Acts 18:1-11
You may be seated. Turn in your
copy of the scripture to Acts chapter 18. Today we’ll be considering
verses one through 11. Acts chapter 18, one through
11. You’ll remember this section
of scripture is Paul’s second missionary journey. He left Antioch
in Syria. He sailed on his first missionary
journey through the early Eastern part of, I guess, Asia Minor,
that area, came back, gave a report, Jerusalem Council. Now, second
missionary journey, they’ve left and gone by land. Remember, they
went back through their first sets of churches, strengthening
them. They were prevented from preaching
the gospel in Asia and made their way to the Macedonian call where
Paul ministered at Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea. Last week, he was in Athens and
today, He is in Corinth. And so if you have the little
map in the back of your Bible, it’s helpful to look there and
follow the little dotted lines or color coded pathways. He will spend about a year and
a half in Corinth. It will be a place of great strength
for the gospel advance in the world. Before we read God’s word,
let’s do ask for God’s help one more time. Pray with me. Lord,
we remember the scripture that says, unless the Lord builds
the house, the laborers do work in vain. And so we know that
everything we might do in church would be in vain unless you brought
your Holy Spirit’s power. And so work in each of our hearts,
work in each of our minds to behold the glories of all that
you are doing in the life of the apostle Paul and even in
our own lives here. Ask for your grace and power
and pray it in the name of Jesus. Amen. Acts chapter 18, beginning
at verse one. After this, which is Athens,
Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. He found a Jew named
Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife,
Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded that all the Jews to
leave Rome. He went to see them and because
he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked for
they were tent makers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue
every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and
Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word
testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they
opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments. And he said
to them, your blood be on your own heads. I am innocent. From now on, I will go to the
Gentiles.’ And he left there and went to the house of a man
named Titius Justice, a worshiper of God. His house was next door
to the synagogue. 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.
And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, do not be
afraid, but go on speaking. and do not be silent 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. And he
stayed a year and six months teaching the word of God among
them. Amen. This is God’s word for
us. You know, the saying we have
in America about one of our cities out West, what happens in Vegas,
stays in Vegas. You might have heard a similar
saying in the era of Paul. What happens in Corinth stays
in Corinth. It was a city much like our modern
day Las Vegas, what we might call Sin City, a place where
prosperous people could go do things with their prosperity
that they might not otherwise be able to do. I mean, who has
money to blow these days? We were chatting this weekend
about March Madness at our house, and yes, we are sad and in mourning,
but we stayed in longer, or even got in, and some of you didn’t.
But we were chatting about $4 million on a ball game. Boy, you gotta be in Sin City
or somewhere to do something like that. Well, Corinth, much
like our prosperous and maybe overindulgent culture today,
vanity fair, to use a phrase from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. There’s a verb in the Greek language,
and it’s the verb to Corinthianize. It was to live as if there is
no God. It was to live as if there were
no moral restraints. To Corinthianize gave the connotation
that you were a Corinthian and that was a bad thing. Now, we
understand this because we have two letters to the Corinthians
in our Bibles. We understand that Paul wrote
four letters to these people. Two of them, the latter ones,
the later ones, made it into our Bibles. I’ve got a book on
my shelf about first Corinthians and the title of the book is
something like the scandals that should have killed a church.
And it goes through first Corinthians and it speaks of all the scandalous
things. And I don’t go into them now,
but, but flip through first Corinthians, bad people doing really bad things
in the church. Uh, to Corinthianize was to be
a wicked, evil person. And so we come to Paul’s ministry
in this old, important city of commerce. where he’s going to
spend about 18 months. He’s going to spend a year and
a half there because as we’ll soon see, the Lord reveals to
them that he has many in this city who are my people. And so Paul will stay and he
will labor in that vineyard for some time. Now, at the beginning
of our passage, it tells us that Paul arrives in the city of Corinth. And as was his usual custom,
he would go to the Jewish synagogue and there he ran into Priscilla
and Aquila. Now you can follow their name
throughout the New Testament. And you’ll find out they were
very important in the life of the apostle Paul, very important,
very instrumental in the life of the Christian church, the
early church. And so Paul arrives in this city,
having come from Philippi, having come from Thessalonica, having
come from Berea and from Athens. And he arrives in this city kind
of downhearted, Dejected, cast down, weak and weary. In fact, when he writes his first
letter to the Corinthians, he tells them it was with weakness.
