Acts 19:1-10 English Standard Version Paul in Ephesus 19 And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. 2 And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John's baptism.” 4 And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. 7 There were about twelve men in all. 8 And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. 9 But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. 10 This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. We are going to see in today's passage how God not only used Apollos to go back into areas where Paul had little success, but God is going to use Paul to give a full gospel presentation to those that Apollos had been teaching in Ephesus (before Aquilla and Priscilla were able to take him aside and explain the gospel more fully to him), and there is going to be a great harvest of souls here because those that were baptized into the baptism of John the Baptist waiting for the coming Messiah are enthusiastic to know the One they were waiting for has already come, and His name is Jesus.
Paul knew that this group in Ephesus had not come from the work done by the apostles or deacons centered in Jerusalem nor from the church that was centered in Syrian Antioch, for they had never heard of the Holy Spirit. They only knew the need to be baptized to show they wanted to forsake their sin and be ready for their King to come and they wanted to be a part of His Kingdom. Paul was able to explain to them that Jesus did come, and He is King, but His kingdom is not of this world--we are part of a spiritual kingdom that is unshakable and will never pass away. However, there were some that were content to believe in the shadow without the fulfillment--they wanted to live as if the Messiah had not come (and never would come) for if it was true that He came and they missed Him that the next time He would come He would come as judge over them, and that is a message that many are unwilling to hear. These unbelieving Jews spoke evil of the Way (that is Jesus who said, "I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father except through Me" in John 14:6) before the congregation of Jews gathered in the synagogue there in Ephesus. For this reason, Paul no longer tried to teach them inside the synagogue and took the believing disciples and taught them instead in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This teaching continued for two years so that there were many Jews and Gentiles who heard the truth of the gospel and believed. It is likely that Ephesus became a sort of "base of operations" for Paul and his team as they were welcomed there and the church there participated in the gospel work sending out other missionaries to the entirety of the province known as Asia in southwestern Turkey (an area that Paul and his companions wanted to go to earlier, but they were prevented from entering by the Holy Spirit so that they would go north and cross over into Macedonia). We will see how Paul and Apollos see themselves as teammates and not competition with each other when Paul addresses the factions that have formed in Corinth over who preached the gospel to them--for some believed when Paul was first there, and others when Apollos came back to minister to them. 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 English Standard Version5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. Acts 18:24-28 English Standard Version Apollos Speaks Boldly in Ephesus 24 Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. 27 And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, 28 for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. We pick up now at the beginning of Paul's Third Missionary Journey. We get straight to where we left off in his return to come back to Ephesus, though we know that he followed the same route he took during the Second Missionary Journey to get here.
Now they meat a man of God named Apollos who knew the gospel only as John the Baptist preached it--that John was preparing the way for the Messiah to come, but he did not know of Jesus being the promised Messiah or of the crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus--he knew only of the baptism of John for repentance. Priscilla and Aquilla who we met at the end of the Second Missionary, heard Apollos and they took him aside and explained to him the gospel more completely and fully--they did not publicly rebuke him. Apollos becomes a great evangelist for Jesus and he desires to cross over into Achaia (the southern part of what we would call Greece where we would find cities like Athens and Corinth--where Paul was at the end of the Second Missionary Journey, and where Aquilla and Priscilla were from), they encouraged him to do so, and they wrote to the disciples in the churches there to welcome him. Paul was forced to leave many of these cities in haste and never got the opportunity to disciple them, but God is going to send Apollos to them to keep preaching the gospel message to those who are lost, to encourage the brothers in these areas hostile to the gospel and to preach and teach the Word of God to them. He also was a Jew who knew the Law well and he was able to stand up to and debate the Judaizes and could refute them (tell them how they were wrong) based on the authority of the Scriptures. This is no small thing because as we've seen the Judaizers got shut down by the apostles in Jerusalem and most of the churches between Jerusalem and Syrian Antioch knew better as did most of the churches from Paul's First Missionary Journey as he carried letters from the Jerusalem Council to them during his Second Missionary Journey, but these new churches in Macedonia and Greece were far away from Jerusalem and so the Judaizers are up to their old tricks assuming they pull a fast one on these new Gentile believers. Not so....God has just the right man for the job to be there and to earnestly contend for the faith and to show them from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ (the Messiah). Acts 18:18-23 English Standard Version Paul Returns to Antioch 18 After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow. 19 And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. 20 When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. 21 But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus. 22 When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch. 23 After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples. This marks the the end of Paul's Second Missionary Journey. What originally start with Paul and Silas carrying the letter from The Jerusalem Council to all the Churches in Syria and Cilicia turned into them revisiting most of the areas Paul and Barnabas had visited in the past (though they did not revisit Lycia or Crete (probably Barnabas and John Mark visited these places).
