament to the church in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit really was building one family of all nations throughout the world.
But just as quickly as Luke rushes through important events with sweeping broad strokes, he abruptly puts the brakes on and gives us a personal story that, while touching, seemingly pales in comparison as far as importance when it comes to some of the details that Luke has chosen not to include. While this specific story of the church meeting together in Troas may not seem important that is precisely why it is. The gospel is not just some grand sweeping narrative where only the end product matters. It is a large tapestry, indeed, but it is woven together by these touching moments of family, concern for one another, and the spread of the word of God from one person to another.
Luke seems to indicate that the Christians were already coming together to break bread (a term that most prevalently referred to the taking of the Lord’s Supper) on the first day of the week. Depending on whether Luke was using the Jewish or Roman method of keeping time, this gathering would have either been on Saturday night (which was the start of Sunday in the Jewish system) or Sunday night. The Christian community had no such luxury of having Sunday as a day off work so they had to meet either early in the morning or later at night. This was one of those late night meetings and people would surely have been tired after a full day of work and activity.
We don’t know what time the gathering started but Luke tells us that Paul spoke for what was at least several hours, something which would not have been that unusual, especially with an opportunity to hear an apostle as he passed through their town. Luke has given us a picture of a family of believers that were truly committed to the apostles teaching and greatly valued the preaching of the gospel, even at what we would consider the great expense of a lack of sleep on a night where they would have had to work and go about business as usual the next day.
The combination of the warmth generated by many lamps and the lateness of the hour was too much for Eutychus. The name “Eutychus” meant “fortunate” and was a common slave name and based on the word used by Luke, it is most probable that he was somewhere in the pre-teen to young teen age range. Despite sitting in the window and having at least some access to fresh air, it was all a bit too much for the young man and he, as some are apt to do, drifted asleep during Paul’s lesson. As a result, he tumbled out of the open air window to the ground below from the third story causing his death.
Some have tried to argue that perhaps the young man only appeared to be dead, but the doctor Luke clearly intended to convey that he was indeed dead. When Paul went downstairs and scooped the boy up in his arms a miracle happened that enabled Paul to immediately declare that he was not dead any longer. There are certainly parallels here with miraculous raising of the dead by Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:32-37) but Luke probably most clearly wanted to depict Paul as being like Peter (Acts 9:39-42).
The young man had been stunningly raised from the dead, something that surely would have been a memorable moment for the young Christians in Troas. After seeing such a miracle, what better time to go upstairs and celebrate the meal that commemorated for them the death and resurrection of their Messiah? With this miracle fresh in their minds, the Christians returned upstairs to break bread together, though we have to wonder if any of them, especially Eutychus, ever looked at a window the same again.
Following the communion meal, Paul had more to teach and say to the Christian family and continued to speak with them until daybreak; something that should be kept in mind the next time you are tempted to complain that the preacher has gone a little too long. At the end of the night, buoyed by the teaching, the fellowship, and the miracle the disciples took the young man home encouraged and bonded further as the people of God. One more amazing thread had been woven into the tapestry of the Messiah’s people.
Devotional Thought
The kingdom life is certainly about the grand story of God becoming the King of his people and his creation but it is also a very personal story of individuals. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that. Is there anyone that you haven’t given personal attention to in awhile that might benefit spiritually from a few moments of your undivided time? Who can you encourage today on a personal level?
1 When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. 2 He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, 3 where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. 4 He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. 5 These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas. 6 But we sailed from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas, where we stayed seven days.
Eutychus Raised From the Dead at Troas
7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. 8 There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. 9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. 10 Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” 11 Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. 12 The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.
Dig Deeper
Some years ago I had an opportunity to take my eldest son to hear a man speak on the topic of the creation of God. He had become a somewhat famous debater and speaker on the topic. The man spoke in over 300 cities per year which meant that he was speaking on the topic of creation in a different city nearly every day of the year. Add to that the fact that he occasionally spoke several times in one day and you realize that this speaker actually spoke to around 500 different crowds a year. Some of those groups were small but the vast majority of them were quite large, numbering in the many hundreds and even thousands. One can only imagine the number of people that he met at each speaking engagement, let alone each year. And the fact remains that despite some serious lack of judgment in the form of tax evasion that has since been revealed and resulted in a prison sentence, he was extremely skilled at speaking and debating (although his level of “expertise” is debatable) and drew large crowds wherever he went. He was also very skilled at keeping his eye on the big picture of spreading his message throughout the world through his personal appearances but also through television and videos.
Yet, as popular as this man got and as many places as he spoke at, he had an amazing ability to focus in on the personal element, which may help explain a lot of his popularity. Allow me to explain. Many entertainers or even traveling speakers and preachers become so focused on the larger mission and the big crowds or the “show” that they are largely uninterested or rather awkward when it comes to interacting with people on an individual basis. This particular man, however, had no such deficiency. He could talk to a crowd of thousands and then come and meet one individual and speak with them as though he knew them and sincerely cared about them. In fact, my son had an opportunity to talk to him before his presentation on the night that we attended. The conversation didn’t last for more than a minute but this man had connected with my some on such a personal level that when it came time for us to leave before the lecture was finished, my then eight year old (or so) son thought that we should find a way to tell him that we were leaving early because he was sure that this speaker would be concerned that my son had left. Here he was speaking to hundreds of people but had connected on such a personal level that this eight year old felt they were close friends.
In a way, Luke has this same skill as he tells the story of the advancement of the gospel in the early days of the church. At times the pace of Acts can leave us breathless as Luke scans the massive history of the early church and describes the highlight moments of the formation of the family of God. He can cover months and years in a few words and takes us through a period of decades from a bird’s eye view in a very skilled way. Yet, just when we think that we are racing through a survey of only the monumentally important events and will focus on just the “big players” in the Christian movement, Luke suddenly slows down and gives us a glimpse at encounters that are so simple, so real, and so authentic that it can catch us off-guard. Yet, without these personal moments, like a sleepy young man tumbling out of a window, we can’t help but think that we would be missing an important element of the story of the gospel. It is the narrative of God’s incredible work in spreading the good news of the Messiah to the ends of the earth but it is also a movement that happens one person and one story at a time. The gospel story is a grand epic and a personal memoir all at once. This is precisely what Luke has given us in the book of Acts.
Epic works like Luke’s travel narrative of the gospel of Jesus were not unknown in his day. Travel narratives like the Odyssey and Aeneas were, of course, quite popular in Luke’s day and although there is certainly a travel motif in both Luke (Jesus’ travel journey as he sets his face towards Jerusalem) and Acts, his heroes are very different than those of the typical Greek and Roman epics. Luke’s observant readers might have heard echoes of those stories in Luke’s work but would have, no doubt, been more struck by the stark differences in Luke’s epic account.
One big difference is that Luke is focusing on the spread of the gospel in his narrative and not on one person such as Paul. Luke is actually a bit sparse on many of the details of Paul’s travels during this time. We know from Paul’s letters that one of his primary focuses in his travels that Luke describes here was to collect money from the Gentile churches for support for the poor in the church in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:16-24) but Luke makes no mention of that here. We do know that Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians while in Macedonia. On arriving in Macedonia his urgent concerns over the reaction of the Corinthian church to his “painful letter” were quelled by the arrival of Titus with good news prompting his letter. During his three months in Greece is the most likely time that Paul penned his masterpiece letter to the church in Rome.
Yet, as Luke races through the details of the grand story of the spreading of the gospel he tells us of none of these details, though he did find it important to detail the men that accompanied Paul on the rest of his journey, a group that included a representative from each of the major regions where churches had bee planted by Paul. The reason for the large group of companions and the reason that Luke felt recording all of the traveler’s names was important was probably two-fold. The larger group served as a means of safety for Paul and a verification that all of the money collected reached its destination. It also served as a personal testament to the church in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit really was building one family of all nations throughout the world.
But just as quickly as Luke rushes through important events with sweeping broad strokes, he abruptly puts the brakes on and gives us a personal story that, while touching, seemingly pales in comparison as far as importance when it comes to some of the details that Luke has chosen not to include. While this specific story of the church meeting together in Troas may not seem important that is precisely why it is. The gospel is not just some grand sweeping narrative where only the end product matters. It is a large tapestry, indeed, but it is woven together by these touching moments of family, concern for one another, and the spread of the word of God from one person to another.
Luke seems to indicate that the Christians were already coming together to break bread (a term that most prevalently referred to the taking of the Lord’s Supper) on the first day of the week. Depending on whether Luke was using the Jewish or Roman method of keeping time, this gathering would have either been on Saturday night (which was the start of Sunday in the Jewish system) or Sunday night. The Christian community had no such luxury of having Sunday as a day off work so they had to meet either early in the morning or later at night. This was one of those late night meetings and people would surely have been tired after a full day of work and activity.
We don’t know what time the gathering started but Luke tells us that Paul spoke for what was at least several hours, something which would not have been that unusual, especially with an opportunity to hear an apostle as he passed through their town. Luke has given us a picture of a family of believers that were truly committed to the apostles teaching and greatly valued the preaching of the gospel, even at what we would consider the great expense of a lack of sleep on a night where they would have had to work and go about business as usual the next day.
The combination of the warmth generated by many lamps and the lateness of the hour was too much for Eutychus. The name “Eutychus” meant “fortunate” and was a common slave name and based on the word used by Luke, it is most probable that he was somewhere in the pre-teen to young teen age range. Despite sitting in the window and having at least some access to fresh air, it was all a bit too much for the young man and he, as some are apt to do, drifted asleep during Paul’s lesson. As a result, he tumbled out of the open air window to the ground below from the third story causing his death.
Some have tried to argue that perhaps the young man only appeared to be dead, but the doctor Luke clearly intended to convey that he was indeed dead. When Paul went downstairs and scooped the boy up in his arms a miracle happened that enabled Paul to immediately declare that he was not dead any longer. There are certainly parallels here with miraculous raising of the dead by Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:32-37) but Luke probably most clearly wanted to depict Paul as being like Peter (Acts 9:39-42).
The young man had been stunningly raised from the dead, something that surely would have been a memorable moment for the young Christians in Troas. After seeing such a miracle, what better time to go upstairs and celebrate the meal that commemorated for them the death and resurrection of their Messiah? With this miracle fresh in their minds, the Christians returned upstairs to break bread together, though we have to wonder if any of them, especially Eutychus, ever looked at a window the same again.
Following the communion meal, Paul had more to teach and say to the Christian family and continued to speak with them until daybreak; something that should be kept in mind the next time you are tempted to complain that the preacher has gone a little too long. At the end of the night, buoyed by the teaching, the fellowship, and the miracle the disciples took the young man home encouraged and bonded further as the people of God. One more amazing thread had been woven into the tapestry of the Messiah’s people.
Devotional Thought
The kingdom life is certainly about the grand story of God becoming the King of his people and his creation but it is also a very personal story of individuals. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that. Is there anyone that you haven’t given personal attention to in awhile that might benefit spiritually from a few moments of your undivided time? Who can you encourage today on a personal level?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Acts 19:23-41
23 About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. 24 A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. 25 He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. 26 And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. 27 There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.”
28 When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” 29 Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together. 30 Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. 31 Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.
32 The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. 33 The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. 34 But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
35 The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? 36 Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. 37 You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. 38 If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. 39 If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. 40 As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it.” 41 After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.