It was with fear. It was with much trembling that
I came to you, Corinthians. And we can only imagine what
is on his mind and his heart as he enters the city and he
meets Priscilla and Aquila. He’s still smarting in his back
from the beating he took at Philippi. He’s still weary in his spirit
from being run out of all these cities, all these towns. And
as he’s just left Athens, it was there that the wise and the
learned wanted to hear the new things he had to say, but they
rejected him. And so he moves on into this
town, leaving behind new converts, leaving behind baby churches
and leaving behind God’s people who weren’t yet established with
leaders and teachers. And so his mind and his heart
was no doubt very heavy, as was his physical body. Things were
hard, things were difficult in these places, and he had to leave
work that was undone. You’ve heard pastors tell you
they get the Monday morning blues. You know, most ministers, they
take Mondays off. I try to take Fridays off for
various reasons, but Monday morning is typical pastor day off. And the Monday morning blues
is you wake up and you look at the want ads. Surely your mind
says selling insurance would be better than pastoring a church.
Surely selling Fords at the dealership would be better than pastoring
the church. And through the mind of a lot
of ministers, They go through the Monday morning blues. And you can imagine that’s where
the apostle Paul is in his life. He’s worn out and weary physically
and spiritually and emotionally. A lot of pastors, I think will
tell you this, nothing like hands-on hard work to get them back. A couple of weeks ago, after
a long stretch of family, concerns and just working since the beginning
of the new year. A couple Wednesdays ago, I think
I washed all four cars. It’s therapeutic. Mowed the yard. My dad has always said, put a
chainsaw in my hands and let me cut up some limbs. And I think
it’s true of many ministers. Give me something for my hands
to do and it clears my mind and it softens my heart to get back
into the ministry. And that’s what the Monday morning
blues, the Monday day off is supposed to do. But here we find
the apostle Paul with Priscilla and Aquila. And I think we need
to see this is a really happy providence for him. Not only
does he meet fellow Jews and they get to be together in the
synagogue every Sabbath, but these are fellow tradesmen. Paul,
we know a lot about his upbringing, his Jewish education, his knowledge
of the law and the history of God’s people. But on the other
side of his life, we don’t know much about his trade. But as
a boy, probably about 12 years old, he would have taken up his
father’s trade, which was tent making. It was leather work. Sometimes we speak of tent making
missionaries. They don’t call on the church
for support. They don’t fundraise. They just go to another part
of the world. They work a regular job and they
just do regular witnessing. Now, we think that’s a novel
idea, but no, it’s what the apostle Paul has done and he’s doing
it here. He works side by side along with
Priscilla and Aquila. You can imagine the picture,
the idea, they’re in a workshop together. And you understand
Paul has just come in from Athens by way of Berea and Thessalonica
and Philippi, by way of the Northern Mediterranean seas from a far
away place. And there’s Priscilla and Aquila
who are expelled with all the rest of the Jewish people from
the city of Rome. And you can imagine all the work
that they do together, working tents, working leather, chatting,
talking about their trade. Where do you get your needles
from? What brand of shears do you like? You know, where did
you get your apron from? How long have you been doing
this? Okay, tell me why you cut it this way and not that way.
You can imagine they chat about trade secrets. But I think one
of the most important conversations that Priscilla and Aquila have
with the apostle Paul is that of Jesus Christ. We know that
Paul desires to go to Rome. In fact, when he was making his
way on the second missionary journey, and you know, my hand
is going along the map. That’s what this is. He wants
to go straight over to Rome. And he’s hindered and keeps going
on all these little Southern excursions into the little peninsulas
along the Mediterranean Sea. But here he bumps into a couple
and somehow Christ has already come to Rome. These are Jewish
Christians from Rome expelled from the city because of an uprising. And so Claudius, our passage
tells us, says to the Jews, all of you get out, all of you leave.
And so they come to, Corinth, and there’s Paul. And they work
side by side, hand by hand, speaking of their trade, but also speaking
of Christ. And no doubt being knitted together
in the bonds of the glories of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Now, one important thing to note
here is Paul is supporting himself. He’s laboring in gospel ministry
Sunday by Sunday or Sabbath by Sabbath in the synagogue. He’s
probably out in the evenings proclaiming Christ wherever he
can. I’m sure in the workplace, he’s doing all that he can. But
there’s a there’s a big shift in verse five that’s rather subtle. It says when Silas and Timothy
arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word testifying
to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. You see, Timothy, I believe
it was, was left up at Philippi. Silas was left at Thessalonica. And remember when Paul gets rushed
off to Athens to be hidden from those raging and angry Jews who
probably would have taken his life from the city of Philippi,
he sends word back with those who brought him. As soon as Timothy
and Silas can get here, get them here. Well, now they meet up
with him here in Corinth. And they bring to him what Paul
calls in other places, the Philippian gift. It would be like your tithes
and offerings. It would be like the church budget
has been met in order that Paul may do gospel ministry full-time
without tent making. Back in September or so, I went
to a preaching conference and we all listened to this speaker,
about 400 of us from different backgrounds and denominations.