We are told that at Cenchreae Paul took a vow of some sort. We'll see something similar to this in chapter 21 when Paul is next in Jerusalem, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. Cenchreae is a port city in Greece just east of Corinth and was the place that Paul and his companions would set out from to head to Ephesus, and Aquilla and Priscilla would accompany them to Ephesus to see them off (and likely to return with letters that they had written to their friends and to the churches--some of which we read in the New Testament Epistles). If I had to guess, Paul's vow that he makes is probably that he is going to return to them again. In Ephesus Paul does take a little time to teach them and they want Paul to stay with them for longer, but Paul explains that he can't stay any longer right now but he intends to come back (and he will). We aren't told exactly what was compelling Paul to get back to Syrian Antioch, but I have a suspicion from things we read later regarding Paul's Third Missionary Journey that he probably wanted to get back to Jerusalem in time to celebrate Passover and Pentecost in Jerusalem with all his Jewish brothers in the faith. He had spent a very long time away from home, things had gotten very difficult recently and it was at least time for him to go home and have a little respite as his missions report would encourage the churches in Antioch and Jerusalem, but it would also be a time of refreshing and encouragement for him and his companions. Paul will set sail from Ephesus and the next place Luke records that they put into port will be at Caesarea--a port city with a Roman garrison on the Mediterranean Sea in Israel. This strengthens my suspicions that Paul is trying to get back to Jerusalem, for if he was simply trying to get back to Syrian Antioch, then he probably would have put in somewhere much farther north (though boats are subject to the winds and the currents too, so as I said this is just suspicion on my part). The beginning of the Third Missionary Journey starts in verse 23 as Paul will retrace his steps from his Second Missionary Journey and make his way back to Ephesus to make good on his promise to return to the Ephesian church. We'll pick back up there in verse 24 next time. Acts 18:1-17 English Standard Version Paul in Corinth 18 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. 4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. 5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. 6 And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” 7 And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. 8 Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. 9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” 11 And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. 12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, 13 saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” 14 But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. 15 But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” 16 And he drove them from the tribunal. 17 And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this. Paul leaves Athens and goes to Corinth next, a city in the southern region of Greece (we are probably familiar with this church from the letters of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians that we have in the New Testament). Here Paul meets Aquilla and Priscilla who will be great helpers to Paul and his ministry, for they will eventually go ahead of Paul to be leaders in the church in Rome. We assume Aquilla and Priscilla are husband and wife as they are always mentioned together and working alongside one another, and they taught Paul how to be a tentmaker to earn some extra money to support himself and his ministry. We now get the phrase "tentmaker ministry" from this to signify a person that is working part-time to generate an income while working full-time in their God-given ministry to cultivate an outcome (as the host of the The Hamilton Corner, Abraham Hamilton, III, says about working parents nearly every day at the beginning of his show). Together Aquilla, Priscilla, and Paul ministered first to the Jews in Corinth, reasoning with them in the synagogues.