Dig Deeper
Anyone who is somewhat familiar with the city of Las Vegas in the United States knows that the nickname of that town is “sin city.” It has a wild reputation for casinos, strip clubs, and the like in the world of entertainment, and just about anything you want to do when it comes to sinful behavior can be done in Vegas. There are, at the same time, churches that exist in Las Vegas. Yet, as far as I know these two worlds don’t come into conflict all that often. I’m sure the churches there occasionally denounce the sorts of behavior that go on in certain places in Vegas, but for the most part it seems as if those two worlds are quite willing to go about their business and leave the other one be.
But what do you think would happen if some new church or preacher went into Vegas and began to preach the gospel in all of its confrontational fullness. In our world today we seem quite happy to separate spheres and keep Christianity safely in the religious sphere, almost seemingly quarantined from other parts of the “real world”. But Paul’s gospel was confrontational. If Jesus really was the king of the new creation and the life of that new creation was available now in Christ then that meant confronting and taking down the ways of life and mindsets of the old created order. So what if this new group set up shop right on the gambling and prostitution strip in Vegas and began to boldly denounce such ways and call people to a new life where gambling and self-indulgent lifestyles were no longer an option (not in the condemning self-righteous way that so many religious people fall into but in the freeing, life-giving manner of the true gospel)? What if people began to come to this message and give up gambling and other things by the hundreds and then thousands and the casinos began to slowly empty as people entered into the life of the new creation and walked away from the deeds of the darkness?
Do you think that the power brokers in Vegas would wish this church well and just leave them to go about their work while their casinos steadily drained like a bathtub once the stopper has been pulled? The quickest way to get people agitated with you is to hit them in the wallet. In this scenario it would not take long for the casinos to respond and I suspect that the response would be lightning fast and devastatingly hard. They have a lot of power in Las Vegas and it wouldn’t take long for them to attempt to do whatever it took to get that church out of town. If this type of teaching took root, tourism would slow dramatically, the casinos would dry up and the whole city would feel the pinch economically for a time. They would, no doubt, appeal to legal arguments and any other appeals to which they could turn to get rid of this group, and maybe even to some not-so-legal means. I know two things for sure. The first is that the response would be as nasty as it was forceful. The second thing I know is that this is the sort of thing that should and will happen when the true and full gospel of the kingdom of God is preached.
As Paul and his companions continued to boldly preach the gospel in Ephesus they continued to call people to live as though Jesus was the king of their kingdom right now in every area of their lives. In a town that was so heavily invested in magic and pagan idolatry it was just a matter of time before the opposition got nasty. The public display of destroying the equivalent of millions of dollars of spells and paraphernalia that went along with worship of Artemis, the primary goddess of the Ephesians no doubt spurred on the opposition that Luke describes here. The problem, though, wasn’t so much the destruction of those old items but the growing realization of those who profited from such things of what this new growing way of life would mean for future business prospects. What would happen if these people continued to grow in their influence and called people away from buying things like the silver shrines that depicted Artemis or her temple?
Something clearly had to be done and it was Demetrius who stepped up to do it. Demetrius was likely the head of the guild of silversmiths. It was common for trades to form guilds at this time and work together to protect the common interests of one another. The gospel had become a clear threat as it called people to live their lives in a completely new way and Demetrius could see where this was heading so he was determined to nip it in the bud.
The goddess Artemis (Diana in Roman mythology) was at the center of Ephesian worship. Images of her and her temple were extremely popular and the sale of these idols helped to prop up the Ephesian economy. The temple of Artemis is regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and covered acreage four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens. Artemis was widely worshipped around the Roman world to such an extent that Ephesus was somewhat of a place of pilgrimage for those around the Empire coming to the temple to partake in worship of the goddess which often included orgies and the like.
Being that Artemis worship was so central to not just Demetrius and the silversmiths but the whole region, it did not take much for them to gather a large crowd in the theater in Ephesus, an impressive structure that still exists today. Let’s be clear about the tumult that the silversmiths had ratcheted up here. The theater in Ephesus held about 25,000 people and Paul wasn’t just threatening the livelihood of one guild. They had managed to make the case to the Ephesian people that if this gospel was not dealt with it would mean economic ruin for them all and would discredit their mighty goddess. The results of this kingdom that Paul was preaching really taking route would mean drastic consequences for a town and region that was completely centered around their goddess and that theater may have been near capacity.
Things quickly became a near riot and the people seized the first two Christians that they could get their hands on, Gaius and Aristarchus. When Paul found out what was going on, his heart was that of an evangelist. How could he pass up the opportunity to declare the gospel to crowds that perhaps numbered in the thousands and even tens of thousands? Paul was zealous but he was not prideful, however, and he let cooler heads prevail as he allowed other disciples and even some very powerful local officials whom Paul had befriended during his time there convince him to stay away. The balance of Paul’s life shows clearly that this had to do with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not fear of what might happen to him.
This was no organized legal demonstration or protest. It was chaos and such situations can get dangerous quickly. In fact many people there were angry and shouting but didn’t even know exactly what precipitated this situation. Those can often be the most dangerous types of crowds because they can be easily manipulated. The Jews would probably have been quite supportive of this protest against Paul and the other Christians and sent Alexander up to speak on their behalf. Luke doesn’t tell exactly what Alexander’s purpose was as he may not have known, but it seems likely that he would have denounced Paul and added to the fervor. Even though they would not have supported Artemis worship, the Jews would have been thrilled to have Paul run out of town. But the Ephesian crowd had been whipped into a frenzy of the type that you only get when you mix together politics, economics, nationalism, intolerance, and religion and they shouted the Jewish representative down and continued chanting and extolling the greatness of Artemis for two hours.
Many commentators suppose that this incident in Ephesus is not the specific item that Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:32 and 2 Corinthians 1:8 where he speaks of facing “wild beasts” and despairing of life in Ephesus. While he may not have been referring to this incident alone, surely the frightening ferocity of the opposition that had been whipped up was a good portion of what Paul referred to. Interestingly, Artemis was widely held up as the protector of wild creatures and beasts so Paul’s reference in 1 Corinthians 15:32 to having to fend off the wild beasts in Ephesus was almost surely a slightly sarcastic reference to followers of Artemis.
Just as things were apparently getting close to spiraling out of control, the city clerk of Ephesus, a man with considerable authority stepped up and calmed the crowd. With the skill of a true politician he was able to appeal to their logical side, an exceedingly difficult task under the circumstances. Paul’s position was that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the one true God was becoming king of the world and people could leave their allegiance to the power structures of the world and enter into God’s family and kingdom. This meant that all other gods were nothing more than lifeless idols made by human hands. But this clerk appealed to the belief that the first image of Artemis had fallen to earth (likely a meteorite) and was sent by the gods. His point was that they all knew the “truth” about Artemis and her image and had nothing to fear from these Christians. He was in no way sympathetic towards the Christians but was protecting the crowd from getting out of hand and risking losing democratic freedoms like the right to assemble to the Romans who would quickly shut things down if they felt that things were getting out of control. He urged them to remember that the grievances that the silversmiths had could be and should be taken up in a court of law. He then turned the tables and reminded them that if they kept this behavior up, they would be the ones that would find themselves in trouble with Rome and not the Christians. Although this ended the immediate riot, it doesn’t mean that the persecution and opposition in Ephesus ended by any means.
The question that we must ask ourselves is whether or not the gospel we preach is as appropriately confrontational to the things that stand opposed to the kingdom of God. Are we truly proclaiming a kingdom that by its very nature and truth shines a spotlight on the darkness of the world and causes them to block the light from their eyes? If not, what kingdom are we proclaiming?
Devotional Thought
Throughout Acts the confrontational aspect of the gospel came not so much from Christians denouncing sinful behavior but from them declaring the freedom from those things that comes when God is your king. How can you declare this message in your little corner of the world today and maybe stir up a little healthy confrontation?
28 When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” 29 Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together. 30 Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. 31 Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.
32 The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. 33 The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. 34 But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
35 The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? 36 Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. 37 You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. 38 If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. 39 If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. 40 As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it.” 41 After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.
Dig Deeper
Anyone who is somewhat familiar with the city of Las Vegas in the United States knows that the nickname of that town is “sin city.” It has a wild reputation for casinos, strip clubs, and the like in the world of entertainment, and just about anything you want to do when it comes to sinful behavior can be done in Vegas. There are, at the same time, churches that exist in Las Vegas. Yet, as far as I know these two worlds don’t come into conflict all that often. I’m sure the churches there occasionally denounce the sorts of behavior that go on in certain places in Vegas, but for the most part it seems as if those two worlds are quite willing to go about their business and leave the other one be.
But what do you think would happen if some new church or preacher went into Vegas and began to preach the gospel in all of its confrontational fullness. In our world today we seem quite happy to separate spheres and keep Christianity safely in the religious sphere, almost seemingly quarantined from other parts of the “real world”. But Paul’s gospel was confrontational. If Jesus really was the king of the new creation and the life of that new creation was available now in Christ then that meant confronting and taking down the ways of life and mindsets of the old created order. So what if this new group set up shop right on the gambling and prostitution strip in Vegas and began to boldly denounce such ways and call people to a new life where gambling and self-indulgent lifestyles were no longer an option (not in the condemning self-righteous way that so many religious people fall into but in the freeing, life-giving manner of the true gospel)? What if people began to come to this message and give up gambling and other things by the hundreds and then thousands and the casinos began to slowly empty as people entered into the life of the new creation and walked away from the deeds of the darkness?
Do you think that the power brokers in Vegas would wish this church well and just leave them to go about their work while their casinos steadily drained like a bathtub once the stopper has been pulled? The quickest way to get people agitated with you is to hit them in the wallet. In this scenario it would not take long for the casinos to respond and I suspect that the response would be lightning fast and devastatingly hard. They have a lot of power in Las Vegas and it wouldn’t take long for them to attempt to do whatever it took to get that church out of town. If this type of teaching took root, tourism would slow dramatically, the casinos would dry up and the whole city would feel the pinch economically for a time. They would, no doubt, appeal to legal arguments and any other appeals to which they could turn to get rid of this group, and maybe even to some not-so-legal means. I know two things for sure. The first is that the response would be as nasty as it was forceful. The second thing I know is that this is the sort of thing that should and will happen when the true and full gospel of the kingdom of God is preached.
As Paul and his companions continued to boldly preach the gospel in Ephesus they continued to call people to live as though Jesus was the king of their kingdom right now in every area of their lives. In a town that was so heavily invested in magic and pagan idolatry it was just a matter of time before the opposition got nasty. The public display of destroying the equivalent of millions of dollars of spells and paraphernalia that went along with worship of Artemis, the primary goddess of the Ephesians no doubt spurred on the opposition that Luke describes here. The problem, though, wasn’t so much the destruction of those old items but the growing realization of those who profited from such things of what this new growing way of life would mean for future business prospects. What would happen if these people continued to grow in their influence and called people away from buying things like the silver shrines that depicted Artemis or her temple?
Something clearly had to be done and it was Demetrius who stepped up to do it. Demetrius was likely the head of the guild of silversmiths. It was common for trades to form guilds at this time and work together to protect the common interests of one another. The gospel had become a clear threat as it called people to live their lives in a completely new way and Demetrius could see where this was heading so he was determined to nip it in the bud.
The goddess Artemis (Diana in Roman mythology) was at the center of Ephesian worship. Images of her and her temple were extremely popular and the sale of these idols helped to prop up the Ephesian economy. The temple of Artemis is regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and covered acreage four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens. Artemis was widely worshipped around the Roman world to such an extent that Ephesus was somewhat of a place of pilgrimage for those around the Empire coming to the temple to partake in worship of the goddess which often included orgies and the like.
