What Makes Jesus Unique? No one else made the claims that He did, He is alive...............
All the great religious leaders of history have one thing in common: they are dead. Only one man has risen from a grave never again to taste death. Jesus Christ died, was buried, remained in the grave for 3 days, then was raised to life again.
Jesus is unique. He is the only one proven to be the Son of God because God validated His Kingship and accepted His payment for our sins all with one incredible stroke: He raised Jesus from the dead!
Paul opens his letter to the Romans with this evidence about who Jesus is:
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:1-4
Because Jesus Christ is very much alive, five things are true right now that wouldn’t be true if He were just another dead religious leader like Confucius, Mohammed or Buddha.
Because Jesus was raised from the dead and is alive…Prayers are answered, We can talk to Jesus 24/7
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That would be salespeople, silver traders, et cetera. So, Demetrius calls a union meeting. That's what he does. He said, men, you know that our prosperity is derived from this business. Uh oh, Paul's ministry was touching that most sensitive part of a man his wallet.
Verse 26. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia, this man Paul has persuaded and misled a considerable number of people by saying that gods made by hand are not gods. Now, the belief at the time was not that these little idols were gods. The belief was that an idol of a god would summon that god to partially take up residence in that idol, thereby allowing you to keep that god and their benefits close to you. Paul's preaching was, yeah, but if you can boss a god around by making a little statue of them, how great can that God be?
Paul never denied the reality of those gods. On the contrary, he called people to turn from those lesser gods to the living god who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. Paul did what the Old Testament prophets did. He mocked the lesser gods, calling them worthless things compared to the glory, goodness, power, and greatness of Christ. He pointed out the real test of a god is whether it can do anything.
Paul's God was working undeniable miracles, and he was not like other gods. He couldn't be summoned by an incantation or a spell, and he wouldn't show up just because you made a little idol of him. Nothing could contain him. And so, to Paul's reasonable preaching and argumentation, the men who got rich by making gods with their hands said blasphemy. Verse 27 not only do we run a risk that our business may be discredited, heaven forbid, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be despised, and her magnificence come to the verge of ruin, the very one all of Asia and the world worship.
In other words, where does it end? Brothers, these Christians may damage the reputation of Artemis so much that we not only lose our business, but people stop caring about her magnificent temple. And Ephesus loses her place of prestige in the empire. Paul is going to destroy the economy. Christianity is going to be the ruin of us all.
It can happen. Because of the Welsh revival between 1904 and 19 six, there was a time when not a single bar or tavern could be found in the entire country of Wales. They had all been closed due to lack of business. And guess how many sermons they preached against drunkenness? None. None.
Just as Paul did not tell the Ephesians to burn their occultic books, it was simply the conviction of the Holy Spirit moving upon people who had genuinely turned to Christ. They intrinsically understood that turning to Christ meant turning from their sins and all other gods. But these men cared nothing that the men women and children who were being set free by Jesus were finding new life, joy and peace, and hope in his name. All they cared about is how it affected what they cared about, which was money. Remember the medium girl back in Acts 16 whom Paul cast a demon out of?
Remember why her owners got so upset? It was because they were making a living off her. They didn't care about her soul. All they cared about was money. Jesus spoke against such thinking with one of the most haunting rhetorical questions of all time comparing earthly wealth to our eternal destinations.
Emotions are soaring and reason is plummeting. People do terrible things when they get into a mob frenzy. This is a scary truth about the world we live in. People do terrible things when they get into a mob frenzy because most people don't have a moral tether. Most people don't have a moral anchor.
They derive their morality from their surroundings. They look at the culture around them and how most people around them are behaving. And from that they determine right and wrong. And the consequences of this can be horrific. We saw this in German society during the Holocaust or Mao's Communist China, but it can take place in much smaller settings.
If there's a protest going on, emotions are soaring, reason is plummeting, and someone smashes a store window and begins looting a store. A few people follow and before you know it, people are thinking this must be okay because everyone else is doing it. You see, they have no moral tether, no transcendent moral law that they're submitted to. Their morality is flexible based on what everybody else is doing at any given moment in time. Added to this are things like demonic activity.
This crowd was full of people who were worshiping pagan gods and who led them into dark sins. They worshiped money. They worshiped lust and greed and didn't really believe in self-control. So, there was a lot of opportunity for demons to stir up anger and rage in a place like Ephesus. I'm sure all of us have seen people who get into a mob frenzy state.
You've seen Muslim extremists chanting Allah Akbar for hours and hours and hours. And closer to home, you can see this phenomenon at many LGBTQ-related protests. You can go and watch the videos online. Middle-aged men dressed as women who have no children, crazy eyes screaming at the top of their heads, demanding that children be given puberty blockers. And they're just incapable of reason.
They're just screaming and yelling at people, completely out of control, completely given over to their emotions and their lust for sin. They're in a mob frenzy. Verse 29, it says so the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed all together into the amphitheater, dragging along Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's traveling companions. Now, the amphitheater was a logical place to head as city-wide civil matters were often handled there. It also provided a venue where everyone could see what was going on and hear from the city leaders.
I've actually got a photo to show you, if you can put that up, Randy, of this amphitheater because incredibly, it's still standing. It's still there. That's the one that these events were taking place at almost 2000 years ago and they still occasionally hold concerts there. Paul was understandably viewed as the man at the Peter of the expanding Christian church in Ephesus. It seems they couldn't find Paul, though, so they grabbed two of his assistants, Gaius and Aristarchus.
Verse 30. Although Paul wanted to go in before the people, the disciples did not let him. Even some of the provincial officials of Asia who were his friends sent word to him, ending with him not to venture into the amphitheater. Though the mob couldn't find him, Paul was in the city somewhere, and when he heard about what was happening, he was concerned for the safety of his friends and felt the need to defend the gospel. In Ephesus, Paul was ready to charge into an amphitheater filled with thousands of men who wanted to see him dead.
He reached people in every city, directly or through those who heard his message, and in every class of society, even rulers of the province. And based on the time it would have taken Paul to get word of what was happening, for people to warn him, and for people not with Paul to send words of warning to him, the mob must have been in the amphitheater for hours before the next developments unfold in the narrative. Verse 32. Some in the amphitheater were shouting one thing and comes another because the assembly was in confusion and most of them did not know why they had come together. This is how mobs work.
People just get caught up in intense emotions and just want to be part of whatever is happening. They're interested because other people seem to be interested. There was no social media, so everyone in the city is just saying, what's going on? What's all this shouting about? What's happening in the amphitheater?
And so, thousands of people come streaming into that amphitheater. Reminded me of a YouTube video I saw, which cracked me up, where a random guy just dressed up in a hoodie with sunglasses. He hired a couple of security guards and a couple of photographers and then walked through a mall having the photographers take pictures of him and the security guards pushing people out of the way. And it wasn't long before there were hundreds of people following him, trying to take pictures with him. Even though nobody knew who he was.
He wasn't anybody at all. That's how mobs work. People just want to be a part of whatever is happening. Verse 33. Some Jews in the crowd gave instructions to Alexander after they pushed him to the front.
You see, the Jews in Ephesus knew that whenever things start going wrong, when the economy is in danger when people's livelihoods are on the line, the Jews often get blamed. Fearing a riot that might turn into violence against the Hebrew community, they pushed forward Alexander, who was a prominent and eloquent Jew, to make their defense and assure the Gentile Ephesians that they had nothing to do with Paul or the Christians or anything like that. It says motioning with his hand. He was part Italian. Alexander wanted to make his defense to the people.
But when they recognized that he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about 2 hours great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Jews were also known for being against idolatry, but they didn't had any impact on the city of Ephesus. As soon as the crowd realized Alexander was a Jew, they had no interest in anything he had to say. And they shouted him down with chants of Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
This is the fervor. This is the frenzy that I was talking about for 2 hours. The crowd shouted in unison, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Verses 35. When the city clerk had calmed the crowd down, a city official finally got involved and tried to just calm the situation.
Ephesus was a free city in the Roman Empire. It was a status given to cities that allowed them to essentially govern themselves while still abiding by Roman law. It was a very special privilege. They would not have Roman officials ruling over their city. They would have some of their own citizens as leaders.
He said, People of Ephesus, what person is there who doesn't know that the city of the Ephesians is the temple guardian of the great Artemis and of the image that fell from heaven? You see, hidden inside the temple of Artemis out of public view was allegedly a rock that traditions said fell from the sky. And the people of Ephesus had become convinced that his rock was in the likeness of a woman whom they decided was the goddess Artemis. You see, in their thinking at that time, objects that fell from the sky were from the gods. They were from the heavens.
Interestingly, there were books that we have that were written in the second century by some Christians who went around debunking the origins of some of the pagan gods in the Roman empires. They would do things like interview tradesmen who were multigenerational tradesmen, whose great-great grandparents were also tradesmen et Peter. And one of the places they went was Ephesus. And what their research revealed was that his rock of Artemis was in fact wood that had been made by craftsmen and that's why it wasn't put on public display. So, it was literally a scam to try and create a business and a tourist industry in the city and turn it into a legend.
That's what he's referring to here, this savvy and secular public official. He placates the crowd by telling them, relax, relax. Everybody knows. Everybody knows the gods have visited Ephesus in the form of the Artemis Rock. Everybody knows how special this city is, and nothing can change that.
Although the man was sincere, he was tragically mistaken, for today, nobody worships Artemis, but hundreds of millions of people worship Jesus Christ. Verse 36 therefore, since these things are undeniable, you must keep calm and not do anything rash, for you have brought these men here who are not temple robbers or blasphemers of our goddess. So, if Demetrius and the craftsmen who are with them have a case against anyone, the courts are in session and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you seek anything further, it must be decided in a legal assembly.
In fact, we run a risk of being charged with rioting for what happened today, since there's no justification that we can give as a reason for this disturbance. After saying this, he dismissed the assembly. It's a good pitch. This official says, let's not be hasty and incur the wrath of Rome. We're not savages.
We have courts, we have laws. If there's an accusation to be made, let a charge be brought legally through the justice system and it'll be dealt with. But right now, we're on the verge of a riot that could endanger our whole city. So cut it out. And they did.
For now.
Last week, we saw Ephesians turning to Christ and burning their occultic books in a powerful and practical demonstration of repentance. And we ended in verse 20, where it told us the word of the Lord spread and prevailed. Wherever the word of the Lord spreads, wherever it takes root, wherever it leads people to Christ, who then respond by turning from their sins and turning from their idols and turning to Christ, there will be a response from the powers of darkness. Always. When their power and authority are stripped by Christ, they don't like it.
One man filled with the power of Christ preaching the word of Christ can stand against all the powers of darkness in existence because Christ is greater. Paul stated it to the Corinthians like this. He said, I fought wild beasts in Ephesus as a mere man, but we must understand this. We must understand this. When we destroy the idols in our lives, we are destroying idols that many people worship. When we turn from lesser gods, calling them worthless, and turn to the living God, we are insulting the gods that many people worship.
Write this down and take it in. When we turn from idols, lesser gods, and sins, we turn from the things the world loves and worships, offending and angering the world.
When our actions call Christ worthy and everything else worthless, we should not be surprised when people get offended and angry. They love and worship those things. They've devoted their lives to those things. They've placed their hope in them. They've built their identity on them.
