Acts 18:9-17
You may be seated. Turn in your
copy of God’s word to Acts chapter 18. Our passage today is verses
12 through 17 that will back up to verse nine and be sure
to connect ourselves to the wonderful vision that our Lord gave to
Paul, a vision of encouragement. So our whole passage will be
Acts chapter 18 verses nine through 17. And let’s look to God one
more time in prayer. Lord, unless you shine the light
of your spirit into our hearts, unless you open our eyes, unless
you give us the spiritual things, the discernment to see these
spiritual things, this will be an exercise in futility. So unstop our ears, open our
eyes, soften our hearts, and let your word do the errand.
Let it accomplish the work on which you send it. And give us
your blessings now as we read and hear your word. In Christ’s
name we pray, amen. Acts chapter 18, beginning at
verse nine. 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 the city who
are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months teaching
the word of God among them. But when Galileo was proconsul
of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him
before the tribunal saying, this man is persuading people to worship
God contrary to the law. But when Paul was about to open
his mouth, Galileo said to the Jews, if it were a matter of
wrongdoing or vicious crime, old Jews, I would have reason
to accept your complaint. 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 over these
things. And he drove them from the tribunal.
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. Amen, the word of the living
God. Every Monday morning, one of
my traditions is to listen to a news podcast listen to that
most mornings, but on Monday mornings in particular, they
have a little segment called Legal Docket. And in Legal Docket,
a couple of attorneys who study the cases that are going before
the Supreme Court will give a description of the case, the background,
the case law that’s at stake, or that’s pertinent to the matter,
and then what’s at stake if the judgment goes this way or that
way. You probably understand from
listening to various news accounts of judgments made that The word
precedent is pretty important in judicial matters. If a judge
can find a precedent, if an attorney can find a precedent, that’s
a good foothold. That’s a good handhold. That’s
a good place for legal standing. And in our passage today, we’re
going to see that by God’s grace, by God’s promise, a legal precedent
is set, which will help in unimaginable ways, probably to us, the Christian,
uh, the Christian gospel, the Christian mission, the, the,
the extension of the church into the Roman world. Remember that
Paul, uh, according to what was at verse nine or 10 and a verse
11 of 18 is, is going to have about an 18 month stay in Corinth. Pretty soon he’ll leave and he’ll
go across the sea to Ephesus, back across the sea over to Jerusalem
by way of Antioch to give a report and to seek the encouragement
of his sending church. But in the midst of this 18-month
stay in Corinth, He’s seeing lots of conversions.
Many people have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Many people
have, by faith, received the forgiveness of sins and the baptism
of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, if you backtrack
through Acts or read through 1st and 2nd Corinthians, or maybe
you pick up a good history of the early church, you’ll see
that Paul’s ministry among the Corinthians was significant.
a very troubled city and indeed a very troubled church, a church
that must have had nine lives because it used every one of
them and all their controversies. But many people converted to
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you can imagine what this
did to the Jewish synagogue. In fact, we’re told just a few
verses back that the new church of Jesus Christ was their meeting
next to the place where the Jews gathered for their synagogue
meetings. And so you have competing religions here. And maybe in
your mind, you can catch images of Jesus last week on earth,
where Luke, the writer of Acts also tells us in his gospel,
according to Luke, tells us that Jesus, while ministering to people,
and preaching the forgiveness of sins through faith in him
during that last week of his life in Jerusalem was really
upsetting the apple cart. It was really upsetting the status
quo. These Jewish teachers in Jesus’
day, what, 30 years back or so, they were upset because people
were leaving Judaism and coming to follow Jesus. Well, that began
to hurt their income. That began to hurt their influence.
That began to rock the foundations as they saw it of their society.