Being that Artemis worship was so central to not just Demetrius and the silversmiths but the whole region, it did not take much for them to gather a large crowd in the theater in Ephesus, an impressive structure that still exists today. Let’s be clear about the tumult that the silversmiths had ratcheted up here. The theater in Ephesus held about 25,000 people and Paul wasn’t just threatening the livelihood of one guild. They had managed to make the case to the Ephesian people that if this gospel was not dealt with it would mean economic ruin for them all and would discredit their mighty goddess. The results of this kingdom that Paul was preaching really taking route would mean drastic consequences for a town and region that was completely centered around their goddess and that theater may have been near capacity.
Things quickly became a near riot and the people seized the first two Christians that they could get their hands on, Gaius and Aristarchus. When Paul found out what was going on, his heart was that of an evangelist. How could he pass up the opportunity to declare the gospel to crowds that perhaps numbered in the thousands and even tens of thousands? Paul was zealous but he was not prideful, however, and he let cooler heads prevail as he allowed other disciples and even some very powerful local officials whom Paul had befriended during his time there convince him to stay away. The balance of Paul’s life shows clearly that this had to do with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not fear of what might happen to him.
This was no organized legal demonstration or protest. It was chaos and such situations can get dangerous quickly. In fact many people there were angry and shouting but didn’t even know exactly what precipitated this situation. Those can often be the most dangerous types of crowds because they can be easily manipulated. The Jews would probably have been quite supportive of this protest against Paul and the other Christians and sent Alexander up to speak on their behalf. Luke doesn’t tell exactly what Alexander’s purpose was as he may not have known, but it seems likely that he would have denounced Paul and added to the fervor. Even though they would not have supported Artemis worship, the Jews would have been thrilled to have Paul run out of town. But the Ephesian crowd had been whipped into a frenzy of the type that you only get when you mix together politics, economics, nationalism, intolerance, and religion and they shouted the Jewish representative down and continued chanting and extolling the greatness of Artemis for two hours.
Many commentators suppose that this incident in Ephesus is not the specific item that Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:32 and 2 Corinthians 1:8 where he speaks of facing “wild beasts” and despairing of life in Ephesus. While he may not have been referring to this incident alone, surely the frightening ferocity of the opposition that had been whipped up was a good portion of what Paul referred to. Interestingly, Artemis was widely held up as the protector of wild creatures and beasts so Paul’s reference in 1 Corinthians 15:32 to having to fend off the wild beasts in Ephesus was almost surely a slightly sarcastic reference to followers of Artemis.
Just as things were apparently getting close to spiraling out of control, the city clerk of Ephesus, a man with considerable authority stepped up and calmed the crowd. With the skill of a true politician he was able to appeal to their logical side, an exceedingly difficult task under the circumstances. Paul’s position was that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the one true God was becoming king of the world and people could leave their allegiance to the power structures of the world and enter into God’s family and kingdom. This meant that all other gods were nothing more than lifeless idols made by human hands. But this clerk appealed to the belief that the first image of Artemis had fallen to earth (likely a meteorite) and was sent by the gods. His point was that they all knew the “truth” about Artemis and her image and had nothing to fear from these Christians. He was in no way sympathetic towards the Christians but was protecting the crowd from getting out of hand and risking losing democratic freedoms like the right to assemble to the Romans who would quickly shut things down if they felt that things were getting out of control. He urged them to remember that the grievances that the silversmiths had could be and should be taken up in a court of law. He then turned the tables and reminded them that if they kept this behavior up, they would be the ones that would find themselves in trouble with Rome and not the Christians. Although this ended the immediate riot, it doesn’t mean that the persecution and opposition in Ephesus ended by any means.
The question that we must ask ourselves is whether or not the gospel we preach is as appropriately confrontational to the things that stand opposed to the kingdom of God. Are we truly proclaiming a kingdom that by its very nature and truth shines a spotlight on the darkness of the world and causes them to block the light from their eyes? If not, what kingdom are we proclaiming?
Devotional Thought
Throughout Acts the confrontational aspect of the gospel came not so much from Christians denouncing sinful behavior but from them declaring the freedom from those things that comes when God is your king. How can you declare this message in your little corner of the world today and maybe stir up a little healthy confrontation?
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Acts 19:8-22
8 Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. 9 But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
17 When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. 18 Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. 19 A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c] 20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
21 After all this had happened, Paul decided[d] to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” 22 He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.
Dig Deeper
There was an old professional wrestler who became somewhat famous due, in part, to a line of his that he repeated often. He would regularly remind his opponents that in to “be the man” they had to “beat the man.” His point, of course, was that you only take the place of preeminence by knocking off the one who currently holds that position. What is true of athletics is, I suppose, also true of our hearts. Whatever holds the position of highest importance in our hearts can be considered our god. It is certainly the thing to which we are most beholden. For the Greeks in Ephesus, the thing that had most captured their heart, imagination, and allegiance was magic. They believed in magic and its power so much that in the ancient world and spell or formula was often referred to as an “Ephesian writing.” The city itself had a reputation as a center of learning and the practice of magical arts, and they were deeply committed in their devotion to these magical powers.
To understand all of that is virtually necessary to understand what Luke wants us to see in this section. Without understanding the hold that their belief in magic and dark powers had on the Ephesians, this passage will seem strange, superstitious, and almost at odds with what we believe to know about the gospel and how it should be spread. This encounter at Ephesus was all about power and challenging what people held most dear in their hearts.
It might help to think of ancient Egypt for just a moment. During the time of Moses, Egypt was beholden to their belief in their gods and so, apparently, were the Israelites who had lived in that land for over 400 years. When Moses came to free the children of Abraham and serve notice on the Egyptians, there was a mighty power struggle that had to be won but it was not between Moses and Pharaoh. It was between Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the gods of Egypt. That is why each plague that Yahweh wrought on Egypt was a direct attack on the major gods of their religious beliefs. (For instance the water into blood was an assault on Hapi the god of the Nile; the boils were a direct affront to Imhotep, the physician god, and Thoth, the god of magic and healing; the hail was a conquering of Nut the sky goddess; the locusts were directed at Seth the god of crops; the dark was a clear defeat of Re, the mighty sun god and so on). God was clearly defeating these gods so that he could replace their positions of preeminence within the hearts of his people.
This is precisely what was going on in Ephesus. These seemingly strange accounts of miracles that almost seem to delve into the magical realm are not mere accounts of legend and myth that has seeped into Luke’s account. Nor are they a demonstration that the gospel was (and perhaps still should be, some might claim) accompanied by magic-type miracles. This was clearly a special situation. It was a defeat of the thing that the Ephesians held most dear so that they could see the truth and true power of the gospel. The power wasn’t in magic or spells or even Paul. The true power was the power of God. To use that famous wrestlers phrase, God was about to step up and beat the man at his own game.
Paul began his ministry in Ephesus, which lasted an uncharacteristically long period for him of two to three years, with a three month stint of preaching and teaching in the synagogue. He apparently had some initial success before being beset with the same sort of opposition from Jewish leadership that he had faced many times before. Rather than incurring further opposition, Paul moved his teaching sessions to a hall where either Tyrranus was the primary lecturer or was owned by Tyrannus. This must have been a fairly successful endeavor because Paul continued there as his main evangelistic outlet for over two years. It seems that during this time some of Paul’s co-workers such as Epaphras (Col. 1:7) were busy evangelizing the rest of the province of Asia, including planting churches in Colosse; Laodicea; Hieropolis, and quite possibly all seven of the churches mentioned by John in his Revelation.
While teaching was the heart and soul of Paul’s ministry, as the preaching of the word of God always will be, God used Paul in other ways as well. While working in the morning before he went off to the lecture hall for the afternoon, people were taking Paul’s work aprons and handkerchiefs to the sick who were being healed and freed from demonic possession. Luke is clear to point out that this was not magic. It was not the result of a spell. It was not even Paul who was capable of such amazing feats. It was the power of the one true God demonstrating the fraud and impotency of demonic magic when compared to the true power of God.
Luke also made clear that this was not a repeatable event to be mimicked for personal use or gain as verses 13-16 make clear. They serve as a stern warning for hucksters who would try to claim the ability to harness non-normative and non-repeating events like those that took place in Ephesus for their own gain or “ministry” claims (although I recently saw a so-called preacher hawking his own green healing cloths on television while using verses 11-12 as a justification for this).
The miracles that were done through Paul were God’s way of showing the Ephesians true power and divesting them from their belief in magic so that they could hear the true message of the gospel, the truth that the power of God’s new creation was breaking into the present realm and brining its holistic restoration to bear. The miracles were a small demonstration of the new creation, nothing more and nothing less. But Luke knew that many would try to co-opt that power and use it as nothing more than another talisman or spell next to all of their other options. All things Jewish were particularly attractive as Jewish magic was considered to be highly effective. Thus, it should be of little surprise that seven men were disciples of Sceva. It is quite possible that Sceva was a magician (possibly even Jewish himself) who called himself a chief priest to gain the reputation of the Jewish connection and impress others (not unlike magicians today who call themselves the “great” or “amazing” something or the other).
But these seven men were attempting to fool with the real deal and not just dabble in magic. They sought to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons. They had obviously been deeply impressed with the works that had been done by Paul through the power of God and thought that they too could invoke the name of Jesus. But they were not part of God’s family and were seeking to use God’s power for their own gain. And like someone using a weapon that they don’t know how to handle only to have it blow up in their face, they had stepped into the realm of the big boys and were about to face the real power. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the real power was the demon that declared that he knew and presumably respected Paul and Jesus and then proceeded to beat them to a pulp, leaving them scrambling, naked, and bleeding. The real power lay in the name of Jesus, something that could not be appropriated for their own use. The family of God wasn’t built on magic but on the power of God and that power had been shown as the real thing while their beloved magic was nothing more than a pretender. And a severe warning had been laid down. One had better think twice before trying to manipulate the power of God for their own gain.
These displays of the power of the kingdom of God were enough to convince many that they needed to divest in their idolatry and adherence to magic and seek the kingdom of God. But as always, to do so involved repentance from the gods that bound them. In this case, they brought their magic scrolls of spells and enchantments which would have taken lifetimes to accrue and pass down. The total value amounted to a day’s wage for 50,000 workers, an amount that has been estimated in today’s terms to be as high as several million dollars. And they weren’t just denouncing or selling these books and scrolls, they were destroying them and they were revealing the spells publicly which, it was believed, robbed the spell of its power. The power of God had made itself manifest and the counterfeit power of magic had lost in an expensive way which is perhaps the quickest way to gain opposition as the following passage will make clear. The Ephesians who believed, however, had learned rightly to trust in the power of God rather than magic. Just as God had defeated the Egyptian gods head to head and run roughshod over the prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel, God had taken on the power of magic and defeated by exposing it’s lack of power and demonstrating that the true power was in God alone.
Although the point for many had been made, they would continue to need to be taught on the topic of spiritual power and the true power of the family of God. This is possibly reason that Paul’s most thorough explanation of spiritual powers and the spiritual battle that Christians face come in Paul’s letter called Ephesians (which he either wrote to the Ephesians or while imprisoned in Ephesus). They would continue to have to be educated on the subject, but the initial battle had been won in the hearts of many. The true power of God had been shown.
Devotional Thought
Take at look at those around you in your life. What are their gods that they believe and trust in? How can you allow the Spirit to work through you to demonstrate to them the emptiness and lack of true power in those things? How can you show them that true power to change lives and bring eternal peace comes from God alone.