And when we turn to Christ, it disrupts the mob mentality that we've been living in and that they are living in. Here's what I mean by that. We live in families, we live in communities, we have coworkers, we have fellow students, we have a social circle. And when we turn to Christ by the simple act of turning to Him and turning from all other gods, we create problems for the social dynamic. Because we used to be part of a group that said, this is okay, it's fine to do that, it's fine to live like this.
And we suddenly do a 180 and turn to Christ and bear witness that that is sin, and we are sinners, and we need a savior. It's as though there's a riot, a store is being looted, and suddenly in the middle of that going on, someone stands up and says, this is wrong, this is theft. We should not be doing this. We need to stop. What's the reaction going to be to that?
You're probably going to get punched, you're probably going to get shouted down, and people are going to get angry with you. And that's what happens. When we turn to Christ, we disrupt the mob mentality of a world in the grips of sin and death. Jesus called his church to be salt and light, and salt stings when it's rubbed in wounds. And light reveals the evil deeds done in darkness, and both can provoke a hostile reaction.
We see this as well in the trans community today. They hate Christians because we preach the truth that God created men and women, and there's nothing anyone can do to become the other. But there's one group they hate even more than Christians, and it's detransitioners those who were transitioning but have since abandoned it after seeing the light of the truth. Now, why the hate? Because the detrans community destroys the idols of the trans community.
It calls their gods worthless. It says they cannot save, they cannot heal, they cannot help. And that doesn't go over really well. This is one of the reasons Jesus said to count the cost before you commit to follow him. It's because your community, your social circle, your people group, your family, as Jesus said, may very well hate you if you disavow their gods and destroy the idols they worship.
Expect it, is what Jesus said because we are calling the things they love and treasure worthless because it's true. But they don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it. I'm going to ask the worship team to come up. Wherever the gospel is preached.
Christian will build his church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He's with you to the end of the age. Let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Jesus. Thank you for your Word. And thank you for how plain and how honest you have been with us in Your Word that we should expect opposition. And Lord, we see our dear brothers who went before us like Paul, not flinching when they experienced opposition because he expected it, but not being intimidated for even a second, because he was assured of the greatness and goodness and power of the God in whom he had believed. And so, Jesus, we thank You that we can be as assured of Your greatness, goodness, and power as Paul was.
You're the same yesterday, today, and forever, and you're as much with us as you were with Him. And so, Lord, we thank you that we don't have to fear, but Lord, we pray for eyes to see and to recognize and discern where we're experiencing spiritual opposition. Lord, I pray for discernment so that we would not rage against people, that we would not mistake what is a spiritual attack for a personal attack or a relational attack, but that, Lord, we would see clearly that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but in the spiritual realm. And so, Lord, help us to come to you to seek Your power, Your wisdom, Jesus, Your help, Your power that works so powerfully in us. And so, Lord, I pray right now for any of my brothers and sisters who are experiencing spiritual opposition in any area of their life.
Lord, I pray for confident assurance that you are with them, for hope and peace from knowing you are with them. And, Lord, for eyes to see and recognize what is truly going on. And thank You, Lord, that the ending is assured. Christ is victorious. We reign with you forever.
And that no matter what our circumstances are in this life, we can experience victory in you because we can have peace and life and hope and joy regardless of our circumstances. So, Lord, let that be real. Help us to appropriate that. Help us to receive it. Help us to cast our cares upon You and to receive all those good things that You do.
Always have to be available for us. Jesus, we love you. We bless you. In Your name, we pray. Amen.
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Date:7/30/23
Series: Acts...Passage: Acts 18:18-28...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
As Paul heads home to Antioch to end his second missionary journey, we are reminded to submit our daily lives, decisions, and plans to the Lord’s will.
And as we pick up our study, Paul has been enjoying a fruitful season of ministry in the city of Corinth. He has been there for a year and a half, possibly longer, and seen a large church birthed through the mighty and sustained work of God in the city. Paul has been ministered to by Jesus directly, as well as through brothers and sisters like Aquila and Priscilla, who have become some of his dearest friends, Paul has been refreshed, rejuvenated, and allowed to recover, regaining his physical, emotional, and spiritual strength. And so, we read in verse 18.
After staying for some time in Corinth, Paul said farewell to the brothers and sisters and sailed away to Syria. That's where Antioch Paul's Homes church is accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. So, Paul begins his journey back home, accompanied by his dear friends that he's made in Corinth, Aquila and Priscilla, and they come with him to serve wherever needed. They pack up their business and their life to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. We don't know how old they were, but for whatever reason, there are no children in their lives at this time.
And so, they serve as a wonderful example of how to use one's flexibility in that stage of life. They don't check out and start building a life focused on their own leisure and pleasure. They make themselves available to the Lord as his servants in a greater way than they ever have before, as is afforded them by the stage of life they are in. There's nothing sadder to me than the general concept of retirement in our culture. Oh, I can't wait to turn 65 so I can just check out and do nothing for the rest of my life.
That's just a really nice way of saying wait to die for 20 to 30 years. But you need to know that there is no concept of retirement in the Christian faith, only having more time to serve the Lord and be available to our master Jesus. That's how the Christian views that. And that's why the Christian should be excited about retirement - because it means more time to be available to the Lord Jesus. That Aquila and Priscilla could leave tells us that other leaders had emerged in the Corinthian church, such as Gaius Stephanus and the former synagogue leader Crispus.
And Sosthenes it's possible Paul also left behind Silas and Timothy to help lead the fledgling church. Then we go on, and it says he that's Paul shaved his head at Cenchreae because of a vow he had taken. Now, Cenchreae is so close to Corinth, I couldn't even mark it on the map for you. But whereas Corinth is a port city that goes out to the west coast of Greece and the Ionian Sea, Cenchreae is the port that goes out to the east coast of Greece and the Aegean Sea. So, Paul traveled the short distance overland between Corinth and Cenchreae because he wanted to travel east back to Syria.
Now, we don't know exactly what this vow was that Paul had taken, why he took it, or when he took it. There are several popular suggestions, such as the Nazareth vow, but it's uncertain for reasons that are much too boring for me to share right now. All we know for sure is that this vow included not cutting his hair until this specific time. The most likely explanation is that this was some sort of thank offering to the Lord for preserving Paul's life through his second missionary journey. And when a man who was Jewish had cut his hair for any kind of vow, he would put it in a bag journey to Jerusalem, and burn it there as a sacrifice to God at the temple.
And Jewish Christians were not required to give up their customs and traditions to become Christians. They were simply required to recognize that they had no bearing on their salvation, as salvation was by faith in Jesus and not by works. But if they really liked washing their hands in the Jewish customary way, that was okay. They just needed to recognize that that didn't make them spiritually clean or impress God in any way. So, for Paul, this was just a way in his Hebrew culture of expressing gratitude to God.
And that was fine. Verse 19 when they reached Ephesus, he that's Paul left them that's Priscilla and Aquila there. Paul needed trustworthy, men and women to anchor the church that he would plant in the important city of Ephesus. And so, after training them for months over conversations in Corinth, Paul was able to leave Aquila and Priscilla there in Ephesus, where they established a business and hosted the church in their home. But he himself that's Paul entered the synagogue and debated with the Jews, as was his custom whenever he entered a new city or town.
Verse 20 when they, the Jews in Ephesus, asked him to stay for a longer time. He declined, but he said farewell and added, I'll come back to you again, if God wills. Underline those three words, if God wills, then he set sail from Ephesus, as in Berea. Paul is received favorably by the Jews in Ephesus, and normally Paul would be thrilled to stay and minister further. But Paul has made this vow, and he's made it to the Lord, and so he takes it seriously.
He needs to get to Jerusalem to make his offering at the temple and fulfill his vow. So, Paul says, I'll come back to you again, if God wills. And it will turn out that God does indeed will Paul to return. He'll come back later and spend three years in Ephesus as God builds a great church there. Those who belong to the Lord belong to the Lord.
And I know you're like Jeff. That's the kind of deep teaching I come here for. That's right. Paul would later tell the Corinthians, you were bought at a price, the price of the life of Jesus. Practically, that means that God has full rights over our life, not just in the final sense, not just in terms of our final destination, but in the day-to-day sense, too.
Now we have a choice to submit our lives to God, or not moment to moment and day by day, but those who love the Lord desire to be in his will, moment by moment and day by day. That's what Paul was alluding to when he said, I'll come back to you again if God wills. He wasn't saying, I'd love to, but sometimes God messes up my awesome plans. He was saying, I want to be in the will of God, and if he allows me to return and see you again, I would love that. But wherever God's will wants me to be, that's where I want to be.
And most of the time we are so good at bringing our problems to God when our plans don't work out. And most of the time we are so bad at bringing our plans to God before we move ahead with them. I'm going to say that one more time because it's so important. Most of the time we are so good at bringing our problems to God when our plans don't work out. And most of the time we are so bad at bringing our plans to God before we move forward with them.
And then he said, have you asked the Lord how many he wants you to have? And I realized that like 99.99% of Christian couples, the thought had Peter. even crossed my mind. We think about the number of brothers and sisters we had growing up. We think about how many kids we think we could handle or afford, or how many could fit into the kind of house that we could afford. But almost nobody thinks to ask God how many kids he wants us to have.
That's a huge life decision. And almost no Christians bring it to the Lord. For us. It turned out the number was more than three, and I'm so glad it was.
Young people, are you seeking the Lord's guidance as to what career path you should pursue? Are you seeking wise counsel from mature believers who have walked with Jesus faithfully for a long time? Or are you just making your own plans based on what seems good to you, what you want to do, and what you feel like doing? Does God get to have an opinion on what you do with the rest of your life? What about buying an apartment or a house?
What about moving? What about moving to another city or another job or another career? Buying a new vehicle? How do we spend our money? Do we bring these kinds of decisions to the Lord proactively?
Do we seek out wise counsel? Do we pray? Do we fast about decisions that have enormous ramifications for our lives? Do we seek his will upfront? Or do we just do what seems best to us and then come back to God if our plans don't work out and be like, Where were you?
He's like, I was right here. You just didn't ask. I would have told you. That's a really dumb idea. Don't do that.
Our brother James would echo the wise perspective of Paul, saying, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring, what your life will be. For you are like a vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes." Those who belong to the Lord belong to the Lord. They know their lives are in the hands of their Savior, and they trust that his will is always good.
When you know the goodness of God, you will trust the will of God. You will want his will to be done in every area of your life because you will finally understand that God's will for you is always better than your plans for yourself. God has perfect knowledge. God sees all things. He actually perceives eternity.
We cannot fathom anything without a beginning or an end. We can't. You can lie and say you do, but you can't. You have no reference point. Your mind can't conceive of that.
But out of love, god's plans for us are based on his perspective that includes both this life and eternity. And from that perspective, he does what is best from a perspective we do not have and cannot possess. So, Paul, humbly and wisely says, I'll come back to you again if God wills. I love you, but being in the Lord's will is what's most important to me. So, write this down those who love the Lord trust the Lord and so desire to be always in his will.
Those who love the Lord want to be in the will of God. There was a man who could share his plans without the preface if God wills, our Lord said to his disciples, if I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, you may be also. He didn't need to say if God wills, because he is God, therefore if he wills it, it will be done. Verse 22 on landing at Caesarea. Now, Caesarea was a beautiful port city in Israel that was always busy because it was the closest port to Jerusalem.