One guy asked a question and he said, this was his question,
I work full time and I preach twice on Sunday and again on
Wednesday. Have you got any advice? And the speaker at this conference
said, quit your day job. That was his advice. You need
to, if you’re going to be a minister, be supported to labor in the
word. That was the advice that was given. And it’s good advice
if you can afford it. It’s a great privilege to be
a pastor in the American church where you are set apart and supported
to do gospel work. If you go to a Presbyterian meeting
where a minister is receiving a call to a church, the beginning
or the heading of the call will say something like this, so that
you may be free from worldly care. and devote yourself to
the gospel labors to which you have been called. We, the congregation,
therefore promise to support you in this way. Now, if it was
back in the days, it might’ve been a chicken a week. Right? It might’ve been a supply of
eggs. It might’ve been a cow every
year. It might’ve been a harvest from the corn crop if it was
in a rural setting. Now today it’s salary and it’s
insurance and it’s a retirement plan and it’s all the things
we have because America has advanced and we have human resource departments
and all the rest. But this is another happy providence. for the apostle Paul, not just
coming into a city beaten up and weary and meeting Priscilla
and Aquila, but also now being able to, as verse five says,
be occupied, or another translation says absorbed. in the word. You know, sometimes I’ll get
this from people, you know, cause we, we have a Sunday morning
service, a Sunday night, you know, we got Sunday school, Wednesday
night, couple Bible studies for the men and women. I’ll have
people say to me, um, why do you do all that? And I’ll say,
cause it’s my job. Uh, it’s the job of the minister
of the word to labor in the word. Um, today’s pastor has become
a CEO. You know, he’s running a big
organization and I’ve served in a big church before. And that’s
exactly what you become. You do not labor in the word.
You’re always putting out fires. You’re always working on a spreadsheet.
You’re always looking at financial statements. You’re always trying
to outrun the bank, all these sorts of things. And Paul makes
it very simple. You become absorbed in the word,
occupied in the word, reasoning with people, persuading people,
convincing them of God’s truths. A pastor I served with early
on said, you keep it pretty simple. You study, you pray, and you
visit, and you preach and teach. Now, visit, preach, and teach,
I would combine into one thing. but basically study, pray, and
teach. That’s the job of the minister. Now, occasionally you
gotta jiggle a toilet handle because you come into the office
and the toilet is running or there’s something you’ve got
to do. But so many ministers are cluttered up with day jobs
or with other things that they don’t get to be absorbed in the
word. And what a happy providence this was for Paul. His ministry is able to ramp
up He’s able to, during the day, go out into the marketplace.
He’s able to, during the evenings, hold ministry services. He’s able to preach and to pray
and to study. And one of the things we find
out from reading about Paul in other places, particularly his
second letter to the Corinthians we have, He spends a lot of this
time now that Paul and Silas have come with the Philippian
gift so that he no longer tent makes, but he labors in gospel
work. He’s writing Thessalonians. He just left them and his heart
is knit towards them and he wants them to know of something. He’s
able to write to the Romans now because he meets Priscilla and
Aquila and he knows something of that congregation there. He’s
able to move on from here in 18 months and go to Ephesus.
And so you begin to see the more a minister is able to labor in
the word, the more effective the gospel ministry is. Verse five is important. He was
occupied with the word. And we move on to see his ministry,
his ministry among the synagogue. He’s proclaiming to them that
Jesus was the Christ. As you would know it, opposition
comes. Every time the wind is at Paul’s
back, something comes up. And so there’s great opposition.
It says in verse six, they opposed him and they reviled him. And when he speaks to them in
a sense of resistance, he shakes out his garments and he says,
your blood be on your own heads. I’ve told you of your sin. I’ve
told you of your need of a savior. I’ve told you of your need to
come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he he tells them
the truth. And as we might say in our language,
he tells them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth. And they hate him for it. And so he moves on. He moves
on just next door. He moves on to the house of Titius
Justice, who at the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans is a man
also called Gaius. And he’s going to he’s going
to go next door to the house of Crispus, who’s the ruler of
the synagogue. They’re going to set up shop
right next door. And he’s going to preach and proclaim and lead
them. into the way of the Christian life. What a happy Providence
again, not just his coming to town and meeting Priscilla and
Aquila, not just the arrival of Silas and Timothy. Not only
are they companions in the gospel, but they bring an offering and
more and more can be done because of the helpers and the finances.