11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
17 When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. 18 Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. 19 A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c] 20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
21 After all this had happened, Paul decided[d] to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” 22 He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.
Dig Deeper
There was an old professional wrestler who became somewhat famous due, in part, to a line of his that he repeated often. He would regularly remind his opponents that in to “be the man” they had to “beat the man.” His point, of course, was that you only take the place of preeminence by knocking off the one who currently holds that position. What is true of athletics is, I suppose, also true of our hearts. Whatever holds the position of highest importance in our hearts can be considered our god. It is certainly the thing to which we are most beholden. For the Greeks in Ephesus, the thing that had most captured their heart, imagination, and allegiance was magic. They believed in magic and its power so much that in the ancient world and spell or formula was often referred to as an “Ephesian writing.” The city itself had a reputation as a center of learning and the practice of magical arts, and they were deeply committed in their devotion to these magical powers.
To understand all of that is virtually necessary to understand what Luke wants us to see in this section. Without understanding the hold that their belief in magic and dark powers had on the Ephesians, this passage will seem strange, superstitious, and almost at odds with what we believe to know about the gospel and how it should be spread. This encounter at Ephesus was all about power and challenging what people held most dear in their hearts.
It might help to think of ancient Egypt for just a moment. During the time of Moses, Egypt was beholden to their belief in their gods and so, apparently, were the Israelites who had lived in that land for over 400 years. When Moses came to free the children of Abraham and serve notice on the Egyptians, there was a mighty power struggle that had to be won but it was not between Moses and Pharaoh. It was between Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the gods of Egypt. That is why each plague that Yahweh wrought on Egypt was a direct attack on the major gods of their religious beliefs. (For instance the water into blood was an assault on Hapi the god of the Nile; the boils were a direct affront to Imhotep, the physician god, and Thoth, the god of magic and healing; the hail was a conquering of Nut the sky goddess; the locusts were directed at Seth the god of crops; the dark was a clear defeat of Re, the mighty sun god and so on). God was clearly defeating these gods so that he could replace their positions of preeminence within the hearts of his people.
This is precisely what was going on in Ephesus. These seemingly strange accounts of miracles that almost seem to delve into the magical realm are not mere accounts of legend and myth that has seeped into Luke’s account. Nor are they a demonstration that the gospel was (and perhaps still should be, some might claim) accompanied by magic-type miracles. This was clearly a special situation. It was a defeat of the thing that the Ephesians held most dear so that they could see the truth and true power of the gospel. The power wasn’t in magic or spells or even Paul. The true power was the power of God. To use that famous wrestlers phrase, God was about to step up and beat the man at his own game.
Paul began his ministry in Ephesus, which lasted an uncharacteristically long period for him of two to three years, with a three month stint of preaching and teaching in the synagogue. He apparently had some initial success before being beset with the same sort of opposition from Jewish leadership that he had faced many times before. Rather than incurring further opposition, Paul moved his teaching sessions to a hall where either Tyrranus was the primary lecturer or was owned by Tyrannus. This must have been a fairly successful endeavor because Paul continued there as his main evangelistic outlet for over two years. It seems that during this time some of Paul’s co-workers such as Epaphras (Col. 1:7) were busy evangelizing the rest of the province of Asia, including planting churches in Colosse; Laodicea; Hieropolis, and quite possibly all seven of the churches mentioned by John in his Revelation.
While teaching was the heart and soul of Paul’s ministry, as the preaching of the word of God always will be, God used Paul in other ways as well. While working in the morning before he went off to the lecture hall for the afternoon, people were taking Paul’s work aprons and handkerchiefs to the sick who were being healed and freed from demonic possession. Luke is clear to point out that this was not magic. It was not the result of a spell. It was not even Paul who was capable of such amazing feats. It was the power of the one true God demonstrating the fraud and impotency of demonic magic when compared to the true power of God.
Luke also made clear that this was not a repeatable event to be mimicked for personal use or gain as verses 13-16 make clear. They serve as a stern warning for hucksters who would try to claim the ability to harness non-normative and non-repeating events like those that took place in Ephesus for their own gain or “ministry” claims (although I recently saw a so-called preacher hawking his own green healing cloths on television while using verses 11-12 as a justification for this).
The miracles that were done through Paul were God’s way of showing the Ephesians true power and divesting them from their belief in magic so that they could hear the true message of the gospel, the truth that the power of God’s new creation was breaking into the present realm and brining its holistic restoration to bear. The miracles were a small demonstration of the new creation, nothing more and nothing less. But Luke knew that many would try to co-opt that power and use it as nothing more than another talisman or spell next to all of their other options. All things Jewish were particularly attractive as Jewish magic was considered to be highly effective. Thus, it should be of little surprise that seven men were disciples of Sceva. It is quite possible that Sceva was a magician (possibly even Jewish himself) who called himself a chief priest to gain the reputation of the Jewish connection and impress others (not unlike magicians today who call themselves the “great” or “amazing” something or the other).
But these seven men were attempting to fool with the real deal and not just dabble in magic. They sought to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons. They had obviously been deeply impressed with the works that had been done by Paul through the power of God and thought that they too could invoke the name of Jesus. But they were not part of God’s family and were seeking to use God’s power for their own gain. And like someone using a weapon that they don’t know how to handle only to have it blow up in their face, they had stepped into the realm of the big boys and were about to face the real power. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the real power was the demon that declared that he knew and presumably respected Paul and Jesus and then proceeded to beat them to a pulp, leaving them scrambling, naked, and bleeding. The real power lay in the name of Jesus, something that could not be appropriated for their own use. The family of God wasn’t built on magic but on the power of God and that power had been shown as the real thing while their beloved magic was nothing more than a pretender. And a severe warning had been laid down. One had better think twice before trying to manipulate the power of God for their own gain.
These displays of the power of the kingdom of God were enough to convince many that they needed to divest in their idolatry and adherence to magic and seek the kingdom of God. But as always, to do so involved repentance from the gods that bound them. In this case, they brought their magic scrolls of spells and enchantments which would have taken lifetimes to accrue and pass down. The total value amounted to a day’s wage for 50,000 workers, an amount that has been estimated in today’s terms to be as high as several million dollars. And they weren’t just denouncing or selling these books and scrolls, they were destroying them and they were revealing the spells publicly which, it was believed, robbed the spell of its power. The power of God had made itself manifest and the counterfeit power of magic had lost in an expensive way which is perhaps the quickest way to gain opposition as the following passage will make clear. The Ephesians who believed, however, had learned rightly to trust in the power of God rather than magic. Just as God had defeated the Egyptian gods head to head and run roughshod over the prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel, God had taken on the power of magic and defeated by exposing it’s lack of power and demonstrating that the true power was in God alone.
Although the point for many had been made, they would continue to need to be taught on the topic of spiritual power and the true power of the family of God. This is possibly reason that Paul’s most thorough explanation of spiritual powers and the spiritual battle that Christians face come in Paul’s letter called Ephesians (which he either wrote to the Ephesians or while imprisoned in Ephesus). They would continue to have to be educated on the subject, but the initial battle had been won in the hearts of many. The true power of God had been shown.
Devotional Thought
Take at look at those around you in your life. What are their gods that they believe and trust in? How can you allow the Spirit to work through you to demonstrate to them the emptiness and lack of true power in those things? How can you show them that true power to change lives and bring eternal peace comes from God alone.
Monday, January 09, 2012
Acts 18:24-19:7
24 Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor[a] and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.
27 When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. 28 For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.
Paul in Ephesus
1 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when[a] you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3 So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism,” they replied.
4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues[b] and prophesied. 7 There were about twelve men in all.
Dig Deeper
A few years ago, I could not stand the idea of cell phones. I vowed that I would never own one but then my wife had to go into the hospital for a period of several months with a difficult pregnancy and I needed to be as available as possible so I began to carry one. Slowly but surely I saw the benefits of having a cell phone and now I cannot imagine going without one. Until recently, however, I felt the same about smart phones. I just didn’t see the point of having a phone that can do a hundred different things above and beyond simply being a phone. That is, until my wife got one for me. Suddenly I can keep track of my schedule and the schedule on my wife’s phone, I can video conference with people around the world regardless of where I’m at, I can check my email anywhere at anytime, I can read and create documents anywhere, and a whole host of other indispensable things. I’ve grown to truly appreciate this phone and be able to do many things on it that I never would have imagined were possible from a mere phone. I’ve even spent some time showing interested people the virtues of this phone and all of the things that it can do. Just when I thought that I had it all figured out, though, I realized recently that there was a function on my phone that I was trying to make work but I just could not figure it out. That’s when my eight year-old son sat down with me and proceeded to explain to me his mild frustration with me over the fact that I simply did not have a full working knowledge of my own phone. I don’t understand if the kids these days are born with technology genes that us older folks simply don’t have but he was able to show me several vital functions and features of my phone that I didn’t have a clue were even available (a surprising fact considering he doesn’t own a phone). I appreciated what I knew of it but he opened a whole new world by giving me a more adequate explanation of my phone.
As Luke continues to describe the spread of the gospel as it made its way from Jerusalem to the “ends of the earth” he takes us on a brief stop-off with two stories that show slightly different aspects of the same issue. In the early decades of Christianity there had been many elements of Jewish Messianic hope including the teachings of a coming kingdom of God that John the Baptist and his disciples were espousing, and even the teachings of Jesus himself that had made their way around the known world at the time. Many of these strands of teaching apart from that of Jesus and his disciples were but parts of the whole and there were apparently many different combinations and partial aspects of the truth, or even somewhat convoluted aspects of the gospel. Most of the work of the church was to preach the gospel to the Jews who were waiting for God’s Messiah and to the Gentiles who had little to knowledge or expectation of anything of the kind. But they also had to confront those who were still following John’s teachings or had heard but part of the message and truth of Jesus. Luke was no doubt taking special concern to include these two accounts to make clear that it was no longer appropriate to continue to follow John. The one that he had pointed to had come and everything that John had preached would come about had been fulfilled in the life, death, resurrection, and baptism into Jesus Christ. God’s family could finally be entered into fully and the seal of God’s Holy Spirit was available to all who entered into Christ.
Luke returns us to Ephesus where a man named Apollos arrived at a time when Paul was not in the city but Aquila and Priscilla were. Apollos was quite possibly an itinerant worker who engaged in teaching wherever he went, something that was not uncommon in these parts of the world at this time but we cannot be certain of that. He was a native of Alexandria which was a center of culture and learning in the ancient world but was also known to be an early center of various garbled versions of teaching about the Messiah so, although Luke doesn’t explicitly tell us, it is quite possible that Apollos had been instructed in portions of the life of Jesus. In addition to that, Apollos was Jewish and presumably grew up in the large Jewish community in Alexandria so his knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures would have been high. We cannot piece together all of the details concerning Apollos but we do know that he had been instructed at least partially concerning Jesus and that he was quite zealous or had “great fervor.” (A phrase which literally translated is “great fervor in spirit,” a phrase which some have pressed to argue that Apollos was full of the Spirit, but an understanding that is unlikely given the context.) Because of his passion for spiritual truth, Apollos taught accurately about Jesus as far as what he knew. It is quite reasonable at this point to conclude that Apollos had been taught by someone who had possibly even heard Jesus or knew of him during his lifetime but who had not yet known of the events surrounding his death and resurrection as well as Pentecost.