And I can't help but notice how brief Paul's greeting seems to have been. We don't read about Paul being invited to preach or minister or them asking him to stay longer at the Jerusalem Church, or anything like that. It just says he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the Church, then went down to Antioch. And I think the reason is that there was a healthy tension between Paul and the brothers in Jerusalem. Let me explain.
God not only gives us differing personalities and gifts, but he also gives us different passions. He wires us to care about certain aspects of the kingdom, certain aspects of the Gospel message, and certain aspects of ministry. More than others. Yes, everyone who loves Christ does and should care about the full counsel of Scripture. But God undeniably gives us inclinations toward certain aspects of it.
Some will gravitate toward ministries of mercy and compassion, others toward evangelism, others toward Bible study and teaching, others toward home groups and other smaller times of fellowship, and others toward missions. I could go on and on, and the Lord does this because the Church needs people to advocate for and champion these different aspects of God's work on the earth. Today, no man and no group of men can consistently concern themselves with all the aspects of ministry and Christian life. It's just not possible. So, like gifts, the Lord distributes these passions across His Church and within his churches.
So, when you feel like an area of ministry is not being focused on the way you think it should be, recognize the possibility that the Lord has given you a passion for that aspect of ministry and ask Him, lord, are you calling me to serve you in this area of ministry in some way? Are you calling me to help in some way meet this need in your church? Don't get mad that other people aren't wired the same way that you are. How can you not see it? How can you not care about that?
How can you not think this is the most important thing in the world? Those other people are likely faithful to the areas of ministry that God has wired them to be passionate about. It doesn't mean they don't care. It doesn't mean they don't think that the area you're wired to care about isn't important. It just means they can't care about every area of ministry all the time.
See what the Lord might have you do. See how the Lord might have you serve so that the church can more fully reflect the heart of God in ministry. One of the aspects of the gospel message that Paul famously advocates for throughout his writings that appear in the New Testament is sola Galatia salvation by grace alone. There are many parts of Paul's letters where he just revels in the extravagant grace of God and just celebrates how we contribute nothing to our salvation. Jesus has done it all.
And when you read the whole counsel of God, all of the Scriptures, it becomes by design very difficult to distort the gospel truth because anytime you want to run away too far in one direction, there's a counterbalance by the design and grace of God.
I don't think we're reading too much into things to say that a similar tension existed in the relationship between Paul and the brothers in Jerusalem. They loved each other dearly. They would have died for one another. They were grateful to God for the ministry of the other. But there's a reason they never partnered together in missionary work.
The Lord gave them different passions and gave their ministries different emphases for the good of the uppercase C church both then and now. And we saw an aspect of those tensions play out in the Jerusalem council back in Acts chapter 15. And listen, there are and there will be differences in this body in Gospel City, and we need those differences. We need people who are gifted and wired by God differently from one another because we have blind spots and none of us has all of the spiritual gifts. And there's a lot that the church wants to do.
The love of God is big, and so the work of the church is big too. We need people who are just overflowing with love and compassion and hugs, and we need people who can and will, out of love, slap us upside the head when we stray from the paths that lead to life. You don't need a hug sometimes. You need someone to be like, what the flip are you doing? It's necessary.
We need people who lean toward ministering to the head and people who lean toward ministering to the heart. We need people who emphasize grace, and we need people who emphasize obedience. And we need all those people to be submitted to the full counsel of God's Word and to the Lord Jesus. In modern evangelical Christianity, most churches have a single lead pastor and not a plurality of elders. Most churches don't have biblical and meaningful church membership.
Let's put our map up on the screen and just recap Paul's journey home. He traveled overland from Corinth to Cenchreae, where he hopped on a boat to Ephesus, from where he sailed to Caesarea. Now, there were likely multiple stops on that journey because boats tended to sail along the coast or stop overnight at islands. He travels overland from Caesarea to Jerusalem, where he greets the Church, then heads back to Caesarea to catch a boat up north to Antioch. Then we read in verse 23, after spending some time there, that's in Antioch, he set out traveling through one place after another in the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.
After catching up with and strengthening the Church in Antioch for a few months, it was likely around the spring of 54 AD. When Paul headed out on his third missionary journey, which began with visits to the churches he had planted during his first missionary journey in the region of present-day central Turkey. But before our narrator, Dr. Luke, details Paul's next journey, he returns to Ephesus to tell us about what happened after Paul's departure. In verse 24, we read now a Jew named Apollos, a native Alexandrian.
So, this Apollos was a Jew from the great intellectual and cultural metropolis of Alexandria, the Egyptian city near the mouth of the Nile on the southern coast of the Mediterranean. It was the second-largest city in the Roman Empire and had large Hebrew and Greek communities. By some reckonings, as much as a third of the city's population was Jewish at this time, which is why the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures, was produced in Alexandria in the second and third centuries BC. Like Rome, the Gospel had reached Alexandria through Jews who had journeyed to Jerusalem to take part in the annual feasts, been ministered to by the Church in Jerusalem, turned to Christ, and then brought the Gospel back home with them. This Apollos, we read, was an eloquent man who was competent in the use of the Scriptures, and he arrived in Ephesus.
He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. The original Greek tells us that Apollos had been formally taught in the Scriptures by experts and was fervent in spirit. Now, the original Greek tells us that this means Apollos was fervent in the Holy Spirit. He wasn't just a passionate guy; he was fervent under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Apollos was a brilliant orator.
It's simple. When we're being transformed by the Word, there will be an increasing passion for Jesus in our lives. It grieves me when I see someone coming to church and enjoying the services, appreciating the messages, but there's no growing passion for Jesus. It grieves me because it tells me they're just growing in intellectual knowledge of the Word. They're just enjoying learning more stuff about God.
It's not a bad thing, but it's not the goal. It's not the goal. The goal is to be transformed by the Word, resulting in a growing passion for Jesus that leads us to become more like Jesus. Apollos was a man being transformed by the Scriptures and therefore growing in his passion for the Lord fervent in spirit. May the same be said of us.
He was speaking and teaching accurately about Jesus, although he knew only John's baptism. Now, the John spoken of here is not John the Disciple, but rather John the Baptist, who was not one of the twelve disciples but was a prophet whose mission was to prepare Israel for the arrival of the Messiah who was Jews. John the Baptist proclaimed that the Messiah would soon arrive, the Savior sent by God to provide forgiveness for man's sins and reconcile him to God. Bringing man back into relationship with God. John would baptize people with a different baptism to the one we practice in the church.
John's Baptist existed before Jesus died and rose again, and it was a public declaration that a person recognized they were a sinner, needed forgiveness, wanted to repent, and desired to receive the forgiveness the Messiah would soon offer. And when Jesus came out to see John, john pointed him out as that Messiah, declaring him to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So, it seems that Apollos only knew what John the Baptist had known and taught that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah who will provide forgiveness of sins. We must repent and place our faith in him. But Apollos knew nothing of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
He knew nothing about the Holy Spirit being given to all who placed their faith in Jesus, even though he was clearly filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn't know that Christ had fulfilled the Law. He didn't know anything about the church, the new body that God had created that consisted of both Jews and Gentiles. Apollos was saved because his faith was in Jesus as Messiah Jesus as his savior.
He was filled with the Holy Spirit. Even though he didn't know about the Holy Spirit, he was faithfully, accurately, and powerfully, teaching the truth that he knew. But he had some really big gaps in his understanding. Apollos didn't have the full picture, and yet he shared what he did know, what he did understand, and he's commended in Scripture for it. You may not be fully acquainted with the significance of the Old Testament sacrificial system or understand why you would burn your hair in Jerusalem at the temple.
You may not be able to explain the Trinity. I can't either. But you know enough to share Jesus with somebody. So, share what you do know, and the Lord will commend you as he did Apollos, and as we shall see, he will give you greater revelation, knowledge, and understanding. Verse 26: He - that's Apollos - began to speak boldly in the synagogue after Priscilla and Aquila heard him.
So, it says they took him aside and explained the way of God to him. More accurately, they didn't interrupt his message and be like, "Actually, Apollos, that's adorable, but there's way, way more to it." They don't interrupt him. They don't embarrass him. They don't tweet at him or just comment on his Instagram feed.
You might want to check your theology, Apollos. They don't do that. They just discreetly pull him aside, and they have a private conversation with him. Why? It's not that profound.
It's because everybody is less defensive in a private conversation than they are in a public conversation. The original Greek implies that they invited Apollos to their home and spoke with him there. Now, I admire Apollos because Apollos could have said, I don't need to listen to you guys. I'm an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. Just read Acts 18.
But praise God, Apollos was a humble and teachable man. He cared deeply about truth, and he loved the Lord, so he was not defensive or prideful when this working-class couple corrected his understanding and shared with him the full Gospel. Apollos received their teaching with eagerness and would go on to become a mighty evangelist in the early church. And I love the two pictures that the Lord gives us back-to-back here we see Apollos faithfully ministering with the truth that he has, and then we see Aquila and Priscilla faithfully ministering with the truth. That they have.
I have to believe that such a mindset was a significant part of why the early church was so effective at sharing the Gospel. They prayed for boldness. They refused to be paralyzed by their fears insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. And they didn't need to know everything before they began sharing what they did know. May we be more like them?
Do you realize that tomorrow, pretty much all of you will spend some time with people who know less about Jesus and the Gospel than you do? Like a lot less. Tomorrow, pretty much all of you will be the expert on Jesus and the Gospel at your place of work, your school, in your circle of friends, or in your family. When it comes to spiritual matters, pretty much all of you will tomorrow find yourself sitting next to someone dumber than you. All of you.
So let the Lord use you. Pray for boldness and ask the Lord for opportunities to share what you do know, because those who don't know the Lord yet desperately need to hear what you already know. Apollos was working faithfully with what he had been given, so God gave him more to work with and sent him Aquila and Priscilla to give him greater revelation, knowledge, and understanding. And the Lord had prepared them for the task by having them spend months in conversation with Paul, the greatest theologian who ever lived other than Jesus himself. As they worked in their leather shop together, the three of them would have spent countless hours discussing doctrine, the Gospel, and the Scriptures.
Aquila and Priscilla were close friends of Paul, but they had also been students of Paul, so they had no problems explaining gospel theology at a high level to someone like the Eloquent. Apollos, verse 27, when he that's Apollos wanted to cross over to Aka. Let's put our next map up on the screen, and I'll show you here. Akea was the Roman province to the south of the province of Macedonia. Today it's the southern half of Greece.
So, they and the other members of the young church in Ephesus wrote a letter of endorsement and introduction for Apollos to take with him to the brethren in Corinth. They trusted Apollos. Based on Paul's greeting in Romans 16 three, we can deduce that Aquila and Priscilla stayed in Ephesus for several years, and then when the church had enough solid, leaders returned to Rome to strengthen the church there. Eight to ten years after that, Paul writes his final letter, which is two. Timothy Aquila and Priscilla are back in Ephesus, serving with Timothy.
They devoted their lives to serving Jews and strengthening his church wherever they were needed. What a wonderful legacy to have in the Word. And now we follow Apollos for a couple more brief scenes, one here in the final two verses of chapter 18, and one at the beginning of chapter 19, which we'll get into next week. It says after he arrived - that's in Corinth - he was a great help to those who by grace had believed, for he vigorously refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating through the scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah. Apollos immediately got to work as an apologist and an evangelist, using his brilliant mind and oratory skills to publicly debate the leading Jewish leaders and scholars in the city.
