Listening to Jesus

Good morning, and happy Mother's Day. We will be proceeding into this passage, Acts of the Apostles, chapter 18, 1 through 11, as Kurt just read for us. And congratulations, you did pretty well with some of those difficult names and whatnot. I remember going through engineering school. There were quite a number of foreign students there. And one particular name stands out after more than 40 years, I still remember the name. And I was astounded at how well the instructor did.

It almost seemed like he had lessons from Courtney, because he would call out the roll call and he would say, ee-hah-kuh-muh-nuh-duh-dah, right? And the guy would, yeah, okay, and he'd go on to the next name and it just didn't stumble on it at all. So we'll go after a few of those names here and catch up to them. Some of them as we go through the book of Acts, actually through the Bible, a little bit tough for us to catch up with. We'll figure out an easy way to deal with it.

The Apostle Paul, as we've been reading and as Kurt introduced to us here, was in Athens. This is, as we've been showing, a picture of the Parthenon in Athens. It's called the Parthenon. It basically means it's from the word virgin, Greek word virgin, and supposedly Athena, the goddess, was a virgin, and that's where it gets its name. So this shows Paul heading to the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, and so we read about that in previous passages. This is a view of that hill that is there. It is essentially a rock in view of the Parthenon. They're both visible from one place to the other.

Acts 18.1 begins like this.

After these things, he, that is Paul, left Athens and went to Corinth. So here's a picture, and we'll show others of it, of Corinth, the ruins of ancient Corinth in the foreground. And in the background, the high point, the high point in the cities was called an Acropolis. And here you see the Acropolis is a fairly high point and up at the top is actually a secondary fortress up on the top. In Athens, the high point is where the Parthenon is located, right? This is what Corinth looks like from ruins up to that Acropolis or high point now.

Looking at the map of Paul's second missionary journey, which you have on the top of page one of your handout there. By the way, if you're visiting with us today, the number over in the corner is not code for somebody here, but it's the page number on the handout. So hopefully those are in sync.

So anyway, it shows that the Apostle Paul, having begun in Jerusalem, then left from Antioch and went through the path that you see outlined there, and ended up going from Athens to Corinth. This zeroes in, and this is also on your handout, zeroes in on the northwest quadrant of that map and then shows with markers there Athens and then Corinth. So it was a trip by land and so they would have, he would have covered that fairly quickly, perhaps at most a few days travel. So it went from Athens to Corinth there and then Okay, so here's the site of ancient Corinth as we showed earlier, slightly larger scale so you can see it.

It shows the streets and then some of the remaining structures, somewhat reconstructed. And by the way, a lot of these archaeological sites, what they would do, as a matter of fact, Lindy just saw a lot of it, is they would partially reconstruct what was there in order that people have a better idea of what was there. So you'll see partial reconstruction, and that's the case here. It actually looked in somewhat worse shape and was partially reconstructed. Here is the artist's rendering of ancient Corinth. This would be taking the ruins and then kind of drawing it up.

What would that look like? And one of the things you notice, not only large buildings and structures, but smaller ones as well. You see a pattern of streets. You also see in the middle of the drawing the agora or marketplace. And then at the time you also see a perimeter wall. This would be a defensive wall. Corinth actually had, early on, a very substantial defensive wall. It was a large city.

This is a computer rendering. I took this off the computer modeling, or you can take them and look like we did last week with Athens. where you can go through and see things. I'll work on that. Their coloring is a little hard to see in the computer modeling where you kind of dynamically go through it. But you see the perimeter wall in the foreground and some wall in the background. You see the Acropolis or the high point there and then the city in the foreground there. So this would be a picture of what Corinth might have looked like, say, in the springtime. So Paul went to Corinth. Corinth was a city, a very important one in the Greek history.

It was wiped out by the Romans in 146 BC, completely wiped out and then uninhabited for about a century. until it was re-established as a Roman colony. That's where the Roman emperor comes in, declares this is now a Roman colony, and they give approval to reconstruct the city. They give those who go in and move into this place special tax benefits and other privileges. And so it was set up as a Roman colony. 44 BC, which meant it was after a century of being out of commission, was then put back in commission. It was now, however, after Reconstruction, a larger city than Athens, where Paul had just left. It was a very important place.