Luke goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Apollos was a sincere and honest man who taught about Jesus accurately, yet he was not fully informed on one vital point. He needed someone to sit down with him and explain the fullness of the gospel message adequately. This is exactly what Aquila and Priscilla would do as they would open a whole new world of the gospel of Jesus Christ to this already rather learned man. Their respect for Apollos is apparent as they did not confront this truth seeker in public. They privately invited him into their home to hear the full story. As they did so, Apollos’ sincerity and humility shined through as he listened and accepted the truth.
But what part of the gospel was Apollos missing? He knew of only the baptism of John which meant that he knew of only the symbolic and preparatory baptism of John the Baptist. Apollos was unaware that the Spirit had been poured out and God’s family made available to all who would not just know of Jesus but those that would believe in his life, repent of living for their own will, and submit to his Lordship, by being baptized into his life (Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-4; Titus 3:4-8).
Luke does not explicitly state that Apollos was then baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of his sin and to receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), but the fact that Luke rolls the conversion of Apollos directly into the account at the beginning of chapter 19 make if fairly clear that this is exactly what he was implying. There were, in other words, fervent and sincere people who had elements of the gospel but they too needed to be taught adequately and immersed into the life of Christ.
Once Apollos had been brought fully into God’s family, he wanted to continue his activities of traveling and teaching about Christ. The brothers and sisters in Ephesus not only encouraged him but sent a letter of recommendation so that he would be welcomed and trusted as a true believer by the community there. His time in Corinth was so successful that it could almost be argued he was “too successful.” Luke confirms that Apollos was “a great help to those who by grace had believed.” His teaching skill was no doubt a great addition to the Corinthian community but they were so young and immature that Paul would have to spend a fair amount of time in the opening chapters of his first letter to the Corinthians helping those who were so enamored with Apollos’ teaching skill and content that they began to create schisms. Yet, Paul, and Luke for that matter, never had anything but godly praise for this humble and powerful teacher of the gospel. In fact, Apollos was so powerful in arguing the truth of the gospel from the Scriptures with his Jewish brethren that some have put forth the theory that he was the author of the anonymously written Hebrews.
Luke intentionally connects these two accounts concerning the priority of baptism into the life of Christ as he mentions that while Apollos was in Corinth, Paul arrived for another visit to Ephesus. This time the Spirit opened the door in Ephesus in a unique way. While there, Paul ran into a group of about a dozen men whom Luke calls disciples. Much debate has gone into whether Luke intended to convey that these men were disciples of John or of Jesus. If they were strictly disciples of John, then it seems that Luke would have just said that. Yet, it is unlikely that Luke would mean that they were actual disciples as the rest of his account goes to show that they were not. In his work “Acts,” scholar I. Howard Marshall astutely points out that “Paul met some men who appeared to him to be disciples, but because he had some doubts about their Christian status he proceeded to examine their claims more carefully. Luke is not saying that the men were disciples but is describing how they appeared to Paul.” This is not unusual as Luke often spoke of the appearance of someone’s spiritual condition without specifically commenting on it before showing the truth of it such as noting that Simon “believed” (Acts 8.13, and; reporting the Judaizers as “believers” (Acts 15:5).
Noticing that something didn’t seem quite right, Paul inquired as to these men’s reception of the Holy Spirit. His assumption was that they, like all believers since Pentecost, would have been baptized through faith into Christ and received the gift of the indwelling Spirit (Acts 2:38). Yet Paul saw no evidence of that or of the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit as manifested in special gifts of the Spirit. Their answer probably didn’t surprise him at all. They, like Apollos, had not even heard of that the Spirit was now available on a personal basis.
Paul’s next assumption is instructive. If they had not received the Spirit and were not members of Christ then the problem must have had to do with baptism for in Paul’s mind, all who were buried into his death and resurrection through baptism in genuine faith were believers and would have received the indwelling of the Spirit. Just as Apollos had not known of the necessity of being baptized into Christ, this group of men had to be taught more adequately as well and were then immediately baptized into Christ, receiving the forgiveness of their sin and the gift of the counselor, the Holy Spirit.
Twice before the Spirit had prevented Paul from laying the foundation of a church in Ephesus and completing the work there that he desired to do but apparently now, the Spirit’s timing was right. It seemingly was through these twelve men that the foundation for a church in Ephesus would be laid. These men were not just baptized into Christ but Paul used his apostolic gift to pass on to them special gifts of the Spirit that would enable them to demonstrate the truth of their gospel claims to others in Ephesus. Once Paul had laid his hands on them, the Spirit came upon them (a separate function from the indwelling of the Spirit that all believers are promised at baptism into Christ per Acts 2:38) and empowered them to speak in tongues and prophesy.
These two accounts from Ephesus are encouraging reminders that the truth of the gospel is powerful. Even those who are very learned and sincere religiously can be brought into the life of Christ if they are humbly and patiently, albeit directly, taught more adequately about the need to fully enter into the life of Christ and become part of his family.
Devotional Thought
We have two separate examples here of disciples who were willing to speak boldly to sincere religious people rather than be sentimental. They put their love for God, the truth, and others ahead of the potential discomfort of speaking the gospel to those who were already convinced that they were doing the right thing. What is your response to such situations? Are you ready, willing, and able to step out in faith and to show biblical truth to those who need more adequate teaching and to do so with the same humility and respect that these first disciples had?
27 When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. 28 For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.
Paul in Ephesus
1 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when[a] you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3 So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism,” they replied.
4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues[b] and prophesied. 7 There were about twelve men in all.
Dig Deeper
A few years ago, I could not stand the idea of cell phones. I vowed that I would never own one but then my wife had to go into the hospital for a period of several months with a difficult pregnancy and I needed to be as available as possible so I began to carry one. Slowly but surely I saw the benefits of having a cell phone and now I cannot imagine going without one. Until recently, however, I felt the same about smart phones. I just didn’t see the point of having a phone that can do a hundred different things above and beyond simply being a phone. That is, until my wife got one for me. Suddenly I can keep track of my schedule and the schedule on my wife’s phone, I can video conference with people around the world regardless of where I’m at, I can check my email anywhere at anytime, I can read and create documents anywhere, and a whole host of other indispensable things. I’ve grown to truly appreciate this phone and be able to do many things on it that I never would have imagined were possible from a mere phone. I’ve even spent some time showing interested people the virtues of this phone and all of the things that it can do. Just when I thought that I had it all figured out, though, I realized recently that there was a function on my phone that I was trying to make work but I just could not figure it out. That’s when my eight year-old son sat down with me and proceeded to explain to me his mild frustration with me over the fact that I simply did not have a full working knowledge of my own phone. I don’t understand if the kids these days are born with technology genes that us older folks simply don’t have but he was able to show me several vital functions and features of my phone that I didn’t have a clue were even available (a surprising fact considering he doesn’t own a phone). I appreciated what I knew of it but he opened a whole new world by giving me a more adequate explanation of my phone.
As Luke continues to describe the spread of the gospel as it made its way from Jerusalem to the “ends of the earth” he takes us on a brief stop-off with two stories that show slightly different aspects of the same issue. In the early decades of Christianity there had been many elements of Jewish Messianic hope including the teachings of a coming kingdom of God that John the Baptist and his disciples were espousing, and even the teachings of Jesus himself that had made their way around the known world at the time. Many of these strands of teaching apart from that of Jesus and his disciples were but parts of the whole and there were apparently many different combinations and partial aspects of the truth, or even somewhat convoluted aspects of the gospel. Most of the work of the church was to preach the gospel to the Jews who were waiting for God’s Messiah and to the Gentiles who had little to knowledge or expectation of anything of the kind. But they also had to confront those who were still following John’s teachings or had heard but part of the message and truth of Jesus. Luke was no doubt taking special concern to include these two accounts to make clear that it was no longer appropriate to continue to follow John. The one that he had pointed to had come and everything that John had preached would come about had been fulfilled in the life, death, resurrection, and baptism into Jesus Christ. God’s family could finally be entered into fully and the seal of God’s Holy Spirit was available to all who entered into Christ.
Luke returns us to Ephesus where a man named Apollos arrived at a time when Paul was not in the city but Aquila and Priscilla were. Apollos was quite possibly an itinerant worker who engaged in teaching wherever he went, something that was not uncommon in these parts of the world at this time but we cannot be certain of that. He was a native of Alexandria which was a center of culture and learning in the ancient world but was also known to be an early center of various garbled versions of teaching about the Messiah so, although Luke doesn’t explicitly tell us, it is quite possible that Apollos had been instructed in portions of the life of Jesus. In addition to that, Apollos was Jewish and presumably grew up in the large Jewish community in Alexandria so his knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures would have been high. We cannot piece together all of the details concerning Apollos but we do know that he had been instructed at least partially concerning Jesus and that he was quite zealous or had “great fervor.” (A phrase which literally translated is “great fervor in spirit,” a phrase which some have pressed to argue that Apollos was full of the Spirit, but an understanding that is unlikely given the context.) Because of his passion for spiritual truth, Apollos taught accurately about Jesus as far as what he knew. It is quite reasonable at this point to conclude that Apollos had been taught by someone who had possibly even heard Jesus or knew of him during his lifetime but who had not yet known of the events surrounding his death and resurrection as well as Pentecost.
Luke goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Apollos was a sincere and honest man who taught about Jesus accurately, yet he was not fully informed on one vital point. He needed someone to sit down with him and explain the fullness of the gospel message adequately. This is exactly what Aquila and Priscilla would do as they would open a whole new world of the gospel of Jesus Christ to this already rather learned man. Their respect for Apollos is apparent as they did not confront this truth seeker in public. They privately invited him into their home to hear the full story. As they did so, Apollos’ sincerity and humility shined through as he listened and accepted the truth.
But what part of the gospel was Apollos missing? He knew of only the baptism of John which meant that he knew of only the symbolic and preparatory baptism of John the Baptist. Apollos was unaware that the Spirit had been poured out and God’s family made available to all who would not just know of Jesus but those that would believe in his life, repent of living for their own will, and submit to his Lordship, by being baptized into his life (Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-4; Titus 3:4-8).
Luke does not explicitly state that Apollos was then baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of his sin and to receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), but the fact that Luke rolls the conversion of Apollos directly into the account at the beginning of chapter 19 make if fairly clear that this is exactly what he was implying. There were, in other words, fervent and sincere people who had elements of the gospel but they too needed to be taught adequately and immersed into the life of Christ.
Once Apollos had been brought fully into God’s family, he wanted to continue his activities of traveling and teaching about Christ. The brothers and sisters in Ephesus not only encouraged him but sent a letter of recommendation so that he would be welcomed and trusted as a true believer by the community there. His time in Corinth was so successful that it could almost be argued he was “too successful.” Luke confirms that Apollos was “a great help to those who by grace had believed.” His teaching skill was no doubt a great addition to the Corinthian community but they were so young and immature that Paul would have to spend a fair amount of time in the opening chapters of his first letter to the Corinthians helping those who were so enamored with Apollos’ teaching skill and content that they began to create schisms. Yet, Paul, and Luke for that matter, never had anything but godly praise for this humble and powerful teacher of the gospel. In fact, Apollos was so powerful in arguing the truth of the gospel from the Scriptures with his Jewish brethren that some have put forth the theory that he was the author of the anonymously written Hebrews.