The subject of his argument was the same used by men like Paul and Stephen. He was using the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was unquestionably the fulfillment of those prophecies, and therefore the Messiah. The Greek word translated "refuted" is an intense, double compound word that means Apollos was crushing the arguments of his opponents, totally disproving them at every point. Apollos was a blessing to the believers in Achaea as he led men to Christ and emboldened the church by demonstrating powerfully that their faith was reasonable. It was based on truth, history, and prophecy.
And if you're not a follower of Jesus, I want to challenge you to investigate the prophecies regarding Jesus of Nazareth. These are prophecies made centuries before he came to the earth as a man, and the odds of one man fulfilling those more than 300 specific prophecies are zero. It's literally mathematically impossible. The only explanation is that God planned it, God prophesied it, and then God brought it about to pass. And if you'd like to learn about some of those prophecies, I put an outline sorry, I put a link on your outline to a message I taught about that subject several years ago.
So just go and give that a listen this week. I think you'll find some of it mind-blowing. Paul would later write to the Corinthian Church, "I planted Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." Paul established the church in Corinth. Apollos nurtured it, but God was the one who made it all happen.
Jesus is the head of the church, and Jesus is the one who gives her life. I love to ask the worship team to come up and get ready to lead us in worship as we wrap up here, as we pray in just a moment, let's ask the Lord if there are any areas in our lives where we're making decisions that we should be submitting to him. Let's ask the Lord if there are any big life decisions that we're walking through right now, where he is saying, I wish you would stop and ask me what I think I wish you would ask a mature believer what they think because I want to share something with you - God's plans for you are better than your plans for yourself. He has the full picture.
If you're not using them, if you're not participating in service and in church membership, let me be super blunt. Jesus wants you to. He wants you to. So do it. Do it if you're not doing it.
And with that, let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes, Lord? Jesus. Thank you so much for your word. And thank you that you are a loving and good heavenly father.
So, thank You, Lord, that we don't ever need to be afraid of what Your plans for us might be because we know Your character. And I pray for anyone here who doesn't know Your character. Jesus, would you reveal yourself to them? Reveal just how loving, just how good, just how kind, and just how gracious you are. Overwhelm them with your goodness we pray, Jesus. Because we understand that where we perceive Your goodness, trust is not a problem. So, Jesus, overwhelm us once again with Your goodness and forgive us for where You have done that, but we have still refused to trust You. Forgive us, Jesus. You are a trustworthy, good God who is only ever and always faithful because you cannot be anything less. It's just who you are.
And so, Jesus, we want to offer up to you all of our plans, all of our hopes, all of our dreams, even the ones we've already made, lord, if you want us to revise them, we want to do it because we want to be in Your will. Jews.
That means more to us than anything, Lord, that we would be found in Your will because we want to be as close to You as we can. And we know that the closest place we can be to you is to be in Your will. So, Jesus, speak to us even now by Your spirit, and in this coming time of worship, lead us into Your will. If we're out of step with Your will, show us where Jesus and I pray for anyone who's afraid to pray that prayer, Lord. Give them the faith to do it, Jesus.
And then, Lord, I pray if you're stirring anything in anyone in an area of ministry, if there's a calling you want to impart on, a life, Jesus, would you speak to them right now in Jesus' name? Just reveal something to them - a clarity, a next step. Lord Jesus and Father, I pray for the gifts represented in this room that are not being utilized right now. I pray that you would stir hearts and, yes, convict, so that the church can be blessed and built up for the glory of Jesus by the gifts that you have put in. Our brothers and sisters, help us to submit our lives, our plans, our gifts, and our passions to you, Jesus, so that Your name would be glorified so that you would be pleased and honored among Your people in the church that belongs to you, of whom you are the Head.
And so, we pray that all glory would go to you, that Your name would be lifted high, that Your name would be exalted, and may it be so even in this time of worship. We love You so much, and we are so thankful for Your goodness in our lives because we deserve none of it. But you're just good, and we love you for it. We bless you, Jesus. In your name, we pray.
Amen. Amen.
Date:7/2/23
Series: Acts...Passage: Acts 17:18-34...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Paul finds himself on the Acropolis of Athens before the Areopagus - the city’s rulers and leading philosophers, who ask him to share the message he has been preaching in the agora (the city’s marketplace).
His life. Being in imminent danger from Jewish persecution, Paul has had to change plans, flee Berea, and journey south via the Aegean Sea to Athens, where his heart is grieved and righteously. Angered by a city filled to the brim with idolatry, they filled seemingly square inch of Athens with temples, shrines, altars, statues, and buildings dedicated to thousands of gods. Paul's heart is disturbed to see the people of Athens caught up in hopeless living. For indeed, the Gospel of Christ is the only genuine message of hope.
It declares that man is not a cosmic accident or some random collection of atoms loving through a meaningless and impersonal universe. There is a God who created all things and has authority over all things. And this God is good, creating men and women to know him, be known by him, enjoy him, and glorify him. Man's connection to his maker was lost in the fall but is restored through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross of Calvary. And through him, sins are forgiven and alienated.
Enemies of God are reconciled to him and adopted into his family as sons and daughters for all eternity. The key to contentment, peace, and happiness in this life is found in knowing this Jesus and being ruled by him, filled with the Spirit of God. Paul was filled with God's love for the men and women of Athens, and he sprang into action, sharing the Gospel in the synagogue on the Sabbath and reasoning with men in the marketplace, the agora, as Socrates had centuries before him. So, let's jump back in. In Acts, chapter 17, verse 18, some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him, with Paul.
As we mentioned last week, Athens was the philosophical center of the world. It was where the world's greatest men of reason and logic studied, taught, and debated. Epicureanism and Stoicism were two of the leading schools of philosophy and had both existed for over three centuries. All genuinely developed philosophies are in fact worldviews. They are lenses through which we perceive and explain the nature of reality.
All religions are worldviews, as are philosophies, such as materialism, naturalism, and even atheism. The question, though, is which worldview explains the nature of reality best in light of science, history, observable reality, and logic? I won't get into it today, but I will share the punchline with you. It's Christianity, and it's the reason I am a more devoted follower of Jesus Christ today than I've ever been. There is simply no other worldview, philosophy, or religion that can match the explanatory power of the Christian worldview.
In Athens, Epicureanism and Stoicism were two of the major schools of philosophy that dominated the city's philosophical landscape. Epicureanism was founded on the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus around 307 BC. He was a materialist meaning that he believed the material world was all that there is. He would have likely been expelled from society for teaching straight atheism. So, he instead taught a form of agnosticism that declared the gods had no interest or involvement in human affairs.
Stoicism, on the other hand, was founded on the teachings of Zeno of Citium around 300 BC. He perceived at least some of what's theologically termed general revelation. Zeno observed and agreed that there was a Logos - a divine order to nature and reality that bore the fingerprints of an intelligent creator. He also recognized the internal Torah conscience that God has put into every man and concluded that virtue was a necessary part of achieving a well-lived and flourishing life. In contrast to the Epicureans, the Stoics concluded that the key to achieving a well-lived life was a disciplined life.
They observed correctly that emotions can easily get in the way of leading a disciplined life. And so, they sought to gain mastery over their emotions by avoiding emotional entanglements and not allowing their behavior and speech to be determined by their feelings. They sought to be courageous and temperate and master themselves by reaching the point where they Were emotionally dead. There were not a lot of Stoic artists. The Stoics even believed that humanity proceeded from a single point of origin.
However, they were also pantheistic believing in many gods and a form of universalism where they sought to live in harmony with the natural order, the Logos. There's quite a bit in Zeno's teachings that is indeed praiseworthy. But of course, the fatal flaw of Stoicism is the goal is said to be to kill the emotions. I'm being ruled by my emotions, therefore I need to completely kill my emotions. But emotions are part of being human and any philosophy that seeks to kill part of what makes us human is destined for failure.
Because the solution is not to become less human by killing part of your humanity. The only solution is to submit every part of your humanity to the Lordship of Jesus Christ so that he might redeem it and bring wholeness and redemption to it. That it might begin to function more as it was originally intended to. Emotions are a gift from God. They are not a curse.
Emotions out of control will rule you and dominate you and be a curse. But emotions under the lordship of Jesus allow us to experience so many of the good things that God has given to us in his grace. As you can see, these philosophies were worldviews. They were lenses through which to perceive reality and to try and make sense of reality and instruct how to live in light of it.
F.F. Bruce commented on both philosophies stoicism and epicureanism represent alternative attempts in pre-Christian paganism to come to terms with life, especially in times of uncertainty and hardship. And post-Christian paganism, down to our own day, has not been able to devise anything appreciably better. In response, it says some said to Paul, what is this ignorant show-off? Or what is this seed picker trying to say?
The Greek word translated "show-off" was generally used to describe birds scavenging for seeds. And so, some of these philosophers who were debating Paul in the Agora used the term metaphorically to insult him. They were implying that he was a religious charlatan, plagiarizing bits of information from other religions and trying to pass them off as his own.
Then it says others replied, that he seemed to be a preacher of foreign deities because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. So, they say deities - plural - because others are mistaking his message to be referring to two gods one named Jesus and another named Resurrection. So, they haven't really figured it out yet. Verse 19 - they took him and brought him to the Areopagus collectively, the philosophers listened to Paul and engaged with him enough that they decided his message needed to be brought before the Areopagus. More than a place, the Areopagus was the regular gathering of the city's political leaders and philosophers that took place on the Acropolis, that famous hill in Athens upon which sits the Parthenon even to this day.
Now, contrary to the widely held belief, it's not certain that the Areopagus convened on the part of the Acropolis known as Mars Hill, the hill of Ares, only that they convened somewhere on the Acropolis close to the Parthenon. And so there is Paul on top of this hill. One of the most famous hills in the world, engaging with the most brilliant men of Athens. For centuries, the men of Athens had understood that a culture's philosophies drive its politics. They took seriously the debate of reason and logic and were determined to expel illogical, bad ideas from their midst.
The leading philosophies would be recognized by the Areopagus and then taught to children in the schools of Athens. Today, our culture's philosophies drive our politics and public education system. However, those philosophies are not determined by the most intelligent among us or the most reasonable, but by fools. They are not formed by rigorous debate, but by censoring contrary opinions. They are not founded upon reason and logic but upon weak-minded emotionalism.
They are not implemented by a council of thoughtful and respectable men, but by corrupt cowards who are slaves to corruption, power, and other demons. Yes, I have thoughts where reason is scorned, and the truth is considered dangerous. A culture is doomed. Let the hearer understand. Paul was brought to the Areopagus because the men who ruled Athens wanted to know what he was teaching in their city.
Could it stand up to the scrutiny of their questions? What a journey Paul has been on. He has taught the Gospel in small towns, off the beaten track to farmers and rural agricultural folk. And now he stands before the greatest minds on earth at the time to present the Gospel and give a defense for it. They said, "May we learn about this new teaching you are presenting? Because what you say sounds strange to us and we want to know what these things mean."
Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new. The Areopagus was a Joe Rogan podcast that never ended. You can hear in Luke's tone his observation that for most among the Areopagus, their interest in Paul's message was recreational. Philosophy was not simply their job; it was also their hobby and their passion.