Now here's where we get into the pronunciations. This was a word that People stumble over this one, it looks, if I were to pronounce it, every single thing, it is-miss, okay? And if you don't have a list when you start it, you will by the time you're done, right? So let's simplify it. Can you say Merry Christmas, okay? Merry Isthmus. You just say it like that and it'll come across okay. If you try to put the TH in there, you will have a list by the time you're done, okay?

So, on an Isthmus that gave Corinth a shipping monopoly, and we'll show an illustration of that in just a moment here. So here is a map just showing the large peninsula that Corinth was on, and they had a very narrow, tight little neck there of land. That's the isthmus, right? And Corinth was situated right on that isthmus.

And so what would happen is people in shipping, instead of going all the way around the large Grecian peninsula, they would say, hey, I'm going to cut that off. I'm going to go into the port on the east side. And then I'm going to have everybody unload the ship and load another ship on the other side and then they can go west. And they would have it going the other direction. So people coming from the west would bring their load in on the west side of that little isthmus, right?

And they would then have people unload the ship, carry it across land on carts, and then reload another ship so that they could go across and avoid going around the peninsula. That made Corinth, barring anything else, we're going to look at other things, but that made Corinth a very busy and wealthy place because all the shipping, with rare exception, would go through Corinth on the ship, on the land, back into another ship, and then going back and forth both ways, right? So that gave them a shipping monopoly. People said, well, why can't we cut a canal through there and avoid this? Well, guess what? They've done that more recently, right? But at the time, that was quite an undertaking.

Though the Roman Empire had rampant immorality, Corinth was famous for its greater immorality than all the others. They had special words with the name Corinth in it for the immorality that they had. It really was rather astounding. So here is a really gross culture. I know Brad Mastin recently posted here 10 gross things about the Roman Empire, and I won't repeat them because you're soon going to want to have lunch. So anyway, really gross things, but they were famous for their immorality and worse than the rest of the Roman Empire, which is already very immoral. So it was astounding.

Corinth was also well known for its mirrors. And so people would say, oh, I've got a Corinthian mirror, right? You'd be really proud to have your Corinthian mirror, the very best. And so they were famous for their mirrors. And interestingly enough, two places, 1 Corinthians 13, 12, and 2 Corinthians 3, 18, the apostle Paul writes in that mirror word.

The first one, it's the noun. a mirror, and then the next one, 2 Corinthians 3.18, is looking into a mirror, right? And so he includes that fame for the mirror in both of those letters, but not in any other. So he was quite aware of its being known for its mirrors.

So, as we go through this chapter, there's going to be some biblically important names here in chapter 18 related to Corinth. Paulos is one of them. Achilla and Priscilla, and Priscilla is also known as Prisca in some places. Timothy and the Roman proconsul Gallio, which we'll see in next week's passage. A few of these names will be mentioned in Paul's letters to the believers in Corinth, and you've heard some of them. Timothy is, by the way, most commonly mentioned either as a co-author or in the letter.

And 1st and 2nd Corinthians would be, particularly some of the names that show up, an example would be Crispus, who was baptized by Paul. Interesting, if you were baptized by Paul, hey, I was baptized by Paul! So Paul didn't go around baptizing a lot, but he did name Crispus here, who is in this account, and very likely the same person. Acts 18, 2 and 3, he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.

He came to them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they were working, for by trade they were tent makers. So we introduce this couple, it won't be the last time we see them, Aquila and Priscilla. are introduced here for the first time in the New Testament. They're going to show up again actually before the chapter is ended and also as you go through the letters of the New Testament. They show up in several different places and so they're introduced here.

It says that he is from Pontus And just so you see where that is, here's Italy on the one hand, this is not a map that's on your handout, but Italy centered in Rome there on the one end of the Roman Empire. Get the phone there. Okay, and then Pontus on the other end here is on the eastern part of the Roman Empire, actually in sort of a far-flung portion of the Empire. Here you have, and I decided to put that on a map, here is Pontus on the southeastern part of the Black Sea. And you might have heard the name before when we were going through Acts chapter 2. In verse 9 it lists Pontus as one of the places where the Jewish believers were from there on the day of Pentecost. So that was one of the places.