But he’s got a house. He’s got hospitality. Doesn’t
this again sound like Philippi with Lydia? Hey, Paul, whatever
you have, mi casa, a su casa, right? Mi casa, a su church,
however you say that. It’s the gospel bearing fruit
in the lives of people and they are moving ahead, preaching. What does it mean, though, when
Paul shakes his garments. What does it mean when he moves
on to the Gentiles next door? Well, it’s very consistent, isn’t
it? With his, his ministry that we’ve already seen. He goes to
the Jew first, and then if they reject him, he moves on to the
Greeks. He moves on to those who will
hear. Let me speak to this in a, in a, maybe a way that relates
to the church. Early in my ministry, I began
to figure out that everything I learned in seminary was really
wonderful and ideal. Come out of the ivory tower of
biblical and theological education, and then you come into the reality
of the American church. Committees, church bosses, budgets,
parents’ expectations for their youth. this group’s expectation
here and there, and you take all that theological education
you have and you walk into the church, and what you begin to
realize very quickly, and it’s not this way everywhere, but
it can be, the church has so cluttered itself up with so much
that in a sense, you feel like Paul in the synagogue. They really
don’t want you. They really don’t want you to
say what you have to say from the word of the living God, because
it will disrupt all of their sacred cows, all of their holy
things that they have raised up. I remember helping a pastor
in a nearby town. Uh, this is a good long time
ago. They, they, they hated his guts. He was preaching the word
and yeah, we’re humans, right? We do some numbskull dumb things.
but he hadn’t done too much. And I was sitting with him over
lunch one day, and you know what we concluded? They don’t deserve
a preacher. That church, if you wanna call
them that, doesn’t deserve a preacher. And I said to him, you know what,
you need to shake your garments and walk out that door. And the
next time you go to a church, you need to go to a church that
deserves a pastor, that wants a pastor. And that’s in a sense
what the Apostle Paul is doing when he leaves and goes next
door and sets up shop. Enough of that. Let’s minister
to people who want to hear. And as our passage says, believe
and be baptized. You know, every pastor gets the
Monday morning blues. And yeah, there’s opposition,
but what happy providences to have partners in ministry like
Priscilla, Aquila, and Paul and Silas. What happy providences
it is in ministry to have the resources of God’s people to
be set apart to labor in the word. But what a even happier
providence to have the assurance from almighty God. You know,
if every pastor on Monday morning could have the vision or dream
that Paul has at the end of this passage. You know, Paul’s head
has wearily laid down on the pillow, And in the night, it
says, a vision came to him. Do not be afraid. Go on speaking
and do not be silent for I am with you. No one will attack
you. No one will harm you for I have
many in this city who are my people. You know, I think the
ultimate comfort a minister has to have is exactly what God gave
Paul. You know, you can have a group
in your church that thinks you’re great. But then there’s the group
that doesn’t, right? You can you can be set apart
to do ministry and have all your worldly cares taken care of.
And you could stop there and say, Lord, I can do ministry
forever. I got a paycheck and I got people. But I think the real fuel for
the journey comes when you have an understanding that God from
before the foundation of the world has set his affection on
a people who will be called to himself through the preaching
of the gospel. And so really the fuel for ministry, whether
it’s for you all in the pew who are supporting the work of the
church and being Priscilla and Aquila and partnering in the
gospel, or whether it’s folks like me or the elders or other
ministers, our fuel for the journey ends up really being, I think,
the fact that God Almighty wants to save a people and he’s gonna
use the church and the preaching of the gospel as the means to
bring them to salvation. May this give us great vision
to be supporters and to be a preaching and praying people so the gospel
may open the eyes of the lost. Let’s do pray together. Our Lord,
we do thank you that you have a people in this city who will
someday call on your name because they hear the preaching of the
word. Pray that we would see that and be patient and faithful
and even instrumental in doing that. We thank you for the fellowship
we have in the gospel to make your name known to the ends of
the earth. Lord, make your glories known in our part of the world
through our support and our prayer, our preaching and our ministry.
Hear us and help us in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.