Luke is tipping us off here in his narration that they brought Paul to the Areopagus to find out what was being taught in their city, but they also brought him there as a form of entertainment. A new religion a brand-new worldview or a new idea would be like a blockbuster movie opening in town. Have you heard the worldview of Paul from Israel? Have you heard Paul from Antioch? And Luke is cautioning us not to think that most in the audience were sincerely interested in the Gospel.
And the epicureans, who were materialists, would have likely chuckled with glee as Paul made this little opening joke. I see you are extremely religious, to put it mildly, in every respect. For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed, to an unknown god, therefore what you worship in ignorance. This I proclaim to you. Paul brilliantly connects his message to the city of Athens, saying, you are aware that you don't know everything about the spiritual world.
In fact, you're concerned that there may be a god you're unaware of. That's why you have an altar to an unknown god. I am here to tell you about that god, the God who made the world and everything in it. He is lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in shrines made by hands. Paul Clarifies, that the god he's speaking of is not a minor god, is not a demigod.
He is the god of gods, the supreme god, the Lord of heaven and earth, and the maker of all things. Paul is speaking of the Logos that was perceived by the Stoics but not known to them. Paul continues and now reasons with these men who pride themselves on their ability to reason. He's going to point out three illogical beliefs about the supreme god who made the world and everything in it, starting with the idea that such a god would live in shrines made by hands. It's an illogical idea because a man-made structure could never contain that kind of god.
You can't confine the living god as Solomon was dedicating the first temple. This is on your outlines. He prayed to the Lord, but will God indeed live on earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you, much less this temple I have built. And David pondered God's omnipresence in Psalm 139 lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I stand up, you understand my thoughts from far away you observe my travels and my rest. You are aware of all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know all about it. Lord, you have encircled me. You have placed Your hand on me.
This wondrous knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty. I'm unable to reach it. Where can I go to escape from Your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Shiol, that's Hades, you are there. If I fly on the wings of the dawn and settle down on the western horizon, even there your hand will lead me. Our right hand will hold on to me. If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light around me will be night.
Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night shines like the day. Darkness and light are alike to you. So write this down it is illogical to believe the supreme god could be contained by manmade structures. It is illogical to believe the supreme god could be contained by manmade structures.
Paul continues in verse 25 that neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives everyone life, breath, and all things. The second illogical belief Paul highlights is the idea that the god who gives everyone life and breath in all things would need anything from human hands. That he created as the sustainer of all life. He does not need to be sustained by us. As John Stott put it, we depend on God, he does not depend on us.
Paul says he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things, not only believers but also unbelievers. Our brother James tells us that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. If it's good, it's from God. Delicious food, the beauty of nature, the joy of laughter. These are examples of what we call common grace, given by God to everyone as a taste of his goodness and character.
Paul is going to point out the third illogical belief about the Supreme God when we reach verse 29. Let's keep going. In verse 26, from one man, he has made every nationality. A belief shared by the Stoics, but not by Greeks in general, who viewed their race as vastly superior to non-Greek barbarians, in a similar way to how the Jews look down on Gentiles as being kindling for the fires of hell. So, Paul's picking a little bit of a fight here, saying, you're not special just because you're Greek.
Everybody ultimately comes from the same man and Romans. And I want to point something out here that we can easily miss as we fly through the text. There are contemporary Christians who do not believe that humanity could have descended from one man and one woman. From Adam and Eve. The eminent philosopher William Lane Craig is one such Christian.
However, Paul is explicit here in verse 26 that God created every nationality from one man. There are not multiple ways to interpret that the Scripture is speaking emphatically. Therefore, those who disagree are wrong. And it's only a matter of time before science catches up to the Scriptures, as we have seen countless times over the centuries. You do not want to be taking the position of, well, here's the thing.
I know more than Paul. I'm more enlightened than Paul was. Listen, when you're tutored for a few years in the desert of Arabia by Jesus Christ personally, then you can talk. But until then, we'd love to go with Paul, who is documented and certified as an apostle of Jesus Christ. Paul affirms a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, just as Jesus did when he was on the earth.
From one man, he has made every nationality live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. Part of God's plan for humanity and for the earth includes specific destinies for ethnic groups and nations at different times in history. We see this in places like the Book of Daniel, where God's plan is revealed in advance for the great empires that would rise on the global stage between the time of Daniel and the time Jesus was born on the Earth as a child. But now tune in here because I want to talk more about this because Paul's about to allude to something fascinating and we're about to take one heck of a rabbit trail right here. Okay?
Verse 27. Paul says he did this. In other words, God created every nationality and determined where they live so that they might seek God and perhaps they might reach out and find Him. Though he is not far from each one of us. Underline though he is not far from each one of us.
When did God create different nationalities and ethnicities? The groups the Bible calls the nations? The Ethnos, in Greek, it happened all the way back at the Tower of Babel in Genesis, chapter eleven. If you want, you can leave your outline in Acts 17 for a minute and turn with me to Genesis eleven.
Just go to the front of your Bibles. Genesis is the first book and find Genesis. Chapter eleven, verse one. I want to show you some stuff here. It says, of that time the whole Earth had the same language and vocabulary.
Iraq sort of area. They said to each other, Come, let's make oven-fired bricks. They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let's make a name for ourselves, otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the Earth.
There's a lot more going on there than you think. It says, then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. The Lord said if they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let's go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech. So from there, the Lord scattered them throughout the Earth and they stopped building the city.
Therefore it is called Babylon Babel, which sounds like the Hebrew word for confuse. It's where we get our word babel. For there the Lord confused the language of the whole Earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the Earth. So, what's going on when they build this tower, most likely under the leadership of a man named Nimrod is they are loving together and they are actually, historians tell us, becoming united around the world's first pagan religion.
They are rejecting Yahweh, they are rejecting their Maker, and they are building this giant tower, which is really a spiritual structure, a temple of sorts, to go as high into the heavens as they can, to try and commune with God on their terms, their way, get to heaven without Yahweh and worship pagan gods instead.
That's what's going on here. And God looks down and he says, my goodness, my goodness. Paul clarifies God's reasoning behind the creation of languages and people groups. God did this because when humanity was united, it didn't bring out the best in them, it brought out their sinful tendencies. And they became united in their rebellion against God, which would have doomed the entire human race to damnation.
As they raised all of their children, all subsequent generations, in rebellion against the Lord, the whole human race would have been lost. So, in order to save as many as possible, Paul tells us that the Lord divided the people up into nations so that they might seek God. In other words, in some individual groups, each individual group would have a chance, would have an option, and would have the ability to turn to the Lord, which would not be possible in a singular homogenized global culture that collectively rejects God under the leadership of a single ruler. Do you understand the difference? If they're all one, there's just one opportunity to turn to God, and the leader is saying, we're not going to do that if he breaks them up into people groups.
Each group has an opportunity, has the potential to turn to the Lord, and you now have multiple opportunities for people to turn to Yahweh. That action by God is alluded to in Deuteronomy 32 eight, where we are told that God appointed one of his spiritual beings, one of his angels. The Hebrew word is Elohim over each individual nation, but he saved Israel for Himself. Israel was God's portion, God's people, but he assigned an angel to each different nation. Israel was supposed to be a missionary nation, modeling what it looked like to be the people of God, to be blessed by God, to walk in fellowship with God, and then invite those other nations to come in and be part of the people of Yahweh.
Now, let me connect some dots for you here to the present day. If you understand what was happening at Babel, if you understand what Satan was trying to do at Babel, and if you understand why God had to intervene, then you will understand what is behind the drive for Globalism today. The drive behind the United Nations Agenda 2030 is the drive to erase borders and the push to homogenize global culture by policing language, viewpoints, currency mobility, etc. Satan is attempting the same thing again in our day. He is attempting to reverse what God did at Babel and reunite the world once again with a single leader who will lead the world in the rejection of God.
That's what's going on. It's not only what's going on, it is what will happen. And that leader will emerge. And he will be the Antichrist. But praise God, the Church will be gone by then.
We've got an appointment with heaven. But what we see going on in the world today, presidents, prime ministers diving headfirst into this notion of globalism all of the laws they're passing, all the pacts they're signing, the treaties and the decrees, it is all preparatory for the one world government that will be established in the near future. We need to understand that both Satan and God have plans to establish a one-world government. Do you know this? Satan wants to unite humanity around the rejection of God.
God wants to unite humanity around the worship of Christ. Satan is doing his work through governments, corporations, and wicked men. God is doing his work through the Church. When Christ died, we forget this. It looked as though all hope was lost.
For three days, Satan was partying. But the story wasn't over yet. There was another chapter coming called The Resurrection. When the Church is raptured, an Antichrist rises on the global stage, leads a one-world totalitarian government. It will look as though all hope is lost.
Satan will celebrate for several years, but the story won't be over yet. There's another chapter coming called The Second Loving. There will be a one-world government that will endure, but it will be under the reign of Christ. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever. The zeal of the Lord of Armies will accomplish this. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, man, I get it.
Just do it. Okay, back to Acts chapter 17, acts 17 and verse 28. Paul continues for in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. Paul quotes two famous Greek poets of antiquity the first is a little bit uncertain, while the second quotes from Phenomena, a poem by Aratus of Cilicia, which was written around 300 years before Christ. He wrote Humans are the offspring, the children of Zeus.
Paul is saying, yes, we come from our maker as children come from their parents, but our maker is not Zeus. Since then, we are God's offspring. We shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver, our stone is an image fashioned by human art and imagination. Here's the idea, just a little complex. To understand what he's saying, let me clear it up.
If we are God's creation, then God must be more than we are. Yet the foolishness of idolatry led the Greeks to worship gods and demigods whom they imagined as looking like themselves, just in really, really good shape and with superpowers. And Paul says that's stupid. It makes little sense to think that you could accurately depict the glory of the creator God by building a statue of a man or a woman out of gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination. Logic says he must be so much more.
His beauty and his grandeur must exceed the imaginations of men. With this argument, Paul highlights the third illogical belief about the supreme God held by the Athenians, to which the Stoics would have certainly replied, here, here, write this down. It is illogical to believe the glory of the supreme God is like that of the humans he created, or that it could be captured by human art and imagination. This is why in the Ten Commandments; we're actually forbidden from making any image of God because they would all be an insult to him. There'd be, like, nothing close. It would be like somebody saying, I'm going to capture your exact essence with this statue. And then they go to unveil the statue. It's literally just like a clump of clay with like two googly eyes on it. And they're like, Behold, it's unreal. Right? It's like I'm looking right at you! Even more so, any attempt to capture the glory of God through art and human imagination, it's a foolish idea to begin with. Verse 30. Therefore, having overlooked underline the times of ignorance the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.
The Bible teaches men will be Judea based on the amount of revelation they have received. Paul explains in Romans chapters one and two, the idea of general revelation. Everybody gets to perceive the glory of God through the created world around us, and everybody is given an internal moral conscience. Those who were never exposed to the Gospel or to the teachings of Israel will be judged on the revelation they received. How did they respond to the general revelation that was given to them? Paul declares here that Jesus of Nazareth was a special revelation of God that has been given to mankind. Therefore, in light of that special revelation, God now commands men to respond to the revelation of the resurrected Jesus by repenting, placing their faith in him, and worshipping him as Lord. Paul plainly states that the work of Jesus ushered in a new epoch, a new season of history, the age of grace, which will continue until the church is raptured. And by the way, I know there's so much packed in here.