Luke intentionally connects these two accounts concerning the priority of baptism into the life of Christ as he mentions that while Apollos was in Corinth, Paul arrived for another visit to Ephesus. This time the Spirit opened the door in Ephesus in a unique way. While there, Paul ran into a group of about a dozen men whom Luke calls disciples. Much debate has gone into whether Luke intended to convey that these men were disciples of John or of Jesus. If they were strictly disciples of John, then it seems that Luke would have just said that. Yet, it is unlikely that Luke would mean that they were actual disciples as the rest of his account goes to show that they were not. In his work “Acts,” scholar I. Howard Marshall astutely points out that “Paul met some men who appeared to him to be disciples, but because he had some doubts about their Christian status he proceeded to examine their claims more carefully. Luke is not saying that the men were disciples but is describing how they appeared to Paul.” This is not unusual as Luke often spoke of the appearance of someone’s spiritual condition without specifically commenting on it before showing the truth of it such as noting that Simon “believed” (Acts 8.13, and; reporting the Judaizers as “believers” (Acts 15:5).
Noticing that something didn’t seem quite right, Paul inquired as to these men’s reception of the Holy Spirit. His assumption was that they, like all believers since Pentecost, would have been baptized through faith into Christ and received the gift of the indwelling Spirit (Acts 2:38). Yet Paul saw no evidence of that or of the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit as manifested in special gifts of the Spirit. Their answer probably didn’t surprise him at all. They, like Apollos, had not even heard of that the Spirit was now available on a personal basis.
Paul’s next assumption is instructive. If they had not received the Spirit and were not members of Christ then the problem must have had to do with baptism for in Paul’s mind, all who were buried into his death and resurrection through baptism in genuine faith were believers and would have received the indwelling of the Spirit. Just as Apollos had not known of the necessity of being baptized into Christ, this group of men had to be taught more adequately as well and were then immediately baptized into Christ, receiving the forgiveness of their sin and the gift of the counselor, the Holy Spirit.
Twice before the Spirit had prevented Paul from laying the foundation of a church in Ephesus and completing the work there that he desired to do but apparently now, the Spirit’s timing was right. It seemingly was through these twelve men that the foundation for a church in Ephesus would be laid. These men were not just baptized into Christ but Paul used his apostolic gift to pass on to them special gifts of the Spirit that would enable them to demonstrate the truth of their gospel claims to others in Ephesus. Once Paul had laid his hands on them, the Spirit came upon them (a separate function from the indwelling of the Spirit that all believers are promised at baptism into Christ per Acts 2:38) and empowered them to speak in tongues and prophesy.
These two accounts from Ephesus are encouraging reminders that the truth of the gospel is powerful. Even those who are very learned and sincere religiously can be brought into the life of Christ if they are humbly and patiently, albeit directly, taught more adequately about the need to fully enter into the life of Christ and become part of his family.
Devotional Thought
We have two separate examples here of disciples who were willing to speak boldly to sincere religious people rather than be sentimental. They put their love for God, the truth, and others ahead of the potential discomfort of speaking the gospel to those who were already convinced that they were doing the right thing. What is your response to such situations? Are you ready, willing, and able to step out in faith and to show biblical truth to those who need more adequate teaching and to do so with the same humility and respect that these first disciples had?
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Acts 18:12-23
12 While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack against Paul and brought him to the judge's bench. 13 "This man," they said, "persuades people to worship God contrary to the law!"
14 And as Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, "If it were a matter of a crime or of moral evil, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you Jews. 15 But if these are questions about words, names, and your own law, see to it yourselves. I don't want to be a judge of such things." 16 So he drove them from the judge's bench. 17 Then they all [f] seized Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the judge's bench. But none of these things concerned Gallio.
The Return Trip to Antioch
18 So Paul, having stayed on for many days, said good-bye to the brothers and sailed away to Syria. Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He shaved his head at Cenchreae, because he had taken a vow. 19 When they reached Ephesus he left them there, but he himself entered the synagogue and engaged in discussion with [g] the Jews. 20 And though they asked him to stay for a longer time, he declined, 21 but said good-bye and stated, [h] "I'll come back to you again, if God wills." Then he set sail from Ephesus.
22 On landing at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, [i] and went down to Antioch. 23 He set out, traveling through one place after another in the Galatian territory and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.
Dig Deeper
Last year an American football player made a vow at the beginning of the season that he was not going to shave his face until his team made it to the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League. The attention that he received for this little stunt grew by the week both as a result of his team being very good and having a legitimate chance to make the Super Bowl and the fact that his beard was growing quite burly over the course of a long season. By the time the playoffs came around, his beard was in the realm of a fine Grizzly Adams-like beard. He continued to vow that he would not shave his beard off until he made it to the Super Bowl, which would have been interesting if his team had not made it, but they did win each round of the playoffs and made their way to the Super Bowl. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, his beard got a great deal of attention. He had vowed to grow it until he played in a Super Bowl and he had made it. Eventually his team lost in the Super Bowl but shortly after the game, with his vow fulfilled, he shaved his beard and came out publicly a few days later clean-shaven and ready to take on the challenge of the next season.
As Paul continued on with his journey of spreading the gospel throughout the world, he faced many challenges of different kinds. As he was beginning the journey back home to Antioch, Luke briefly mentions that Paul shaved his head because of a vow but doesn’t give us any more information than that. Commentators have long puzzled over what type of vow Paul was taking and what it meant. We can state with absolute certainty that he had not taken a vow to play in the Super Bowl. Some have suggested that he took a strict Nazarite vow which often involved not cutting one’s hair but strict vows of that nature were not taken outside of the land of Israel and always ended in Jerusalem so it is unlikely that it was a vow of that type. What is more likely is that Paul engaged in a typical but not formal Jewish custom of making vows that reminded them of a special circumstance or time period that they were offering to God. It is quite reasonable that Paul had chosen to undertake such a vow when God guided him to stay in Corinth to build up the ministry there for a time much longer than he had originally planned. It is quite possible, if this speculation is correct, that Paul was growing his hair as a sign of trust in God’s provision and protection through a long time in Corinth. Now as he left the region, he would shave his head to signify that God had indeed come through and that specific time was over.
But before he left the region of Achaia, Paul would be dragged before the authorities for one more important encounter, this time with the proconsul, Gallio. The charge against Paul was a familiar one that was lodged against the apostles and the early church most often. They were persuading people to worship God contrary to the Law of Moses. The church was constantly facing dual charges on either end of the spectrum. The Jews charged that the Christian belief followed in the blasphemous footsteps of their so-called Messiah, Jesus. They truly believed, as Paul once had, that the Christians were encouraging Jews to abandon their faith, disregard the Law, disrespect Moses, and therefore they stood as no better than the pagans.
On the other hand, the Romans were quite wary of the early Christians, especially as it became more and more clear that this was not just an offshoot of Judaism but was something entirely different. It might seem odd that Rome would have a problem with Christianity being that it was an empire that was quite tolerant of other religions as long as they didn’t pose a threat to the Empire itself. So how could a group that was built on the teachings of love and non-violence of their Messiah pose a threat? It was because they were not a typical religion. Rome would have been quite happy to allow just another group that held their private religious beliefs within the confines of their own community. But the Christians, although not political or militaristic, truly believed that Jesus was the true King of the world and this meant that Caesar was not. They were determined to live that way and live by the values of the kingdom to which they belonged in heart and loyalty. Rome may not have completely understood that but they saw the potential threat and were determined to stop it. This meant that the Christians typically found themselves squeezed between the religious zeal of the Jews and the political wariness of the Romans.
But as Paul stepped before Gallio, it was still early in the Christian development and Christianity had not yet fully gained the attention of the non-Jewish world and certainly the Christian community was not fully understood by the Romans. Gallio, like many in the pagan world at this time, still saw the Christian and Jewish conflict as an in-house squabble that they did not want to deal with. Gallio did not want to get involved what what he understood as arguments over things that the Romans didn’t believe, didn’t understand, and didn’t care about.
This might seem like a negative decision for Paul and the disciples but it was actually a great victory for them. It basically gave the Christian community a new freedom, at least in the region of southern and central Greece. Gallio’s decision meant that Christianity was still being viewed as a part of Judaism which meant that they would be afforded the same freedom that was allowed to the Jewish faith. In addition, he was clearly telling the Jewish leadership that he didn’t want to hear about any more complaints that they had with the Christians. For now, Rome would not do their dirty work.
Luke does not make it clear as to why Sosthenes was beaten and by who but he does make clear that Gallio was no saint. His decision was favorable for Paul but was not based in godliness or justice but convenience for him and Rome. Now he turns a blind eye to a crowd grabbing and beating a man. It may have been that the Greeks grabbed Sosthenes and beat him but it is more likely that the Jews beat their own synagogue leader either for losing the case before Gallio and losing the honor of the community or because he had somehow demonstrated Christian sympathies during the trial. Bolstering this last possibility is that Paul mentions someone named Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1:1 as his co-author (possibly the same man as the one in this passage, but not necessarily).
As Paul’s journey was coming to an end he left and headed towards Ephesus. God had prompted him to stay in the region of Corinth for longer than he had planned but now it was time to move on. It would make sense that if his vow was a remembrance and thanksgiving vow to God for his provision during his time in that region that as he left the region and headed toward Jerusalem that it was a good time to end the vow and give final thanks to God.
Paul finally arrived in Ephesus, in the province of Asia. He had earlier been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. Now in Ephesus, things seem to go well and Paul is asked to stay more and continue to preach the gospel, but Paul seemed to discern that the time was still not right for a full-scale ministry in Ephesus, at least it was not the time for Paul. But he did leave Aquila and Priscilla behind to build up the church. Paul was clearly a man who was constantly in touch with the guidance of the Spirit as he revealed God’s will to him and did not feel that he had to do everything himself. He would later urge Timothy to teach the ministry and gospel to faithful men who would be equipped to pass it on to others (2 Timothy 2:2) and that is precisely what he was doing here.
Verse 22 is a bit cryptic but it is likely that when Luke says that Paul “went up and greeted the church,” he is referring to Paul going to visit the church in Jerusalem (although he could simply be referring to the church in Caesarea, but it would be worded oddly if that were the case). What Luke was most likely telling us was that Paul was always accountable in his ministry to the church family at large. He was not a lone-gun but kept in contact with the historic center of the church and gave them occasional updates of his activities. Paul then traveled on to his “home” church in Antioch for a short time.
But even on arriving back at “home,” Paul would not stay put for long. He had established churches in Galatia and Phrygia and would now return to them to with a fatherly heart to love and strengthen them. Paul was always deeply committed to spreading the influence of God’s kingdom one heart at at time through active evangelism and church building but he never reduced those churches and converts to a numbers game. They weren’t just conquests or numbers for Paul. He cared deeply for each church, each community, and each person. Paul was truly an evangelist and a shepherd.
Devotional Thought
Paul was constantly working towards being sensitive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit whether he led Paul towards the expected or the unexpected and uncomfortable. Paul’s loyalty was to the Spirit, not himself or his own desires. Are you equally committed to following the guidance of the Spirit? Have you trained yourself to even discern the Spirit’s guidance and do you listen when he does guide you? To what is he calling you right now?
14 And as Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, "If it were a matter of a crime or of moral evil, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you Jews. 15 But if these are questions about words, names, and your own law, see to it yourselves. I don't want to be a judge of such things." 16 So he drove them from the judge's bench. 17 Then they all [f] seized Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the judge's bench. But none of these things concerned Gallio.
The Return Trip to Antioch
18 So Paul, having stayed on for many days, said good-bye to the brothers and sailed away to Syria. Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He shaved his head at Cenchreae, because he had taken a vow. 19 When they reached Ephesus he left them there, but he himself entered the synagogue and engaged in discussion with [g] the Jews. 20 And though they asked him to stay for a longer time, he declined, 21 but said good-bye and stated, [h] "I'll come back to you again, if God wills." Then he set sail from Ephesus.