And so fast forward 30 years or so after Jesus’ death and
resurrection, 20 years, I believe, you’ve got Paul doing the exact
same thing. He set up shop right by the Jewish
synagogue. And left and right people are
coming to faith in Jesus and leaving Judaism behind, including
their most recent synagogue leader comes to faith in Jesus. And
so you can imagine they’re having these back door meetings, closed
door meetings. How do we get rid of Paul? You
know, they had these about Christ. How do we get rid of Jesus? Somehow
we’ve got to be rid of him. He’s hurting our cause. Well,
in the midst of all this rumbling and ministry in the life of the
Corinthian people, God comes to Paul in a vision one night
and says, hey, don’t worry. I’ve got many people here that
through your preaching, through your gospel proclamation are
going to come to faith in me. And I need you to be there. I
need you to preach. I need you to teach. I need you
to proclaim. I need you to exhort. I need you to do the large gathering
preaching and the hand-to-hand combat of evangelism. I’m ad-libbing, right? But that’s,
in a sense, what Jesus told Paul. He promised him, do not be afraid. Go on speaking. He says, do not
be silent. I am with you. No one will attack
you. or harm you. What a great comfort
that must have been to the apostle Paul to receive this vision,
to be given these promises and to carry on. Because what does
our passage tell us? It tells us the Jews were of
one accord. They presented a united front
when they came to attack the apostle Paul. And verse 13 says
they dragged him to the tribunal. They dragged him. Imagine this,
the marketplace, you know, where, where, where main street and
first street meet. He, he drags them, they drag
him into the marketplace. He’s, he’s put there before the
tribunal, the governor of their region, Gallio comes out and
all his Roman regalia and the Jews, after all their closed
door meetings, after all their planning, All their attempts
to stop Paul are now here. Don’t you hear the echoes of
Jesus last week on earth? Don’t you hear the echoes of
our voice of the martyrs ministry telling us today of all the opposition
to faith in Jesus around the world, the prisons, the torture. the government edicts, all the
things that would stop the gospel. And Paul has to have in his mind
and in his heart, the promise of God. You go on speaking, you
keep on preaching, you keep on, you keep on, you keep on, I am
with you. But eight months into his ministry,
eight months into that 18 month ministry, this comes to his plate. This comes to his experience.
This is a freedom of religion issue, isn’t it? That’s a term
that we would use in our modern day. The government should not
get in the way of any religions free practice. The government
shouldn’t also have a state sanctioned religion. That’s the meaning
of church and state, isn’t it? We won’t be like other countries. I think you’re studying the German
Reformation. There was a German state church
for a good while. There was a state church in England.
Well, that’s what’s at stake here in the life of Corinth. Religious freedom. What’s the
government’s view of how Christianity can be shared or practiced in
the Roman Empire? And so this tribunal, this meeting
with Gallio is an important one for the apostle Paul. And here’s
what’s really going on behind the scenes. You know, the Jews
have had their closed door meetings. They’ve had their, you know,
their whiteboard and their, their PowerPoint presentations. This
is how we’re going to get Paul. Really, this is how we’re going
to get Jesus. Uh, this is that age old battle of the seed of
the serpent. and the seed of the woman, one
trying to snuff out the other. And thanks be to God, we know
who wins. We know who always triumphs,
it’s always Jesus. But what the Jews are gonna do
here, this is their tactic, is Galileo is a new governor. He’s
just come to town. Now a little bit about him, he’s
an interesting fellow. He’s the brother of Seneca. And
if you’ve studied ancient philosophy, Seneca was the great Stoic, philosopher,
famous guy. He and his brother were, they
were loved by Nero. They would end up dying by the
hand of Nero as would Paul. But Gallio was a, he was a, he
was a big man on campus and he comes into the tribunal and,
and, and, and they’re going to test him. We’re going to see
if the new guy will favor us. We’re gonna see if the new guy
will fall into our trap, our trick. We’re gonna see if the
new guy will stamp out Christianity. We’re going to see what happens.
And so it’s like, you know, when you were in school, you get a
new teacher, I’m going to test the teacher out, going to see
if she’ll let us get away with things or not, or he will let
us get away with things. And, and so they’re going to
try this guy out. They drag Paul into the marketplace,
crowded marketplace, a crowd gathers for sure. Lots of commotion,
lots of mobs coming this way and that way filing down the
streets. And there’s galleo. There’s Gallio
and they present the accusation. He tells us to worship God out
of accordance with our law, out of accordance with our standards.
And you get a little of the confusion here, not the confusion of the
scriptures, but is he saying they’re breaking a Roman law?