Paul also warns, though, of the next age that is coming. The next age is called in the Bible, the day of the Lord, which is the time, the season of future history when God will judge the world in righteousness. Before the world was made, before our universe existed, the time was chosen to the second when Jesus would be born on the earth and take human form. Do not think for a second that the Incarnation was a reaction to a plan gone wrong. It was the plan from the beginning.
In the same way, the time of the rapture, the Second Coming, and the judgment of all unbelievers has been sealed already to the second. The time is determined, and nothing has the power to alter the plans of the Lord. Notice who will execute the judgment of the earth, Paul says. The man that God has appointed. The man Christ Jesus.
Jesus will judge the living and the dead. Those who refuse to follow Christ as Lord will not be judged by themselves or a jury of their peers. They will be Judged by Jesus, Paul tells us explicitly. Another tip for you Bible students you might just want to go read through Romans chapters one through three this week and then compare it to Paul's speech here in Acts 17. Because Romans one through three is basically a more detailed argument of what Paul shares at the Areopagus.
After connecting with his audience through shared philosophical pointing and quotes from their classical poets, Paul does not cower from the most important part of his presentation - the Resurrection. Paul does not fall prey to thinking, Man, I've connected so well with these people. I mean, they're digging this. They're laughing at my jokes; they're cheering my good points. I don't want to blow it by sharing the harder-to-believe stuff.
Maybe I should just save that for another time. Such can be the temptation for us when we engage in relational evangelism, right? Oh, I'm building bridges here. They're just starting to like me. I don't want to blow it by talking about Jesus now and use up all that goodwill that I've carefully stored up so that I would have a chance to talk with them about Jesus.
What are we going to do? But Paul gives us an example to follow, which is never forgetting that the reason we build those bridges is to share the Gospel. That's the reason. And when that moment comes, we must not cower but boldly and plainly share the good news of the resurrection. Verse 32.
After Paul does that, it says when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. Remember, the Epicureans were materialists, so they would have found the idea of a resurrection ridiculous, just as the atheist, materialists, and philosophical naturalists do in our day, they had pre-dismissed even the possibility of something like a resurrection. In Psalm 14, David declares the fool says in his heart, there's no God. They are corrupt. They do vile deeds.
General revelation for his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen since the creation of the world being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse, for though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, forefooted, animals and reptiles, and Jesus taught Nicodemus. This is the judgment the light has come into the world, and people love darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.
For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it so that his deeds may not be exposed. It is a difficult thing to gain worldly knowledge and not have it produce pride and arrogance. The knowledge that comes from God is unique in that true Godly knowledge produces humility, because it allows you to see Christ more clearly and yourself more clearly. And if you're doing both of those things, you're going to become more humble over time. But for 99.99% of people.
The more of the world's knowledge you get, the more prideful you become and the harder your heart becomes to the truth. We see this in academia, where scientists today feel that they shouldn't even have to defend or debate their work with anybody except other scientists who agree with them. Of course, the problem is that the entire argument is illogical because they say, okay, well, everyone who's qualified to debate me agrees with me. Well, what about this guy? Well, does he agree with me?
No? Then he's not qualified to debate me. As you can see, everyone who's qualified to debate me agrees with me, and my policies stand unchallenged. That's the flimsy, pathetic state of academia. In our time, colleges and universities contain few students of truth.
Sadly, it seems most are fools who have become blinded by pride and arrogance and surrounded themselves with an echo chamber of their ilk. Far too often we find a pattern in the world of academia wherein the more years a person has been studying, the more prestigious the facility in which they are studying, and the more foolish and disconnected from reality they seem to become. If you think that's harsh, go and read Romans 1:18-23 again. Paul tells you exactly what is happening to them. Back to the text.
It says, that when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. But others said We'd like to hear from you again about this. So, Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius, the Areopagite, who was one of the philosophers who hung out in the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. Apparently, Paul didn't go back to the Areopagus.
He didn't preach anymore to that same group. He could discern their general hard-heartedness. He likely met privately with the small group who did respond sincerely to the gospel and gave them further teaching before leaving Athens, never to return. Out of the entire Areopagus, only a select few chose to respond to the revelation they received and came to know for themselves the unknown God.
I want to exhort you that the revelation of God has been given to you through Jesus, and you are commanded to respond to it. And lastly, I want to give you a warning. Christ will judge the living and the dead, including you. The time is appointed. It is unavoidable.
The only question is, when your judgment comes, will you belong to Christ or not?
Turn to Christ. As Paul told the Athenians almost 2000 years ago, he is not far from each one of us. He is not far. And for those who love, and worship Jesus, let me encourage you with these same words he is not far from each one of us. And though he needs nothing from us, he loves us, and he wants to be in fellowship with you.
And incredibly, you have the capacity to bless Him because He is a father. He is your Heavenly Father. And the same way that a child can bring delight to their Father, God has put in us the capacity and ability to bring joy and delight to our Heavenly Father. I do not need anything from my seven-year-old daughter. But, man, can she bless me?
She can, because she's my kid. And if you belong to Jesus, you are a son or a daughter of God, and he loves you, and he is blessed by you. So, when you worship, when you pray, when you study, when you fellowship with Him, understand that he is blessed. Not because he needs anything he doesn't, but just because he loves you and you're his child. If you belong to Jesus, then his spirit is in you, Christ in you, the hope of glory.
And He Himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. Therefore, we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper.
Series: Acts...Passage: Acts 20:1-19...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Paul begins his final missionary journey by visiting churches he planted over the years in Greece. A stop in Troas sees a young man raised from the dead before Paul continues to Miletus, where he meets with the elders of the Church in Ephesus, modeling love for Christ and His Church.
If you made it in today without a Bible or an outline. They're just in the lobby at the table over there. We love to study the Word of God and to orient you where we are. We are in a historical book called The Book of Acts that comes after the Gospels in the Bible. You can turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 20. If you need to use the index at the beginning of your Bible, there's no shame in that. The earthly ministry of Jesus ended around 32 AD. We are roughly 25 years after that, following the ministry of an apostle named Paul. An apostle is a specially selected messenger of God, who is continuing to take the message that Jesus taught, and the message of what Jesus did and teach it all over the world. Planting and establishing the first churches in history. And the end result of the ministry that was taking place in this time is people like you and me sitting here almost 2000 years later. Last week, we saw a riot take place in Ephesus as the silversmiths, who made little shrines of the goddess Artemis, directed their anger toward Christianity for threatening their business.
In response to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Through Paul, people were turning from false gods to the true and living God in droves, and the impact could be felt in every business connected to paganism. The spirit was also stirring in Paul, telling him that after three years, it was time to move on from Ephesus and continue ministering in other places. The members of the almost entirely Jewish Church in Jerusalem were in financial dire straits because of societal persecution and a terrible famine that was affecting the region, Paul decided it would be a wonderful display of unity and love if the Gentile - that's non-Jewish - churches in Macedonia and Achaia, the region of present-day Greece, gave an offering to help their brethren in Jerusalem. And so, he set out to visit the churches he had planted in those regions to strengthen and encourage them and collect an offering for the Jerusalem believers. The Apostle John wrote about the connection between giving and loving the brethren of the church. It's on your outlines, John wrote. This is how we have come to know love.
He that's Jesus laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has this world's goods and sees a fellow believer, literally a brother or sister in need, but withholds compassion from him, how does God's love reside in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth. So, let's put our first map up on the screen, and then we'll just leave it up there until we're finished studying all the way up to verse six. It says, after the uproar was over, that's the riot we read about last time Paul sent for the disciples - those are the members of the Ephesian church - encouraged them, and after saying farewell, departed to go to Macedonia. In what was likely the summer of AD 55, Paul sailed northwest from Ephesus to Macedonia, which was home to churches like Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea, and when he had passed through those areas and offered the many words of encouragement, he came to Greece and stayed three months.
When he finally got the news that they had, he heard that they had repented and were seeking to restore fellowship with him. And so, in response, Paul wrote the letter in our Bibles called Second Corinthians. All of that happened before this visit to Acadia. So, this journey was a big deal in terms of Paul's relationship with the church in Corinth. Then we read The Jews, and whenever it says that in the Book of Acts, it's referring to the Jewish religious leadership who were not Christian but felt that Christians were heretics. So, the Jewish religious leaders plotted against him, plotted against Paul when he was about to set sail for Syria. And so, he decided to go back through Macedonia. After visiting Corinth, Paul planned to set sail to Syria, which would have been the city of Antioch, the city of his home church, which you can see on the far eastern side of our map. However, some of the Jewish religious leaders learned Paul's itinerary and planned his assassination, possibly by infiltrating the boat he would be sailing on and throwing him overboard at some point on the journey.
So instead, Paul headed north back up to Macedonia. Once again he was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. Paul tells us in First Corinthians 16 that he planned to have representatives from each church travel with him to personally deliver their church's love offering to the church in Jerusalem. It's reasonable to assume that's why these men were accompanying Paul. These men went on ahead and waited for us in Troas, but we sailed away from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread. In five days, we reached them at Troas, where we spent seven days. So, Paul, Luke, who is the narrator of the Book of Acts, and a couple of others stay in Philippi to celebrate the feast of Passover before sailing back to the province of Asia, which is present-day Turkey, where they landed at Troas and rejoined the rest of the group. Verse seven. On the first day of the week in Troas, we assembled to break bread.
It was a Sunday evening, and the church in Troas would have been meeting for their weekly service. Remember, the two-day weekend didn't exist at the time, and so believers would gather in the evening for church. After everyone had finished their day's work. The early church began meeting on Sundays because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday morning. However, there's no prohibition in Scripture against meeting on any other day. Instead. Scholars agree that the phrase break bread likely refers to the agape feast, the love feast that the early church used to celebrate on a weekly basis.
So, Paul almost certainly delivered the sermon in that service and then continued talking with them as they ate the meal. And afterward. The Greek word there for talking is "dialegomai" from where we get the English word dialog. Paul preached, but he also engaged in conversation with them about the Lord, answering their questions and sharing in response to the subjects that were raised. And we see in this Paul's love for the church because even though he's leaving the next morning to begin a long and difficult journey, he has no concern for rest and continues talking with the brethren as long as they desire at this point until midnight. Paul had likely been teaching for 5 or 6 hours by this time. And that's inspired me to make some changes to the length of my messages. But don't worry, we'll still be done by 11 p.m. or so. We're going to get through four chapters this evening. It's going to be incredible. It says there were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were assembled.
A young man named Eutychus, the original Greek, tells us he was between 8 and 14 years old, was sitting on a windowsill, and sank into a deep sleep as Paul kept on talking. The room was packed with people. There were many lamps, which were basically just little fires in the room, heating up the room and burning through the oxygen in the room. There was no air conditioning. It would have been stuffy and hot, and if you'd been listening to someone talk for 5 or 6 hours, you'd probably get a little drowsy too. So, this young man named you tickets went and sat on a windowsill to get some fresh air and valiantly tried to stay awake instead. Being a teenager, he just fell asleep as Paul continued to teach. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was understandably weak when he was overcome by sleep. I just love that phrase overcome by sleep. I was fighting it, but I lost. When he was overcome by sleep. He fell down from the third story.