22 On landing at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, [i] and went down to Antioch. 23 He set out, traveling through one place after another in the Galatian territory and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.
Dig Deeper
Last year an American football player made a vow at the beginning of the season that he was not going to shave his face until his team made it to the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League. The attention that he received for this little stunt grew by the week both as a result of his team being very good and having a legitimate chance to make the Super Bowl and the fact that his beard was growing quite burly over the course of a long season. By the time the playoffs came around, his beard was in the realm of a fine Grizzly Adams-like beard. He continued to vow that he would not shave his beard off until he made it to the Super Bowl, which would have been interesting if his team had not made it, but they did win each round of the playoffs and made their way to the Super Bowl. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, his beard got a great deal of attention. He had vowed to grow it until he played in a Super Bowl and he had made it. Eventually his team lost in the Super Bowl but shortly after the game, with his vow fulfilled, he shaved his beard and came out publicly a few days later clean-shaven and ready to take on the challenge of the next season.
As Paul continued on with his journey of spreading the gospel throughout the world, he faced many challenges of different kinds. As he was beginning the journey back home to Antioch, Luke briefly mentions that Paul shaved his head because of a vow but doesn’t give us any more information than that. Commentators have long puzzled over what type of vow Paul was taking and what it meant. We can state with absolute certainty that he had not taken a vow to play in the Super Bowl. Some have suggested that he took a strict Nazarite vow which often involved not cutting one’s hair but strict vows of that nature were not taken outside of the land of Israel and always ended in Jerusalem so it is unlikely that it was a vow of that type. What is more likely is that Paul engaged in a typical but not formal Jewish custom of making vows that reminded them of a special circumstance or time period that they were offering to God. It is quite reasonable that Paul had chosen to undertake such a vow when God guided him to stay in Corinth to build up the ministry there for a time much longer than he had originally planned. It is quite possible, if this speculation is correct, that Paul was growing his hair as a sign of trust in God’s provision and protection through a long time in Corinth. Now as he left the region, he would shave his head to signify that God had indeed come through and that specific time was over.
But before he left the region of Achaia, Paul would be dragged before the authorities for one more important encounter, this time with the proconsul, Gallio. The charge against Paul was a familiar one that was lodged against the apostles and the early church most often. They were persuading people to worship God contrary to the Law of Moses. The church was constantly facing dual charges on either end of the spectrum. The Jews charged that the Christian belief followed in the blasphemous footsteps of their so-called Messiah, Jesus. They truly believed, as Paul once had, that the Christians were encouraging Jews to abandon their faith, disregard the Law, disrespect Moses, and therefore they stood as no better than the pagans.
On the other hand, the Romans were quite wary of the early Christians, especially as it became more and more clear that this was not just an offshoot of Judaism but was something entirely different. It might seem odd that Rome would have a problem with Christianity being that it was an empire that was quite tolerant of other religions as long as they didn’t pose a threat to the Empire itself. So how could a group that was built on the teachings of love and non-violence of their Messiah pose a threat? It was because they were not a typical religion. Rome would have been quite happy to allow just another group that held their private religious beliefs within the confines of their own community. But the Christians, although not political or militaristic, truly believed that Jesus was the true King of the world and this meant that Caesar was not. They were determined to live that way and live by the values of the kingdom to which they belonged in heart and loyalty. Rome may not have completely understood that but they saw the potential threat and were determined to stop it. This meant that the Christians typically found themselves squeezed between the religious zeal of the Jews and the political wariness of the Romans.
But as Paul stepped before Gallio, it was still early in the Christian development and Christianity had not yet fully gained the attention of the non-Jewish world and certainly the Christian community was not fully understood by the Romans. Gallio, like many in the pagan world at this time, still saw the Christian and Jewish conflict as an in-house squabble that they did not want to deal with. Gallio did not want to get involved what what he understood as arguments over things that the Romans didn’t believe, didn’t understand, and didn’t care about.
This might seem like a negative decision for Paul and the disciples but it was actually a great victory for them. It basically gave the Christian community a new freedom, at least in the region of southern and central Greece. Gallio’s decision meant that Christianity was still being viewed as a part of Judaism which meant that they would be afforded the same freedom that was allowed to the Jewish faith. In addition, he was clearly telling the Jewish leadership that he didn’t want to hear about any more complaints that they had with the Christians. For now, Rome would not do their dirty work.
Luke does not make it clear as to why Sosthenes was beaten and by who but he does make clear that Gallio was no saint. His decision was favorable for Paul but was not based in godliness or justice but convenience for him and Rome. Now he turns a blind eye to a crowd grabbing and beating a man. It may have been that the Greeks grabbed Sosthenes and beat him but it is more likely that the Jews beat their own synagogue leader either for losing the case before Gallio and losing the honor of the community or because he had somehow demonstrated Christian sympathies during the trial. Bolstering this last possibility is that Paul mentions someone named Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1:1 as his co-author (possibly the same man as the one in this passage, but not necessarily).
As Paul’s journey was coming to an end he left and headed towards Ephesus. God had prompted him to stay in the region of Corinth for longer than he had planned but now it was time to move on. It would make sense that if his vow was a remembrance and thanksgiving vow to God for his provision during his time in that region that as he left the region and headed toward Jerusalem that it was a good time to end the vow and give final thanks to God.
Paul finally arrived in Ephesus, in the province of Asia. He had earlier been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. Now in Ephesus, things seem to go well and Paul is asked to stay more and continue to preach the gospel, but Paul seemed to discern that the time was still not right for a full-scale ministry in Ephesus, at least it was not the time for Paul. But he did leave Aquila and Priscilla behind to build up the church. Paul was clearly a man who was constantly in touch with the guidance of the Spirit as he revealed God’s will to him and did not feel that he had to do everything himself. He would later urge Timothy to teach the ministry and gospel to faithful men who would be equipped to pass it on to others (2 Timothy 2:2) and that is precisely what he was doing here.
Verse 22 is a bit cryptic but it is likely that when Luke says that Paul “went up and greeted the church,” he is referring to Paul going to visit the church in Jerusalem (although he could simply be referring to the church in Caesarea, but it would be worded oddly if that were the case). What Luke was most likely telling us was that Paul was always accountable in his ministry to the church family at large. He was not a lone-gun but kept in contact with the historic center of the church and gave them occasional updates of his activities. Paul then traveled on to his “home” church in Antioch for a short time.
But even on arriving back at “home,” Paul would not stay put for long. He had established churches in Galatia and Phrygia and would now return to them to with a fatherly heart to love and strengthen them. Paul was always deeply committed to spreading the influence of God’s kingdom one heart at at time through active evangelism and church building but he never reduced those churches and converts to a numbers game. They weren’t just conquests or numbers for Paul. He cared deeply for each church, each community, and each person. Paul was truly an evangelist and a shepherd.
Devotional Thought
Paul was constantly working towards being sensitive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit whether he led Paul towards the expected or the unexpected and uncomfortable. Paul’s loyalty was to the Spirit, not himself or his own desires. Are you equally committed to following the guidance of the Spirit? Have you trained yourself to even discern the Spirit’s guidance and do you listen when he does guide you? To what is he calling you right now?
Monday, January 02, 2012
Acts 18:1-11
Note: Sorry for the long delay in resuming our journey through Acts. Look for new devotionals every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
In Corinth
1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. 4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
5 When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. 6 But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
7 Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. 8 Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.
9 One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. 10 For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” 11 So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.
Dig Deeper
There’s always a difficult line to discern when you feel that someone else is in error in their beliefs or practices concerning God. You have to decide whether they are truly in error and lacking some vital information about God and his word or whether it is simply just a difference in small matters of opinion that can be safely tucked into the category of disputable matters. A few years back, for instance, I had an interaction with a young man who was convinced that I was not part of God’s kingdom because our church will occasionally have musical instruments playing during our song worship. I’m pretty convinced biblically that this is one of those disputable matters and while I respect his right to feel that way, it is probably not a matter over which someone needs to be categorized as embracing false doctrine.
On the other hand, I had another friend awhile back who believed that water baptism into the life of Christ is not necessary for salvation, and that in fact, there are three types of ordained baptism in the New Testament. Neither of these view is biblical, of course, and flies directly in the face of Scriptures that state plainly that God graciously saves us (Titus 3:5; 1 Pet. 3:20) and forgives our sin (Acts 2:38) at baptism and that there is only one baptism (Eph. 4:5). As much as I would have liked to not have to confront him about this, it is serious business and so I felt that his error would be on my head if I didn’t at least try to proclaim the truth to him. As uncomfortable as it was, I did share the biblical truth with him although he rejected it, citing the fact that that’s not what he had been taught growing up, and he respected his pastor more than anyone else and just didn’t believe he could be wrong. Despite an inability to demonstrate the truth of his belief biblically, he sadly chose to side with what another person had told him. He didn’t listen to the biblical truth, but I had done all that I could do.
Paul certainly felt the burden of believing that he had the truth to proclaim to Jews and Gentiles alike wherever he went. He did have one advantage in that Christianity was such a new faith based on the recent life and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah that it was a safe assumption wherever he went and whoever he talked to that they needed to have the truth of the gospel proclaimed to them. There were very few gray areas between the truth and the false gospels that had popped up yet, although they were there already and would soon explode in scope and number. But Paul took his role as apostle quite seriously and felt that if he didn’t proclaim the truth of the Messiah to people wherever he went, regardless of the consequences of sharing that truth, that their blood would be on his head. But once he had faithfully proclaimed the gospel, that was all he could do. It was not his job to get people to respond. Once they heard the truth the responsibility shifted to them.
Despite the fact that Paul had been beckoned by the power of the Holy Spirit to Macedonia, things had not gone personally well for him there. Paul was now arriving in Corinth but still concerned about how things were going for Silas and Timothy who had remained for a time in Macedonia. Corinth was a metropolitan center that was teeming with life and energy. It was one of those cities that has a nearly palpable pulse wherever you go. But it had a dark side. As a commercial port it had attracted all types of people including a Jewish community, but it had a terrible reputation for immorality. Corinth was the center of worship of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and had a temple for her with over 1,000 prostitutes housed there. In the ancient world, the term “Corinthian” became almost synonymous with the term “immoral”. Corinth was a fiercely Roman colony that was very proud of it’s “Roman-ness” and just as committed to the Roman gods and the Roman way of life.
Paul arrived in Corinth in “fear and trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3) after his previous experiences, but he was not deterred. Rather he was still determined to preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2) and nothing else in Corinth, a message that quickly separated the truth seekers from those who would cling to their own myths, idols, and opinions.
He must have been quite encouraged, though, to have met Aquila and Priscilla right away. Luke never says for certain that they were already Christians, but that seems to be the implication. They had recently arrived from Rome after the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, an act which included Jewish Christians as well. They were making a living as tentmakers, a profession which required skill in working with both leather and cilcium (a cloth made of goat’s hair from Paul’s native region of Cilcia) tent material. Paul was also a skilled tentmaker which was not that unusual as most rabbis and Pharisees in Paul’s day earned their own living through a trade of some sort. It seems that they quickly agreed to let Paul live with them and to stay on and work with them as well, an arrangement that allowed Paul to support himself while preaching the gospel.