Or is he saying they’re breaking a Jewish law? Well, we can tell
what Gallio believes. He’s not going to get into their
Jewish laws and we’ll see him wipe his hands clean. But you
see their attempt. Let’s try the new guy. Let’s
throw something against the wall and see if it sticks. And so
they present their case. This man is persuading people
to worship God contrary to the law. What a big accusation. And I love verse 14 because God
steps in as he promises to do. In verse 14, it simply says,
but when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the
Jews, we’ll finish the quote there in a second. He steps in
and says, silence. He steps in and says, in a sense,
Paul, your job is to preach. My job is to silence your enemies.
This is, this is God, right? I promise to keep you. I promise
to be with you. I promise to not let anyone harm you. You
keep on speaking and you keep on preaching. What a great blessing
this is. And I think a great reminder,
a blessing to Paul, but a good reminder to us. Now use your imagination for
a moment. Paul was a smart guy. He was
a Roman. He was a Jewish scholar and a
legal scholar. I bet you in his mind, I bet
you, at least on the back of a napkin from wherever he ate
breakfast that morning, he had his defense all jotted out and
he was going to stand before Gallio and say some wonderful
things of protocol, some wonderful things about the Roman kingdom
and some wonderful things about God, the Jewish faith, but about
Jesus Christ. He probably had it all in mind.
And it’s a good reminder for us to say, sometimes God says,
you leave the dirty business to me. Doesn’t the church need
to hear that message today? Where is the simple Great Commission
ministry in the world? We’re busy, busy, busy doing
all this stuff outside the Great Commission. And it’s a good challenge
here to say, do the basics, Pray and trust God. Ministers these
days are CEOs and CFOs. They’re fundraisers. They’re
chasing this. They’re building a social media
platform. They’re doing all this sort of
stuff. And this is a really good challenge.
Maybe it’s just for me, but I hope it’s encouraging to y’all. Just
do the basic stuff Jesus says. Keep on teaching, keep on preaching,
keep on proclaiming, keep on speaking in public spaces, keep
on meeting with people one on one, little by little, in order
that my many people may come to faith in Jesus Christ. What a great encouragement this
is, I think, to trust in the promises of God. Do you remember
the Great Commission going to all the world and make disciples. How do you make disciples? Well,
you baptize them and you teach them everything that God has
commanded. But we go into the world and we make disciples.
And what did Jesus say at the end of the Great Commission?
Good luck. No, he said, lo, I am with you
always, even to the end of the ages. There’s a sense where Paul’s
vision that he receives in the night has echoes of the Great
Commission. Keep doing the basics. Keep doing
the main thing. I’ll take care of the dirty business,
even the galleos or the opposition problem. And I will be with you. You go on speaking. Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful
blessing that is. You know, I was thinking on this
passage and thinking of sometimes all that weighs on your heart
and mind as a minister. And a lot of the pastoral heartache
that a minister or even the elders experience is on the stuff outside
the basics. It’s on the colors of the carpets
or the length of the gymnasium that has to be built or who gets
to run this ministry or that ministry. There’s generally not
too much chaos around the basics. And if we stick to the basics
and let the Lord deal with the dirty work, I think we’ll find
ourselves faring well in this world. Look at how he works,
how God works. In verse 14 and 15, Paul is about
to speak. He’s about to give his defense. And Galileo breaks in and says
to the Jewish people, if it were a matter of wrongdoing, if it
were a vicious crime, I would have to accept your complaint.
I would have to rule here. But since it’s questions about,
he uses two phrases here, two words. It’s a question about
your words and names of your own law. You handle that yourselves. You take care of that. Words,
maybe the message of the gospel. There’s a dispute about the gospel.
Is Christ the Messiah? That’s a likely candidate here. And the names. Maybe Paul’s been
saying Jesus too much. Maybe he’s been saying the Christ,
the Messiah too much. He’s been speaking of the law
and how it’s fulfilled in Jesus. And Gallio says, this is not
Roman business. This is not the government business.
You take care of this yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these
things. It’s not civil, it’s not criminal,
and it’s not against the emperor. And so I wash my hands of it. Can you imagine Paul’s surprise?
I mean, probably half of them says I had a really good speech
written. I had a really good defense and it was going to zing
and zang and do all the right things it was supposed to do.