So, Eutychus falls out of the window from a height of three stories and is picked up dead. Let that be a warning to any of you who may feel the creeping embrace of sleep coming over you at this very moment. But Paul went down. Bent over him, embraced him, and said, don't be alarmed because he's alive. Paul rushes down. Raises him from the dead. That's what's going on. Brings him back upstairs and says, now where were we? There are some clear parallels between how Paul raises Eutychus from the dead and how the Old Testament prophets Elijah raised the widow's son in 1 Kings 17 And Elisha raised the Shunammite woman's son in 2 Kings 4. I put those references on your outline so you can go and look them up later this week if you'd like, but the point being made by these clear parallels is that like Elijah, like Elisha, Paul is a true prophet whose ministry was authenticated by similar miracles like raising the dead. Verse 11, after going upstairs, breaking the bread, and eating, Paul talked a long time.
Underline until dawn, until dawn. Then he left. They brought the boy home alive and were greatly comforted, I should say so. Paul taught at their service, shared communion with them, ate the agape feast with them, and conversed with them about the Lord until dawn. I am confident that when Paul raised Eutychus from the dead at midnight, it gave proceedings a second wind, and he had their undivided attention. Can you imagine being the guy who left early, who was like, oh man, I'm here. It's 1145.
This was their only chance to see Paul. And they didn't know if they'd get another one. They wouldn't, by the way. And so they weren't going to miss a second of what this incredibly special man had to share with them. They loved him, they appreciated him, and they were blessed by him. Let's put our second map on the screen so you can follow along as we walk through the next part of Paul's journey. We'll leave that map on the screen until we finish talking about verse 17. It says in verse 13, we that's Luke. And the rest of the party went on ahead to the ship and sailed from Troas for Assos, where we were going to take Paul on board because these were his instructions since he himself was going by land. We don't know why Paul chose to walk to Assos. It's likely he either desired some solitude to pray or was accompanied by some of the brothers from Troas, giving him more time to converse with them. When he met us at Assos, we took him on board and went on to Mytilene, sailing from there.
The next day we arrived at Chios, the birthplace of Homer. Not from the Simpson's Greek philosophy, you Philistines! Okay. The following day we crossed over to Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras, and the day after, we came to Miletus, a coastal city about 30 miles south of Ephesus. Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia because he was hurrying to be in Jerusalem, if possible, for the day of Pentecost. The assassination plot had derailed Paul's original plan to be in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. His revised plan was to make it to Jerusalem in time for the feast of Pentecost, which took place 50 days after Passover. Because of Paul's deep connection to the city of Ephesus, having spent three years living in ministering there, he knew there would be no such thing as a quick stop in Ephesus. And so, not wanting to miss the feast of Pentecost, he intentionally bypassed Ephesus. Verse 17, now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and summoned the elders of the church from Miletus.
Paul sends word to the elders in Ephesus to make the journey to come and see him. While he did not have time to visit the church in Ephesus again, his love for them compelled him to meet one last time with their elders to encourage, exhort, and warn them of dangers coming in the days ahead. If you haven't been around the Bible very much, I'll let you know that the word elders is a synonym for pastors. In this context, it has nothing to do with age, but with the office of pastor in the church. These were the pastors of the church in Ephesus, the overseers, the shepherds of the local church charged with overseeing the flock, the congregation. Much of the modern church is enamored with the giftedness of those who hold leadership positions in the church. The most prominent names in evangelicalism tend to be the most gifted, charismatic, or controversial leaders, those with the best social media presence, and those most likely to go viral. However, the New Testament teaches a vital ingredient of leadership that is almost entirely overlooked today.
Paul told the Philippians, join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us. He said, do what you have learned and received and heard from me and seen in me. And the God of peace will be with you. And there are more examples I could give. In the faith. Your first role model is Christ. It's Jesus always. Your next role model should be the men and women in scripture who are held up in the Bible as examples of godliness. But I want to suggest that your next role models should not be men and women that you do not personally know. Your next role model should not be men and women who have a great social media presence and are highly gifted. Your next role model should be mature brothers and sisters in Christ who are living their lives in front of you, faithfully following his example. Don't be enamored with what your favorite Christian celebrity says about marriage and ignore the couple you personally know who are living out a godly marriage right in front of you.
Good biblical teaching is of incalculable value. It is essential, but some of the best help we can get in applying those truths to our lives will come from knowing and talking and doing life with those who are actually doing it. You know nothing about that online preacher's marriage except what he shares on social media. Take the true things that they say. They're good. Praise God for them. But you can personally know the life and challenges of that godly couple whose marriage is setting an example right before your eyes. You can observe those truths being applied in real time. Write this down. The New Testament model of leadership deeply values being an example worth emulating. An example worth emulating. Paul is going to begin his speech to the Ephesian elders by appealing to the fact they witnessed his example up close and personal. Over the three years he lived in ministered among them. It says in verse 18 when they came to him, he said to them, you know, from the first day I set foot in Asia, underline the first day how I was with you, and then underline the whole time, the whole time, you know, from the first day I set foot in Asia how I was with you the whole time.
I noticed in Paul's words another mark of spiritual maturity. Consistency. Paul says, from the first day I was with you to the last, I behaved the same way the whole time. We cannot measure consistency during the good times. Consistency is measured in the hard times. What is the difference in your behavior in the good times versus the hard times? How much variation is there? The less variation there is, the more consistent you are. How do you treat people in good times versus hard times?
Be committed to being consistent. Be someone who understands that the things that are true about God and about us, and about the love of God are true at all times. They're not less true when you're going through a hard time, and more true when you're going through a good time. Become a Christian who is consistent and understands the truth is the truth always. And I build my life on the truth, not on my emotional state. I build my life on the firm foundation of Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And I act based on the truth. Not on how I'm feeling. Not on my state of mind at the time, but on the truth. And here's the good news the Holy Spirit offers us the power to be consistent if we want to, if we want to. But a lot of the time we don't want to because having a pity party feels a whole lot better. Being mad feels a whole lot better. Using our emotional state to justify wrong behavior feels a whole lot better.
But for those who would say, no, no, I want to be consistent. I want to live and think and act based on the truth. No matter what's going on in my emotions or with my thoughts. The Lord would say, Here's the Holy Spirit to give you the power to do that. Paul continues in verse 19 and reminds the Ephesian elders they got to witness him serving the Lord. Would you underline serving the Lord, serving the Lord with all humility, with tears? During the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews, the Jewish religious leaders, the word serving in the original Greek is the verb form of the word doulos. The word doulos means bond-servant or slave. And so, this is the verb form. The word serving here literally means slaving. Paul gladly and gratefully considered himself a slave of the Lord Jesus, and here reveals his motivation for enduring so much and pouring himself out so freely for the church. Here's his motivation. He viewed it as serving the Lord.
He did it all in service to the Lord Jesus. Listen to me on this. If your motivation is serving people. You will be disappointed. And you will end up bitter and probably giving up. Why? Because people are disappointed. People can be ungrateful. People can be demanding. People can be selfish. And when I say people stop thinking of somebody else. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about me. Anyone? Anyone who has placed their hope in any of us, in any small way, has either been disappointed or will shortly be disappointed. Because we're sinners. The key to living a life of effective service and ministry is doing it to serve the Lord. Because our hero, Jesus Christ, will never disappoint you. He will never fail to encourage you. He will never fail to affirm you when you do what is right. Serve people because you love God. Easy to say. Very hard to do. Easy for me to put out there. Very difficult to walk in practically. When I don't get the encouragement, the affirmation, the appreciation, the reciprocation, or the respect that I think I deserve.
The evidence of this is that Paul did not get bitter when the Lord asked him to take on the role of a servant. He was simply concerned with pleasing his master, Christ the Lord. And can I tell you, there is no master sweeter to serve than the Lord Jesus. As I shared a couple of weeks ago, what makes someone a disciple of Christ is that they desire to be like Christ. That's what makes you a disciple. You want to be like the one whom you are a disciple of. And Jesus said, The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. And he told his disciples, A disciple is not above his teacher, or a slave above his master. The Word of God tells us explicitly that one of the things the Holy Spirit is working in the life of every believer is a change in perspective. The Holy Spirit is working to change our perspective, to change how we view ourselves, instead of viewing ourselves as entitled and deserving of being served.
He wants to change our perspective so that we begin to view ourselves as servants serving on behalf of Christ and in so doing, being like Christ. Following his example. When the carnal Corinthians started splitting into factions based on their favorite preachers. Oh, I'm Team Apollos. Oh, I'm Team Paul. He's the best. Paul refused to compete for followers, telling them what then is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believe, and each has the role the Lord has given. In his second letter, he told the Corinthians, that it is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. Paul shows that true spiritual humility is not thinking of yourself as worthless. True spiritual humility is not low self-esteem. It's understanding that all your worth comes from Christ. All your gifts, all your abilities. Anything good in you comes from Christ, and any real meaning and purpose in life comes from living as a servant of Christ, as a master who served us with all of himself.
Paul wrote that he was in no way inferior to the other apostles like John James and Peter. But in Ephesians three and eight he also referred to himself as the least of all the saints, and in first Timothy 1/15 as the worst of sinners. Paul served the Lord with all humility, genuine humility because there's no other way to be if you actually view yourself as a servant of Christ. Write this down. Paul's humility was a natural byproduct of viewing himself as a servant of Christ, and natural byproduct of viewing himself as a servant of Christ. Do you view yourself that way? Do you view your purpose in life as serving Christ and therefore serving those he asks you to serve? Do you do it? Gladly. The work the Holy Spirit is doing in every disciple of Christ is the work of making us more like Christ, which means making us more willing and joyful servants of God. Paul says he served the Lord not only with humility but also with tears.
Those who love the Lord deeply will find their hearts becoming like his. They will love what he loves. The things that grieve him will grieve them. Paul was grieved over the loss - over those who don't know Christ. He was grieved as he walked the city of Athens and saw people worshiping false gods, devoting their entire lives to meaningless pursuits like money, wealth prestige power position, and fame. And he's grieved internally as he watched men waste their lives. Waste their lives. I think of his grief over the hardness of most of his ethnic brethren, the Jews who rejected Jesus. Paul was so grieved by this that he wrote to the Romans, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the benefit of my brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood. In other words, Paul says, if I could trade my salvation for seeing Israel turn to Christ right now, I would. The condition of the lost grieves those who love the Lord.
Paul was grieved by weak, struggling, and sinning Christians. He longed to see the immature grow up in Christ. He longed to see believers definitively cut off the sins of their old lives and go all in. On following Jesus to such believers in Corinth, he wrote. I wrote to you with many tears out of an extremely troubled and anguished heart. Those who love the Lord love his people. And so, they cannot be ambivalent. Where believers are immature, uncommitted, and refuse to take holiness seriously. Those who love the Lord will be grieved by such behaviors and attitudes and longed to see them changed. Paul was grieved by the threat of false teachers who he would later in this chapter refer to as wolves. Those who love the Lord are grieved by such men and women, and the threat they pose to immature believers. Paul wished he could be everywhere at once so that he could defend such believers from such attacks of the enemy. He wrote to the Philippians, I have often told you and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Godly elders. Godly pastors will experience tears over the lost over weeks, struggling and sinning Christians, and over the threat of false teachers. Godly fathers. Will experience tears over their children who don't walk with the Lord, or when their children are weak, struggling, and sinning, or when their children are being led astray by false teachers. And all who love the Lord will to some degree experience tears over the loss over week, struggling and sinning Christians and over the threat of false teachers. It comes with the process of sanctification, allowing the Holy Spirit to make your heart more like the Lord's. But those tears are never in vain. In Psalm 126, verse six, it says, though one goes along weeping, carrying the bag of seed. He will surely come back with shouts of joy carrying his sheaves. God promises that those who love him and faithfully spread his word and cry tears, because they are moved by the things that move the heart of God, will reap a rich spiritual harvest in this life and or the next.