Paul must have been relieved on two levels when Silas and Timothy arrived safely from Macedonia. First, he knew that they were safe and that he could finally receive some news as to the progress of the gospel in Macedonia (1 Thess. 3:6-10). Second, they apparently brought with them monetary support from the disciples in Macedonia (2 Cor. 11:9; Phil. 4:15-16). This allowed him lay down his tentmaker tools for awhile and fully devote himself to the message of the gospel which was what Paul wanted to do as much as possible to fulfill what he felt was his true calling in the Lord.
As an apostle, Paul knew that his work of declaring the truth of Jesus as the Messiah to the Jew first and then the Gentile was vitally important and he took that task seriously. He understood that when his fellow Jews, or anyone else for that matter, rejected the gospel they also rejected their only chance to be brought into the family of God. Preaching the gospel was his responsibility. If Paul failed to render that duty then he felt that he would have to answer to God for that. But once he had done so faithfully, he was innocent. Once the responsibility of preaching the gospel had been dispensed the onus of accountability shifted to the hearers and how they would respond to the truth.
When the Jews in Corinth did reject the gospel and began to be abusive towards Paul, as they had in so many other places, Paul shook his clothes out towards them. This was no empty gesture or a mere sign of frustration. Shaking out one’s garments was a sign of breaking fellowship with them (Neh. 5:13). It was the kind of gesture that Jews would usually aim towards the pagan Gentiles. It was an indicator form God’s servant that, in his eyes, they had put themselves in the category of the godless Gentiles and were no better off when it came to their position in God’s family. They, just like the Gentiles that they so quickly looked down upon, were also cut off from God’s family.
Whether the opposition that Paul faced forced his move to the house of Titius Justus or the persecution ramped up as a result of his move and subsequent success there remains an open question, but Paul did eventually move to Titius’ house which was right next door to the synagogue and would have been a constant “in-your-face” reminder of the success and power of the gospel that they had so summarily rejected. Most Romans had three names that they used under different circumstances so it is quite plausible that Titius Justus is one in the same with Gaius who was personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1:14) and who was still hosting the whole church in Corinth in his house when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. To have such a sizable house meant that Titius (Gaius?) was a prominent and wealthy member of Corinthian society but he was not the only prominent convert. The synagogue leader, Crispus, was also personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1:14) and presumably became one of the early leaders of the young church in Corinth. Despite his opposition, then, Paul had a great deal of success in bringing people, both prominent and poor (cf. 1 Cor. 11) into the kingdom of God and was doing so right next to the very synagogue that had rejected the gospel, complete with the former leader of that synagogue as one of the newest converts!
We have to speculate a bit at this point that Paul had become so accustomed to being run out of towns that perhaps he was bracing himself for another such incident. It is possible that having such a well respected convert like the synagogue leader, Crispus, might have actually padded Paul against some of the harshest opposition that he usually faced. Whatever the case, God felt that it was necessary to assure Paul that Corinth was precisely where he wanted him to be and to stay. Paul had desires to continue spreading the gospel and eventually make his way to Rome, but the time was not yet to come. For now, he was assured that God would bring him great success in Corinth and protect him while he stayed and built the church.
It must have been an exciting and yet challenging time for Paul as we know from his letters that the young church in Corinth was petulant and strong-willed but also passionate and full of zeal and energy. They were like an undisciplined teenager that was constantly ready to explode with pent-up energy. And perhaps that’s why God chose to have Paul stay for the 18 months that he did. Imagine the problems that might have developed in Corinth had Paul not stayed as long as he did to build, mature, and establish his relationship with the church there.
Devotional Thought
How do you feel about God’s call on your life to teach the truth to others, especially those that find themselves in serious biblical error? Are you willing to risk embarrassment, rejection, or even be ostracized for the sake of declaring the truth of the gospel to others? Remember, it’s not our responsibility to make them respond positively but it is our responsibility to declare the truth to those in error.
In Corinth
1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. 4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
5 When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. 6 But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
7 Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. 8 Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.
9 One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. 10 For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” 11 So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.
Dig Deeper
There’s always a difficult line to discern when you feel that someone else is in error in their beliefs or practices concerning God. You have to decide whether they are truly in error and lacking some vital information about God and his word or whether it is simply just a difference in small matters of opinion that can be safely tucked into the category of disputable matters. A few years back, for instance, I had an interaction with a young man who was convinced that I was not part of God’s kingdom because our church will occasionally have musical instruments playing during our song worship. I’m pretty convinced biblically that this is one of those disputable matters and while I respect his right to feel that way, it is probably not a matter over which someone needs to be categorized as embracing false doctrine.
On the other hand, I had another friend awhile back who believed that water baptism into the life of Christ is not necessary for salvation, and that in fact, there are three types of ordained baptism in the New Testament. Neither of these view is biblical, of course, and flies directly in the face of Scriptures that state plainly that God graciously saves us (Titus 3:5; 1 Pet. 3:20) and forgives our sin (Acts 2:38) at baptism and that there is only one baptism (Eph. 4:5). As much as I would have liked to not have to confront him about this, it is serious business and so I felt that his error would be on my head if I didn’t at least try to proclaim the truth to him. As uncomfortable as it was, I did share the biblical truth with him although he rejected it, citing the fact that that’s not what he had been taught growing up, and he respected his pastor more than anyone else and just didn’t believe he could be wrong. Despite an inability to demonstrate the truth of his belief biblically, he sadly chose to side with what another person had told him. He didn’t listen to the biblical truth, but I had done all that I could do.
Paul certainly felt the burden of believing that he had the truth to proclaim to Jews and Gentiles alike wherever he went. He did have one advantage in that Christianity was such a new faith based on the recent life and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah that it was a safe assumption wherever he went and whoever he talked to that they needed to have the truth of the gospel proclaimed to them. There were very few gray areas between the truth and the false gospels that had popped up yet, although they were there already and would soon explode in scope and number. But Paul took his role as apostle quite seriously and felt that if he didn’t proclaim the truth of the Messiah to people wherever he went, regardless of the consequences of sharing that truth, that their blood would be on his head. But once he had faithfully proclaimed the gospel, that was all he could do. It was not his job to get people to respond. Once they heard the truth the responsibility shifted to them.
Despite the fact that Paul had been beckoned by the power of the Holy Spirit to Macedonia, things had not gone personally well for him there. Paul was now arriving in Corinth but still concerned about how things were going for Silas and Timothy who had remained for a time in Macedonia. Corinth was a metropolitan center that was teeming with life and energy. It was one of those cities that has a nearly palpable pulse wherever you go. But it had a dark side. As a commercial port it had attracted all types of people including a Jewish community, but it had a terrible reputation for immorality. Corinth was the center of worship of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and had a temple for her with over 1,000 prostitutes housed there. In the ancient world, the term “Corinthian” became almost synonymous with the term “immoral”. Corinth was a fiercely Roman colony that was very proud of it’s “Roman-ness” and just as committed to the Roman gods and the Roman way of life.
Paul arrived in Corinth in “fear and trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3) after his previous experiences, but he was not deterred. Rather he was still determined to preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2) and nothing else in Corinth, a message that quickly separated the truth seekers from those who would cling to their own myths, idols, and opinions.
He must have been quite encouraged, though, to have met Aquila and Priscilla right away. Luke never says for certain that they were already Christians, but that seems to be the implication. They had recently arrived from Rome after the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, an act which included Jewish Christians as well. They were making a living as tentmakers, a profession which required skill in working with both leather and cilcium (a cloth made of goat’s hair from Paul’s native region of Cilcia) tent material. Paul was also a skilled tentmaker which was not that unusual as most rabbis and Pharisees in Paul’s day earned their own living through a trade of some sort. It seems that they quickly agreed to let Paul live with them and to stay on and work with them as well, an arrangement that allowed Paul to support himself while preaching the gospel.
Paul must have been relieved on two levels when Silas and Timothy arrived safely from Macedonia. First, he knew that they were safe and that he could finally receive some news as to the progress of the gospel in Macedonia (1 Thess. 3:6-10). Second, they apparently brought with them monetary support from the disciples in Macedonia (2 Cor. 11:9; Phil. 4:15-16). This allowed him lay down his tentmaker tools for awhile and fully devote himself to the message of the gospel which was what Paul wanted to do as much as possible to fulfill what he felt was his true calling in the Lord.
As an apostle, Paul knew that his work of declaring the truth of Jesus as the Messiah to the Jew first and then the Gentile was vitally important and he took that task seriously. He understood that when his fellow Jews, or anyone else for that matter, rejected the gospel they also rejected their only chance to be brought into the family of God. Preaching the gospel was his responsibility. If Paul failed to render that duty then he felt that he would have to answer to God for that. But once he had done so faithfully, he was innocent. Once the responsibility of preaching the gospel had been dispensed the onus of accountability shifted to the hearers and how they would respond to the truth.
When the Jews in Corinth did reject the gospel and began to be abusive towards Paul, as they had in so many other places, Paul shook his clothes out towards them. This was no empty gesture or a mere sign of frustration. Shaking out one’s garments was a sign of breaking fellowship with them (Neh. 5:13). It was the kind of gesture that Jews would usually aim towards the pagan Gentiles. It was an indicator form God’s servant that, in his eyes, they had put themselves in the category of the godless Gentiles and were no better off when it came to their position in God’s family. They, just like the Gentiles that they so quickly looked down upon, were also cut off from God’s family.
Whether the opposition that Paul faced forced his move to the house of Titius Justus or the persecution ramped up as a result of his move and subsequent success there remains an open question, but Paul did eventually move to Titius’ house which was right next door to the synagogue and would have been a constant “in-your-face” reminder of the success and power of the gospel that they had so summarily rejected. Most Romans had three names that they used under different circumstances so it is quite plausible that Titius Justus is one in the same with Gaius who was personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1:14) and who was still hosting the whole church in Corinth in his house when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. To have such a sizable house meant that Titius (Gaius?) was a prominent and wealthy member of Corinthian society but he was not the only prominent convert. The synagogue leader, Crispus, was also personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1:14) and presumably became one of the early leaders of the young church in Corinth. Despite his opposition, then, Paul had a great deal of success in bringing people, both prominent and poor (cf. 1 Cor. 11) into the kingdom of God and was doing so right next to the very synagogue that had rejected the gospel, complete with the former leader of that synagogue as one of the newest converts!
We have to speculate a bit at this point that Paul had become so accustomed to being run out of towns that perhaps he was bracing himself for another such incident. It is possible that having such a well respected convert like the synagogue leader, Crispus, might have actually padded Paul against some of the harshest opposition that he usually faced. Whatever the case, God felt that it was necessary to assure Paul that Corinth was precisely where he wanted him to be and to stay. Paul had desires to continue spreading the gospel and eventually make his way to Rome, but the time was not yet to come. For now, he was assured that God would bring him great success in Corinth and protect him while he stayed and built the church.
It must have been an exciting and yet challenging time for Paul as we know from his letters that the young church in Corinth was petulant and strong-willed but also passionate and full of zeal and energy. They were like an undisciplined teenager that was constantly ready to explode with pent-up energy. And perhaps that’s why God chose to have Paul stay for the 18 months that he did. Imagine the problems that might have developed in Corinth had Paul not stayed as long as he did to build, mature, and establish his relationship with the church there.
Devotional Thought
How do you feel about God’s call on your life to teach the truth to others, especially those that find themselves in serious biblical error? Are you willing to risk embarrassment, rejection, or even be ostracized for the sake of declaring the truth of the gospel to others? Remember, it’s not our responsibility to make them respond positively but it is our responsibility to declare the truth to those in error.
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