And you see it again where Peter writes to the believers in various areas of the Roman Empire, including he names in 1 Peter 1.1 Pontus. So there it is. To give you some point of modern familiarity about that, the 2014 Winter Olympics were right across the Black Sea in Sochi. however that is pronounced. So that's right nearby, just to kind of give you a point of orientation there.

So Achille and Priscilla will be used by the Lord, and what's interesting is you read about Achille and Priscilla in different situations, the Lord uses them differently. So that's interesting. It's like here's a special couple, the Lord moves them into different circumstances, and they are used of the Lord differently. We'll see some of that by the time we get into next week's passage.

But if you were to go through the various letters of Paul, where they're likewise mentioned, we'd see additional places where the Lord uses them, and He uses them in different ways. So, now we have a command here from Claudius. We had mentioned Claudius in the previous elective here. Claudius was part of a series of five emperors who became emperors all in a row, five emperors who became emperors by the adoption of sons. And they weren't all great guys. Some of them are really lousy guys. But nonetheless, this is the Claudius.

He was distrustful of the Jews from the very time he became emperor in 41 AD. One of the ways we know that is he made a rule that the Jews are not allowed to go to their synagogues. Just right off. He didn't like them. Of course, it was difficult to enforce and a lot of the Jews ignored it. Nonetheless, it shows his anti-Semitism. 49 A.D. was, and there's some variation on that, but 49 A.D. was about the time he gave the command for the Jews to leave Rome.

And that's this command that we're looking at. How reliable was Dr. Luke in recording Claudius' command? Was it something he just invented? No, we have actually no less than three secular historians of the Roman Empire of that day that recorded that Claudius gave this same command. So we have three secular historians confirming what the Book of Acts records here.

Now, so the question, was Paul in fact a tent maker along with Aquila and Priscilla? Was he? Oh, you expect me to answer that? Okay. So anyway, so there's this strong evidence that the trade included making and repair of tents and other objects of leather and sometimes heavy cloth.

So for example, Paul might also be called upon to make a leather belt. make strapping for something, a quiver holding arrows, for example, would be another instance. So he'd make various things out of leather that would include tents, so include tent making. There would likely have been several business reasons for Paul and Aquila and Priscilla to set up shop in Corinth and make it a very good place. One, Silk Road trade meant that there was a lot of trade going into the western part of the Roman Empire from the east, all the way from China and India. Silk Road trade going through there and going through Corinth had to go across that little land Ipsumus, right?

So that would be one of the things. The other thing is every two years they would have the Isthmian Games. We hear about the Olympics, and that was true, they had the Olympics every four years, right? But every two years, they had the Isthmian Games at Corinth. And so people would come to the Isthmian Games to compete and others to watch them and coach them and that sort of thing.

And so those occurred every two years, and so those would be additional customers for their leather goods. And then land and sea travel through Corinth. By the way, what would the sailors who came on the ships stay in while they were waiting for the ship to get unloaded and then carried on to the next ship? They would wait in a tent. So you'd have these Tents, lots of them with the sailors who were waiting for the ship to get unloaded and they would stay often in tents and that would be very common so he could sell to all the or they could sell to all the sailors who were en route there.

Here's Acts 18.4.

He was reasoning in synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. So Paul would reason and persuade in the book of Acts, generally among the Jews, is how we see it described. Also generally for purposes of evangelism, that's how we see it described here. We give some references here in Acts chapter 17, here in 18.4, reasoning and persuasion, and continuing on even into chapter 19. The record we have by Dr. Luke was that Paul used reason and persuasion with the Jews using facts and logic.

Yes, Jesus is the Messiah and you see it recorded in the Old Testament here. This passage is talking about that. He says to Jews and Greeks, so in the synagogue he would address the Jews who would have been of the Pharisee persuasion. The Pharisees were missionary, went all over the Roman Empire and outside of it. And appealing to all of them what we would call the Old Testament. Did the Jews call it the Old Testament? No. Because they didn't have a New Testament. To them that was the whole thing. So their typical word was called the Tanakh. So the Greeks that Dr. Luke wrote about here would be of the God-fearing Gentiles who would come to the synagogue and be sympathetic to the Jews and believing in the God of Israel.

So here's Acts 18.5.