Silas and Timothy arrived later, coming from Macedonia (go back to verse 15 to see that Paul was in Athens without Silas or Timothy because they had stayed behind in Berea while Paul was conducted by friends to Athens) they found Paul ministering in the Word to the Jews, but Paul had reached a point where the community as a whole was unwilling to accept the true gospel, for we don't see any indications of Jews or Gentiles responding here like we have seen in other cities, and Paul is ready to shake the dust off of his clothes and speak condemnation over these Jews for rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ and to tell them that this gospel they were rejecting was going forth to the Gentiles now. We see that God even used this proclamation to get the attention of some of the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles for Titus Justus, a devout, God-fearing Gentile let Paul and his companions stay at his home, and we see that the leader of the synagogue, Crispus, believed in the Lord along with his entire household. This is another one of those "entire household" baptism passages like we mentioned earlier with Cornelius and the Philippian jailer. We should not assume that this means that everyone in the family was considered saved because the head of the household was saved, but it's probably safe to say in that culture that the wife and children and the slaves and servants did follow the example of the head of household. We know of at least one time where that didn't happen in the New Testament where Onesimus, a slave to Philemon, did not become a Christian when his master Philemon did and Onesimus actually ran away from Philemon and ended up encountering Paul and his ministry team and becoming saved after Philemon did, so there was free will involved. It does seem the typical pattern though was for the husband/father/master to be saved first and then the wife/children/slaves/servants to be saved following this example that was set for them. God speaks to Paul in a vision in the evening and tells him to go on and keep on speaking here in Corinth even though there is danger and opposition at every turn because the Lord is not going to let any harm come to Paul (before the appointed time). Worldly wisdom would tell Paul that it was time to flee again, but the Lord tells Paul to stay put because there is much work to be done here and the Lord promises that He will protect Paul and his team. Paul is going to stay there 18 months. Paul stayed until there was a change in government where the new government leader seemed less favorable to the work Paul was doing. However, that leader did not want to be involved in trying cases of differences in theology between Jews and Christians. The ruler saw the Christians as still being under the authority of the Jews and told the Jews to hold court themselves and do what the Law required of the them since this was a violation of the Mosaic Law that they charged Paul, Silas, and Timothy with, and not a violation of Roman law. Once the Jews saw that they had been given blanket authority by the proconsul to deal with religious matters, they immediately took the leader of the synagogue (probably the one we saw named Crispus earlier--it appears he is referred to by a different name here, likely his Jewish name instead of his Greek name) and beat him in front of the tribunal, and the proconsul turned a blind eye to all of this. This was probably because the proconsul knew how the Jewish people had a tendency to riot and the unrest they had created in the whole region, following Paul from town to town and he didn't want his city to be the next epicenter for a religious mob. If the beating of this one man would quiet them, then he was willing to turn a blind eye to it, but this would only embolden the Jews there in the future. Acts 17:22-34 English Standard Version Paul Addresses the Areopagus 22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ 29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. Paul takes the information that he's gleaned through his eyes and ears as he has walked the streets of the city of Athens and had conversations with the Jews and devout religious people in the synagogues and the business people and common people in the marketplace. Now Paul is going to engage them in the lecture hall where they met to discuss philosophy--thing of this more like inviting a guest lecturer to a college or university. Listening to such lectures seems to be a way that the Athenians pass the time and is a sort of entertainment for them to give audience to speakers with new ideas. I'd day say that they seem to be big on the idea of pluralism and were proud of their "diversity" and "inclusiveness" when it came to the vast pantheon of gods and goddesses they worshiped and they were pretty willing to add another idol and temple if they met someone who worshiped a different god--just as long as that god was okay with being one among many others.