On this very journey, Paul's travel plans had to be revised to work around a plot to take his life, and when he arrives in Jerusalem, he will face still more Jewish opposition. Truly did the Lord's words to Ananias about Paul come true? I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Despite being persecuted by his countrymen nearly everywhere he went, despite their various attempts to murder him. Despite the stress and anxiety they constantly caused him, Paul's feelings toward them were. If I could trade my salvation for seeing them all turn to Christ right now, I would. Paul was indeed God's man. Gripped by God's heart. And filled with the Lord's desire to see the lost welcomed into the family of God and grow into maturity in Christ. I'm going to ask the worship team to come up. Paul's love for the church is a wonderful example. For those who desire to live in a manner pleasing to the Lord. Paul instructed the Romans. Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil. Cling to what is good.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another. Do not lack diligence in zeal. Be fervent in the spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction. Be persistent in prayer. Share with the saints in their needs. Pursue hospitality. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud. Instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone's eyes. Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good. May God give all believers, not just the leaders of the church. Such love for the church Christ purchased with his own blood. Let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Lord, thank you so much for your word and thank you for the example of our brother Paul, a man gripped by your love for those who don't know you and gripped by your love for the church, for those who love you.
Please do that work in our hearts, Lord. Grow us in love for one another. In compassion for one another, in affection for one another. You said in your Word that our love for each other within the church is supposed to be the defining mark of your people. So, Lord, please do it more and more. Grow us in love that we might reflect You to the world around us, that when people come in and visit, they would experience a love between us that doesn't exist anywhere else because it's not based on simple shared interest; it's not based on selfish motivation, but it's based on the fact that we are the family of God. Brothers and sisters through the blood of Jesus. Sinners, all equally needy of the grace of God, and all equally grateful to have found it. So, Lord, please bind us together in love, in greater unity. Lord, please work a servant's heart in us by your spirit. All the areas of us that seem so deep.
Lord, please free us and please forgive us. Lord, please help us in the relationships where we are burdening people. With the expectation of giving us the things we are supposed to find in you. Please open our eyes to see where we're doing that. Lord, help us to instead turn to you so that we can be free to serve and to love as you've called us, to which we cannot do if we're just constantly offended by how we're not getting what we think we deserve. Lord, do that work in us so that it's not fake, but it comes from an actual work of your spirit, a change in perspective that we cannot bring about in our own strength. Lord, please do that. Work in us. Make us genuine servants, glad and grateful to serve you in every circumstance. And as we pursue that Lord, I pray that we will find every need we have emotional, spiritual, physical, financial, practical, and relational. We would find every need met in you and by you.
Please do that work in us, Lord, for our joy and for your glory, that your name would be exalted. Lord, please grip our hearts with a love for the lost. Please don't let us grow weary of caring and praying of preaching and sharing the truth. Lord, please don't let us become callous when our brothers and sisters are walking in weakness and need to be called higher. Please help us to love one another in a way that refuses to accept that. And Lord Jesus, please protect every one of us, Lord. From false teaching or anything that is not true. Protect us from the things that our ears want to hear because our flesh wants to hear them. Give us such an appetite for the truth, Lord, that anything less is distasteful to us. Please bring glory to yourself, in us, individually, as couples, as families, and as your people, the church. Jesus, we love You and in Your name, we pray. Amen.
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Series: Acts...Passage: Acts 18:1-8...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
Paul moves on to the city of Corinth, where God "shepherds" Paul by leading him into a season of rest before returning him to full-time ministry with wonderful results.
In our previous study, we heard the Apostle Paul address the Areopagus, the body of politicians and philosophers who ruled the city of Athens. They met on the Acropolis, that famous hill in Athens upon which sits to this very day the Parthenon. His message was seemingly going well. His audience was intrigued. Then we reached verses 30 to 32 of Acts 17, where Paul told the Areopagus, God now commands all people everywhere to repent because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed.
He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. But others said, "We'd like to hear from you again about this." So, Paul left their presence. The Epicurean philosophers in particular would have scoffed at Paul as they were materialists, believing that nothing exists beyond our material, natural world.
So, the idea of miracles, or something like a resurrection would have seemed ridiculous to them. Their naturalistic worldview pre-dismissed any such notions. The text makes it obvious that the dividing line, the defining moment in Paul's speech was when he preached the resurrection. That's when people either leaned in or checked out. The resurrection is the bedrock of Christianity.
It is the foundation; it is the evidence that Jesus' is who he claimed to be God in the flesh. Christianity is unique among the religions of the world because it invites the skeptic to examine the evidence for the resurrection. Muhammad claims a private revelation nobody else was around to see. Joseph Smith claims a private revelation and magical golden tablets that disappeared somehow, and nobody else was around to see. Nobody was there to witness the divine revelation given to the Tao, or to the Buddha, or to Confucius, or to anybody else who claims any measure of divine inspiration.
But Christianity is unique because it says, we will hang our entire religion upon a miracle that was witnessed by hundreds of people being true. And you can test it to this very day. No other religion dares make such a claim. The Bible itself freely confesses that Christianity rests entirely upon the reality of the resurrection. When Paul later wrote to the Corinthians, he said, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, oh, there is no resurrection of the dead?
You see, some people were saying, you don't have to believe in an afterlife to be a Christian. You don't have to believe in the eternality of the human spirit. It can just be a useful tool for helping you live your best life now. But Paul isn't having any of it. And he says, if there is no resurrection from the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and so is your faith. Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we've testified wrongly about God, that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up if, in fact, the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. Now get this. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless.
You are still in your sins. Those then who have fallen asleep, those who have already died in Christ, have also perished. They're not in heaven. They're not with the Lord. They're just dead.
Paul says, "If Christianity is just a philosophy to cope with life and the reality of this earth, if it really is just the opium of the people, as Karl Marx said, then we are to be pitied because our beliefs are pathetic." He goes on, and he says, but as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ. All will be made alive.
It all hinges upon the Resurrection. And, praise God, our hope is not misplaced. We serve a Risen savior. Write this down. Christianity rests entirely upon the reality of the resurrection.
The reality of the resurrection. If you're not a follower of Jesus, I invite you, I urge you to examine the evidence for the resurrection. And if you're looking for a place to start, you can check out the sermon I put a link to on your outline. And if you want more evidence after that, just shoot me an email. I'll hook you up with a great book on the subject.
But know this you have not explored Christianity in any meaningful way until you have examined the evidence for the resurrection, and you owe it to yourself to do that. You'll also recall from our previous study that Paul had to flee persecution in Berea, and when the brothers from Berea dropped him off in Athens, he told them to tell Silas and Timothy to join him ASAP. And they did. Paul received word that the Jews in Thessalonica were persecuting the church there and making life extremely difficult for those new believers. You may recall that Thessalonica was the city where Paul was staying in the home of Jason.
And the Jewish religious leaders hated the grip that Christianity was getting on the city. And so, they dragged Jason and some of the other brothers from his house before the town council accused them of hosting men who were turning the world upside down. And the agreement was struck, basically, we'll keep the mob at bay, but you got to get Paul out of this city. And so now Paul receives news that those same Jewish religious leaders have directed their vitriol and violence toward the newly formed church in Thessalonica. Paul tells us in First Thessalonians 3, that he was so concerned about the faith of the believers there that he sent Timothy from Athens to Thessalonica to check up on them.
For reasons that will be revealed later in the text, we know that Paul also sent out Silas from Athens to check on other believers in Macedonia who were likely also experiencing persecution, likely in Philippi, where the church met in Ladia's House. Paul then most likely spent the winter of 51 AD or thereabouts alone in Athens before continuing his journey when the weather changed in the spring. Acts 18/1. Let's read together. It says after this, he, that's Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
Let's go ahead and put our map up there on the screen. Corinth was about 50 miles west of Athens and was located at the end of the Gulf of Corinth that extends all the way to the west coast of Greece, which is the Aegean Sea I'm sorry, the Ionian Sea. And so today there's a canal in Corinth that cuts through that little bit of land there and connects to the eastern coast, which is the Aegean Sea. And that canal is about 4 miles, six and a half kilometers long, roughly. And just to make it even more confusing, the Aegean Sea and the Ionian Sea are both part of the Mediterranean Sea.
I didn't even know this till this week, but apparently, there are sub-seas, and they are sub-seas of the Mediterranean Sea. But when you look at the map there, you can see why Corinth was the political and commercial center of Greece.
All trade between Rome and the east moved through Corinth and as a result, the city was filled with a constant flow of travelers passing through. These travelers would bring with them their pagan worldviews and philosophies and a huge demand for prostitutes. In fact, more than anything, that is what Corinth was known for and had been known for for centuries. It was a city of prostitution. The only way I can explain it is to say, imagine if Las Vegas was in one of the world's busiest port cities.
That's what Corinth was like. The s*xual sin of Corinth was so famous that calling someone a Corinthian was empire-wide known slang for someone who was an enthusiastic fornicator a modern-day equivalent would actually be the term "Californication," which came about due to Los Angeles's reputation for s*xual sin. And Corinth leaned into wholeheartedly embracing her reputation. She was the center of Aphrodite worship Venus in the Roman pantheon of gods, the goddess of beauty, desire, love, and sex. Her temple was located 1,500ft above the city on a hill, and every evening over a thousand temple prostitutes would emerge from it, walk down to the city, and ply their trade, for lack of a better term.
And that was how one would worship Aphrodite. You would have sex with one of her temple prostitutes in Athens, the dominant sin was intellectual pride. In Corinth. It was lust. We keep reading in verse two about Corinth where he that's Paul found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.
If you've been with us for a few months, then you know that in many of the places Paul went, he was opposed by the Jewish religious leaders who did things like hire thugs to stir up mobs and try to kill him. They hated that some of the Jews were turning to Christ because of Paul's preaching. They hated how the message of the Gospel was undermining their positions of prestige and power over the people. Jews would journey to Jerusalem - from all over the Roman Empire to participate in the annual feasts. And ever since Pentecost in Acts chapter two, there's been a church in Jerusalem.
The first church was in Jerusalem. And so what was happening in all this time that we've been reading about Paul and the church in Antioch? In all this time, ever since Acts chapter two, there has been a steady stream of Jews coming to Jerusalem for the annual feasts and engaging in conversations and encounters with the church that was in Jerusalem. And as that is happening, some are turning to Christ, placing their faith in Jesus as Messiah and then taking the Gospel back with them from whence they came. And we know from history that at this point there was already a church in Rome.
The Gospel had reached Rome through Jews who made the journey from Rome to Jerusalem, heard the Gospel, got saved, and took it back to Rome. But the reaction of the Jewish religious leaders in Rome was the same that Paul experienced almost everywhere he preached. They hated Christianity, they were disturbed by it, and they were determined to oppose it.