And before he can, well, really be surprised at Gallio’s response,
it says in verse 16, he drove them out from the tribunal, get
out of my court, bailiff, remove the crowd, so to speak. And then,
a lot of irony here, it says in verse 17, they all seized
Sosthenes. So Crispus, the former synagogue
ruler, has become a Christian. He’s with Paul. He’s a Christ
follower, been baptized. Now Sosthenes, who probably just
won by a unanimous vote on a Friday night, he’s now the new leader
of the synagogue, and they beat him. in front of the tribunal. Can you imagine the spectacle
of all of this? Can you imagine God sitting in
the heavens watching all this, the backdoor meeting, the planning,
watching the glorious ministry of Paul, watching this tribunal
and watching what Gallio does, but watching the chaos that ensues
when people don’t get their way. And Paul has gotta be saying
in his mind and heart, Lord, I didn’t know how you were gonna
pull this off. But this is pretty good. This is even maybe with
a chuckle. This is rather full of irony. And it says further, Galio paid
no attention to any of this. Isn’t it wonderful when God steps
in? Isn’t it wonderful when we take
our yoke, our burden off of us and we rest in Jesus? Isn’t it
wonderful to see how God works things out way better than we
would have, if we could have, or if we would have gotten around
to it. I think of America, maybe since
the 1980s, and maybe I’m a little naive about history, but just
go with me. Since about 1980, the Christian
right in America has been full of activism. And I wonder if
God were to weigh in the balance, Christian activism versus the
church fulfilling the Great Commission, which way would the scales tip?
Now, I’m all for Christians being active in our culture and society. Isn’t it wonderful in a sense
to be coming up on a year since the overturning of Roe versus
Wade? That’s through the prayers of God’s people. That’s through
the ministry of the church in large ways. And yes, it does
help in some way fulfill the Great Commission because more
children are born and they can perhaps hear the gospel and you
could run it all kinds of ways. But I wonder how often the church. Spends time in the side projects
and not in the Great Commission and in fighting battles, God
has said, I will, I will fight for you. You just keep on preaching. You just keep on teaching. You
just keep on evangelizing. You just keep on doing the main
work, which I have given, and I’ll do the dirty work. Now,
I understand there’s church administration, there’s budgets. You know, sometimes
we need to petition the government to be favorable to us and all
the rest. And I know that’s very different
in very different contexts or in every different context that’s
around the world. But friends, only the Lord Only
God could move Gallio. I mean, when you go before Gallio,
it was like flipping a coin. What mood is he in today? What
whim is he going to fly with? And you understand the significance
of this. Under the Roman law, the Jewish people were an accepted
religion. Christianity was so new that
it did not yet have a vote of confidence. And so what is taking
place in this passage of scripture is through Galileo, well really
through God, a precedent is being set where Rome accepts Christianity. Rome is sanctioning Christianity
in a little bitty corrupt Corinth. And so for the 10 years or so
until persecution breaks out under Nero and other wicked people,
the gospel can go forward freely. You think about the significance
of this. We look at social media today
and their censorship. What would happen if we were
deplatformed And we couldn’t put our sermons on Apple or we
couldn’t put our content on a Google or Amazon, whatever all that
is, web space. I don’t know how that works.
I’m ignorant. But what happens. Well, we got to trust the Lord.
We got to go on speaking, go on proclaiming, go on preaching,
go on evangelism. Yes, we want religious freedom.
Yes, we want to be treated. We want to be served out of the
same ladle, so to speak, as others are. But this is an amazing,
amazing precedent that is set. And I think the precedent that
it ought to set in each of our minds and our hearts is God will
make the way for his gospel. And yeah, sometimes we gotta
get in there and fight with them and pray and do some work that
God sends us to do. But ultimately, ultimately, we
need to let the Lord open the way for the gospel, not only
in the hearts, but even in the area of religious freedom. And
it’s amazing where his gospel will go, the work that it will
accomplish if we stick to our main task, which is trusting
God and proclaiming his goodness. to a dark and dying world. Do
pray with me. Our Lord, we thank you for this
little glimpse into the life of the early church. They face
things that we face. They have fears that we have
today. And your word is eternal. What’s good for Paul is wonderful
for us. It is inspired, it is from you,
it is useful. May we be corrected and trained
in righteousness now to trust you more and to preach you often,
to look to you daily and to never stop saying the words of hope
about Jesus Christ. Hear us, help us, we do ask in
the name of our great God and King Jesus Christ, amen.