Paul starts his lecture by telling the people how he has walked among them and taken note of how "religious" these people are (we'll see in a minute that "religious" does not equate with "moral"). They have a god or goddess for everything and everyone. They even have an altar to "The Unknown God," so Paul starts there to say that he wants to tell them more about this God that they don't know. The God that they don't know is the Creator of all things--the Maker of heaven and Earth and all that is in them. He does not live in temples like the other gods they worshiped, for no temple could contain Him--nor is he served by human hands as the temples were full of pagan priests and priestesses in the service of their particular god or goddess. This may make you scratch your head a bit because is there not a Temple to the LORD in Jerusalem and is there not a Levitical priesthood, the sons of Aaron, who serve Him day and night? Notice that Paul's point here was that God does not need us. God allows us to worship Him, but the Greeks believed in some way that the gods lived in the temples and that their sacrifices they brought provided sustenance for the gods (food to eat and wine to drink) and that without their tithes and offerings and their worship, their gods would become weak and possibly even be killed by stronger deities. The Lord is not like that. He Himself is the one that gave life to all mankind and to every other living thing--life, and breath, and everything we have comes from Him. This is an important verse in the context of what is going on in our culture this week. There is a spiritual war for the hearts of the people that starts with the fact that they don't want to believe that God is their Creator and the one who gave them life. If God made them, then He has ownership and authority over everyone and everything--even those who rebel against Him and say they don't recognize His authority over them. This is where Paul is going with his argument and it's the same kind of argument that we need to make in today's culture. Paul then summarizes the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis for them to speak of the common ancestry that we all have through Adam and Eve and setting boundaries for them--not just the geographical boundaries of Genesis 10, but the boundaries of the commandments. God fenced in an area for us live in safely, but we always want to know what is on the other side of the fence and imagine that God is withholding something good from us. Was that not the temptation that Satan used when tempting Adam and Eve? We also are not content to be told what is good and evil, but we want to be able to decide good and evil for ourselves--we want to be our own god. We want to be self-reliant and self-determining--we are neither of these things, only God is. Paul says that we have a desire to be close to God and have a relationship with Him. The Greek poets had even written poems/songs about this and Paul quotes one of them to the people that they would have been familiar with. "In Him we live and move and have our being, for we are indeed His offspring." Paul then argues that if we are made in the image of God that we should not imaging God to be an idol made of silver or gold that is crafted by the hands of men. We are the ones that were made in Him image and likeness. He is the builder who fashioned us. God is willing to overlook such ignorance from the Athenians and those like them who until now had not yet heard the gospel, but now that they are about to hear the gospel, they are called to repent and believe, the same as the Jews who have had the benefit of the Law, the Temple, and the Aaronic priesthood. There is not a different Way for Greeks and Jews, there is but One Way, and that Way is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is important we speak this message of exclusivity because as Paul says next, the LORD has fixed a day when He will judge the world through a Man that He has appointed--that man is Jesus who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Creator of all the things and the one who is the Judge of the living and the dead who holds the keys to Death and Hades (He has ownership over them). This judgment will be a righteous judgment for Christ is the Righteous One who fully obeyed the Law that none of us could and so we can stand before Him on our own merits to be measured against His perfect righteousness and be found unacceptable or we can today, right now, at this very moment exchange our unrighteousness for His righteousness. This is what the cross accomplished for us so that He would be declared "guilty" in our place and take our punishment so that we could be declared "innocent" in His place and receive the blessings that He earned. Is it fair? No! Is it just? Absolutely! The punishment that none of us could pay could only be paid by Him, so paid the sin debt for you and for me with His own blood. We just need to believe by faith. How do we know that Jesus is the one that God has appointed to be the Judge of the Living and the Dead? The Resurrection is proof that God has accepted His sacrifice and that He has declared that the debt has been paid in full. The Father has exalted the Son and told Him to sit at His right hand until the day when the Father makes the Son's enemies a footstool for Him and the Father has told the Son to ask for the nations as an inheritance and He will be given them by the Father. He will be the Righteous Judge over us and there will be no one entering His kingdom illegally. Your name will have to be on the role of kingdom citizens and there is but one Gate and Door for you to pass through (which is Christ). He will know all those that belong to Him like a Shepherd knows His sheep. "My sheep know My voice and they listen to me." That is, we obey His Word. That is not to say that Christianity is a system of "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" commandments to obey to try to earn enough righteousness to please God--we just said that's not how it works. We need our sins imputed onto Christ and His righteousness imputed onto us, but if we truly love Him as we claim we do, then we will obey Him. Those who say they love Him, but live in rebellion to His commandments prove themselves to be liars and the truth of God is not in them (Jesus is that Truth). We have discussed much of this already in the book of Romans and the Epistles, so I will not go into a long explanation of Soteriology (the theology of salvation) today. The Athenians were okay with this message until Paul got to the message of the Resurrection. At this point some started to mock him. Others said they wanted to hear more at another time, and a few repented and believed right there. What I want to point out here though is that Paul gave an entire gospel presentation without using any big theological words. He didn't directly cite any Scripture (though he definitely paraphrased and referenced the ideas of Scripture) and he was able to make some cultural connections with the people that he was speaking with. All that said, Paul did not let their ignorance be an excuse. Now they knew the truth and they would be accountable for what they had heard. Paul will argue in Romans that all men are without excuse because all of us know that there is a Creator God and it is up to us to ask Him to reveal Himself to us. If we do so, then He will speak to us through His Word and His ambassadors (that would be one of the roles of Christians) that He has commissioned and sent out on mission to declare His gospel message to the whole world. There is one message that tells people one Way to be saved. It is not a message readily accepted by either Jew or Gentile, but it is a message that both need to hear. Acts 17:16-21 English Standard Version Paul in Athens 16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. Paul has gone on ahead of Silas and Timothy as the Jews from Thessalonica went to Berea to threaten his life. Once safely conducted by friends to Athens, he has called for Silas and Timothy to join him there. While there, he saw the city full of idols to every god and goddess imaginable even to the point of making an altar to "The Unknown God." (We'll get to this later in Paul's speech to them).