But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the Word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. So here we have Silas and Timothy. They had been left behind to deal not just with the church in Berea or Thessalonica or Philippi, but actually all those churches up in that area. Silas was kind of the senior teacher and Timothy learning from him and being kind of assisted and coached along that route. Their teaching and training the believers in Thessalonica allowed Paul to move on to safer territory here, while growing the flock back where they were. So Silas and Timothy had now, as of this recording, had rejoined Paul, what they had taught and observed among the believers at Thessalonica and at the other churches there.

Interesting, he says, he now, once they were there, devoted himself completely to the Word. It may have been before that that he stuck to working his tent trade. This would tell us that once Silas and Timothy came alongside him, he was able to set aside his craft at least for a time. So he devoted himself completely to the word in this specific context here, means he focused on delivering the gospel.

What's the gospel? That Christ, Son of God, died for your sins, was buried and rose again. Delivering that message in varying ways. Urging people to recognize Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the One predicted in the scripture. Now, some people might ask, well, why didn't the Jews easily see Jesus as the Messiah? Way back in Israel, why didn't they just say, hey, here's the Messiah, and recognize him? Okay, there are a few different reasons.

One, Jews who believed that there was going to be a Messiah were always, almost always, of the Pharisee kind. And the Pharisees all thought that when the Messiah came, the Messiah is just going to love the Pharisees, right? He would just fawn over them and they would be so delightful to him. The fact that Jesus was not all delighted with the Pharisees and even denounced them, said, well, that guy must not be the Messiah, because the Messiah is going to love us. Secondly, the Jews didn't put all the ideas of the Messiah into one person.

The Old Testament, and we give the passages up above there, talked about the prophet. This was Moses talking about a prophet would come like him. Next, there would be the suffering Savior. That would be primarily in Isaiah 53 and the end of chapter 52. And then the coming king.

And they tended to think of these as three separate individuals. The Jews didn't see the Messiah as deity, as they do not now. Just as a descendant of David, a human descendant, but not deity. So when Jesus claimed to be deity, when he would say things like, before Abraham was born, I am, when he would say that, they would just say, this guy can't be the Messiah, he deserves to have rocks thrown at him.

Acts 18.6, But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, Your blood be on your own heads.

I am clean from now on. I will go to the Gentiles. So Paul went to the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles first. That's what he typically did. And so far what he did was the same as he had done everywhere else. What was different this time was that when he encountered some resistance among the Jews, he turned to the Gentiles and even told the Jews he was doing exactly that. Here's Acts 18, 7 and 8.

Then he left there and went to the house of a man named... Now here we've got to come up with something. Tidiest, justice, right? So, tidiest, like, you know, make us real tidy, right? And then justice, just us. a worshipper of God whose house was next to the synagogue, and Crispus, the one who is also mentioned in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 14, the leader of the synagogue, he believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized. So between the Gentile name that he had there, and he was a God-fearing Gentile, like Dr. Luke, This was tidiest justice, and he lived right next to the synagogue. Crispus, on the other hand, was the leader of the synagogue and became a believer in Christ along with his household. Crispus, as we mentioned earlier, was among the few whom Paul baptized, or at least the ones that he named.

Acts 18, 9 and 10, And the Lord said to Paul in the night by the vision, Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking, and do not be silent. For I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city. Would you like to have the Lord Jesus come visit you tonight and talk to you like that? It would be nice, huh? However, It doesn't seem like that's likely to happen, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Apparently, though we had not seen it before, Paul was fearful, because it says, no longer be fearful. Paul was fearful. We hadn't seen that directly.

He feared the great opposition that he faced in Thessalonica and Berea, and by the way, those were life-threatening. So it wasn't something that he took lightly. Christ the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision at night, letting him know that he didn't need to be afraid any longer. He told him essentially to be bold. He didn't need to hold back or move on because of his concern. There are many of Christ's. I have many here in this city.

Acts 18.11, And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. So Paul settled at Corinth for 18 months here about, and while it's clear that he did spend some time presenting the gospel, verse 11 tells us his focus was to teach the word of God among them. So notice a shift. At first it was a matter of presenting the gospel, referenced as the word of God, presenting the gospel to these people so that there would be those who would be saved, right?