Paul was so provoked by this idolatry that spoke both to the Jews and devout persons in the synagogues and the Gentiles in the marketplace (where they met not only to do business, but to discuss philosophy) on a daily basis. The particular philosophers that took interest in Paul's message were the Epicureans and Stoics--Paul will argue against these philosophies in his epistles to the churches in this region. Some were dismissive of Paul and his message calling him a "babbler." Others simply saw him as a preacher of foreign deities because he was preaching in the name of Jesus and preaching about the resurrection. It was this second group that wanted to hear more about what Paul had to say, for they were concerned that perhaps there was another god they didn't know about that they needed to make an idol to and worship so as not to upset that deity. They tried to be inclusive of everyone and their beliefs there in Athens--that is up until someone told them that there was only one true God and all the other gods and goddesses they worshiped were false. We'll see this next time when we see Paul preach the gospel to them. Some will believe and some will get angered by the exclusivity claims of the gospel message. Paul's concern (and Luke seems to hint at it here) is that the Athenians loved to hear new things, but there was no indication that they would do anything other than hear. Hearing the argument and considering it was their end goal, not hearing, understanding and then applying. We'll see next time there will be those who ask Paul to come back to speak again because they found his message to be entertaining, but they had no intent of repenting and believing the gospel. Some will repent and believe and as mentioned before there will be still others that will be angered that Paul will claim that Jesus alone is the Creator and Judge and He alone should be worshiped. We'll see this next time we study the book of Acts together. Acts 17:10-15 English Standard Version Paul and Silas in Berea 10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. 13 But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. 14 Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. 15 Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. I mentioned last time that I was part of a church-planting/evangelism/missions-minded group of students at Liberty University that used Acts 17:6 as their key/theme verse, but one of the first college-aged ministries that I was ever a part of here in Virginia was named the College Bereans. We took our name from today's passage--specifically verse 11, "...they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so." That is what we were encouraged to do not just with everything we heard at church, but also everything we heard at college. College is a time when the professors try to deconstruct whatever world view the students have and usually try to replace it with a worldview that is more consistent with the professor's own worldview. Students must stay anchored to the sure and steady anchor of the gospel and God's word so that no matter if they are learning about history, ethics, philosophy, theology, economics, psychology, sociology, biology, law, or politics, we center all that on what the Bible has to say about God, Man, Nature, and how we are to interact with each.
After the riots that happened in Thessalonica, Paul and Silas were sent away immediately by the brothers to Berea (the people we read about today). They immediately went to the Jewish synagogue when they arrived for Paul and Silas were called to preach the gospel to the Jews first, and then also to the Gentiles. We see that same pattern as we have seen before that many believed including Greek women of high standing and some Greek men as well. We also see the pattern being followed that the Jews who had become jealous and made trouble for Paul in their own town are willing to follow Paul from place to place to continue to make trouble for him--especially when they hear that Paul and Silas are having success somewhere else. The agitation was so bad this time that Paul was sent away by sea (likely they feared for his life), but Silas and Timothy remained in Thessalonica a while longer. Paul was guided by other as far away as Athens where he sent a message back to Silas and Timothy to come join him. That is where we will pick things up next time. |
Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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