What we have here is a chronology. This is on page four of your handout, and it's the entire chronology of his second missionary journey. We're particularly looking at his arrival at Corinth in the middle of March 51 AD. And by the way, that would mean in about two months, the Isthmian Games would start, right? So he arrived there just in time for that to get going.

Right after that Silas and Timothy arrive from Berea and Paul writes then 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. He doesn't leave until September of the following year. So while Paul was in Corinth, he also wrote at least those two letters to the churches that was in Thessalonica. Did he write others? May have. We don't know for sure, but he may well have written other letters to Thessalonica and to other churches or people as well. Most of those two letters, those to the church of Thessalonica, were focused on the rapture, the taking up of the church, the body of Christ to be with the Lord.

It also provides insights for parents. If you are interested in reading that, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 has insights for parents of younger children. And we won't go into it now. That would be another whole session. But I invite you to look at that if you're interested. It also talks about the God-intended process of making disciples among us as believers and gives insight into that. We have from last week's passage, and this one, insight into evangelism.

Christ, the Son of God, died for your sins and was buried and rose again. Do you believe it? And of course, the question is, do people understand that? One of the things we saw in last week's passage is that Paul had to explain things, their concept of God and of the world needed to be corrected in order for people to even understand the gospel message. And actually the same is true for us today in many places in many ways. If you go up to the average person and just simply say the gospel, and it is possible to say it simply, Christ the Son of God died for your sins, was buried and rose again, much of that statement that I just made would not be understandable.

And so we have that same challenge today, and that challenge is actually there for parents as well, to explain these things to their children so their children can understand the gospel. We have an opportunity as parents also to deal with other issues of worldview, right?

One of the questions for parents, how will they know what are the most important things? If you were to take somebody who had never seen a car or driven a car before or seen a car driven and you gave them, say, here's a car and here's the manual, okay, how would they know what's the most important thing in the manual? They would have a tough time knowing exactly what's the most important thing. I'm going to really focus on the, you know, changing out the lights, the tail lights. I'm going to really focus on that. Oh, you mean this thing has brakes? What's that? Right?

So what's important is something that isn't always obvious. But communicating to our kids, you know, what is important is a big question and one that parents can talk about. What the Apostle Paul did as he went into places like Athens and Corinth, he would focus on what is important, which of course ends up with who is important, which means Christ.

Do they know that no other worldview can offer eternal fellowship with Christ? There are a great many different worldviews out there and the world is very busy trying to sell them to all of us, especially our kids, especially our young people. The world is busy trying to press that upon people. But do they know that no other worldview can offer eternal fellowship with Christ?

One of the other things that is important is the biblical principle is to put our faith in the facts, like we have the train in the tracks. And the feelings follow, as in the caboose. Our culture has been screaming since about the end of World War II to put our trust in our feelings and to pursue our feelings and to guide things by our feelings. And so that's something to be communicated because the world is going to communicate a different message. How do I feel about things is very important in the world's message.

That ends up being primary. One of the things we mentioned is that it used to be, this was back in the 90s, that there were about 11 different genders, but that's passé now. That's so 90s. Now the number is 63, just so you know. So the world's got a lot to choose from, a whole buffet, if you will, And it says, how do you decide which one of those? Oh, your feelings will let you know. And of course, those could change, couldn't they? And you're free to change.

That's the world's message. Instead, the Bible says that God created the male and female from the beginning. So here's the Apostle Paul. He gets a direct visit from Christ. How many of you got that last night? Probably not so much, right? Why not? It's because Christ is revealed in the Word, in the Word of God, from beginning to end.

So we are invited, as Paul puts it, and as we referred to briefly earlier, that we behold the Lord Jesus Christ in the Word of God. We behold Him. And seeing Jesus from beginning to end, He has revealed there what we need to know for life. which is why we take the time here today to look at what does God's Word say and behold Christ together. Let's pray. Lord, as we look through this passage, as we anticipate what's coming up next, as we see what has gone before, we thank you that you give guidance to us for the things that matter so much in life, and that through that, not just guidance, go here, go there, don't do this, don't do that, but rather we have a fellowship and a relationship with you. Thank you for drawing us to you, for making that fellowship and relationship possible. We pray these things, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen.