Acts 18

Acts 18:1-28

THREE CENTERS Acts 18:1-28. PAUL is a restless spirit! We seldom have it recorded “he slept”, or “sat”, or “stood”. He is a man of motion! He is always “coming” or “going”. He is always speaking and preaching. When he comes, he comes to preach. When he goes, he goes to preach. When he ceases speaking to the people of one city, it is that he might hasten to speak to the people of another. That is why it is written, “Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth”.This chapter will see the Apostle touch several centers. Three of these stand out as cities of importance, centers of influence; and it will be interesting to watch the work of Paul in each. PAUL AT CORINTH“He came to Corinth”. This was the city on the isthmus between the Ӕ ?ean and Ionian seas. It was the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. After it had lain in ruins for one hundred years, Caesar rebuilt it, and the proconsul established his residence there. It was a city of splendid size and of mercantile and commercial importance, with a great Jewish population. The country field is not to be despised! But Paul knew how certainly the city influenced all the territory round about. He deliberately chose, therefore, to strike the city centers. He seemed to believe positively that from such centers the Gospel could best radiate its sacred influence, and from such centers that influence would be felt most afar. The language of the text leads one to reflection upon several facts. Here he was a guest to Jewish citizens. “Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla”, driven out from Rome, had taken residence in Corinth. Their house was open to him. Whether he had known them previously and came thither at their invitation, the text does not tell us, but it does declare that they were of the same craft—“tent-makers” all. They had, then, a common bond of fellowship. There is a certain amount of companionship in crafthood. In a measure, society is not only divided into social classes—upper and lower, aristocratic and plebian, rich and poor—but it is divided, also, into professional classes.

The doctors are a class; the lawyers are a class; the farmers are a class; the preachers are a class; the grocery men are a class, and comradeship grows out of craft itself. You are interested in all professions, but you are especially interested in the man who follows your trade and engages in your calling. You have much in common with him. Conversation is easy; mutual understanding is ready. We may be surprised to find that Paul was “a tentmaker”. We hardly expected the orator to engage in such humble work. We hardly looked for the member of the Sanhedrin to know and follow such a calling; but let it not be forgotten that the Jews of Paul’s day were more intelligent than the Gentiles of ours. Every man of them brought up his son to follow some particular calling out of which he could get a living, and just on that account the humble callings often contributed to the highest professions and started men on the way to superior attainments. It is so, even now. The hard-working apprentice, the sun-browned yokel—they will be the men of tomorrow.

In making a tent or tilling a farm, strides may be rapid to the noblest professions. The greatest school of life is the school of labor. The college of all colleges is the institution of employment. The man who fails to learn the first lesson of life, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”, will never be apt in the later lessons. Here, also, Jews hated him. For when “he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath”, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ, they opposed him, set themselves in opposition and blasphemed against him. One proof of the divinity of the Gospel is in the reaction it affects in men. Truly, it is a “savour of life unto life, or of death unto death”. Men who hear it will either become Aquilas, Timothys, Silases, or they will gnash their teeth in opposition. The longer the true minister lives, the more he appreciates the hatred of the unregenerate heart and of the sin-loving soul against the Gospel. One often wonders whether the times have grown worse, or whether it is just because he has grown older that he discovers such intense bitterness against the Book and against the Lord. Possibly both facts are effective here. Doubtless, as the centuries roll on, “evil men do wax worse and worse”, as the Bible said they would; and doubtless the man who listened with a certain degree of complacency to the youth, will bitterly fight back, when the man in maturity of years and experience brings him under the condemnation of the Gospel. It seems to me I find that the men who hate my Gospel most are not young men, but men of my own age. They are affronted by the fact that one of equal competence and kindred experience with them should not entertain their views. Then, if you happen to be of the same people nationally, the affront is felt the more deeply. Paul was a Jew, and they were Jews “who opposed themselves and blasphemed”, until he said, “Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles”. Follow him, however, and you will find that while he goes to the Gentiles, he does not quit the Jews. He will be heard by both Jew and Gentile. “And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing, believed, and were baptized”. The Gospel was never intended for classes merely; it was never meant for any one nationality; it was never intended to reach but a single continent, or be preached and heard in only one tongue. The day of Pentecost was, in many respects, both an ensample and a symbol; and the circumstance that the men of many nations and tongues heard every one in that tongue where he was born, was symbolic of the sacred intent. The great commission literally carries out that thought, “Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”. As God is no respecter of persons, so the Gospel cannot be; as “with Christ there was neither Jew nor Gentile”, so Christianity cannot be partial. It is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”.

So it proved at Corinth. Paul’s ministry there was a ministry of the Spirit’s preaching. “The Lord, in a night vision, commanded him to speak and not to hold his peace”, declaring, “For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city”.

God knows His own before they are His own. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows who will come to Him. He can command and even count before regeneration takes place. Go back to Corinth in a few years and you will find a great church there—a literal fulfillment of the prophetic words, “I have much people in this city”. In fact, ere Paul left, that church existed and was efficient, for “he continued there a year and six months teaching the Word of God among them”; and even that was not the end, for “when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul”, and left him to whatever mercy they might mete out to him and Sosthenes, to the severity of the Greeks; and being indifferent to the fate of both, they quit not the city on that account, and Paul after that “tarried there yet a good while” before he “took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila”, his noblest hosts. PAUL AT EPHESUSWe will not stop to pass comment upon his shorn head. There are those that believe that this shorn head refers to Aquila. Personally, I am inclined to think that Paul himself had taken a vow, and was in the act of carrying the same out when he came to Ephesus. Now Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia, was a city of importance. Its size in commercial importance, its philosophers, the fact that Paul here established a church and that one of the letters of Paul was written to the same people, and finally the council at Ephesus, in which was passed upon the great fundamentals of the Christian faith—these were all incidents urging the Apostle’s visit, or fruits growing out of the same. His work here impresses us with certain specific features. He entered the synagogue to speak. Like his Master, that was his custom. The synagogue had been to him the place of religious training, and equally the place of spiritual opportunity. Habit is as effective when it works in the realm of church attendance as in any other. The man who has long gone to the House of God finds it difficult to keep away from the same, and the man who has been blessed in that place in his own soul, will want to carry the message for the souls of others who gather there. The synagogue had much to do with making Paul, perhaps more than any other institution.

In fact, the sanctuary has more to do with the making of men now than any other institution. We know that there are men who succeed eminently and seldom or never see the inside of a sanctuary, but that is not to say that the sanctuary had nothing to do with their making. Even in their cases the old mother and father got their spiritual sustenance in the sanctuary and drew their moral strength from that source, and their influence and guidance and counsel, determined by the sanctuary, is seen in the life of the child. In all probability, there is not a degenerate in America today who is not a bit better and a bit nearer God than he would have been had there been no sanctuary. Somewhere back, his ancestors attended upon its services, practiced the virtues of its precepts and passed on to posterity riches that have never been measured, good that can never be imagined. His stay at Ephesus was short. He speedily bids them farewell, saying, must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem: but I will return again unto you, if God will. And he sailed from Ephesus”. The man who truly abandons himself to the Spirit’s leading is tied to no locality and is held by no measurements of time. He must go at the Spirit’s call and where the Spirit leads. Back in the eighth chapter of the Book of Acts we had an illustration of what we mean. If ever a man seemed to be in the right place, Philip in Samaria seemed to be that man, and if there ever seemed a reason for abiding, Philip had the reason. The blessing of God was upon him and “people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. “For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed. “And there was great joy in that city” (Acts 8:6-8). But into the very midst of that revival “the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gam, which is desert. And he arose and went” (Acts 8:26). There is the Spirit’s man. Place is nothing to him. The voice is everything! Success is not to be set up against the still small whisper of the Holy One. “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain. “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.“For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4:13-15). He continued his journey, and also his speech.“And he sailed from Ephesus. And when he had landed at Caesarea, and gone up, and saluted the church”. Every town visited was to Paul an opportunity. In fact, every person with whom he fell into company loomed as a possible convert. We know ministers who are waiting for a church to call them in order that they may have something to do, when the truth is that the world around them involves God’s commission and passionate appeal. We know laymen who complain because the pastor does not put them to any task, and yet they share rooms daily with the unsaved and never say a word.

What church agreed to support Paul while he talked? What pastor set Paul busy pleading with his fellows? There is a far higher appointment than any pastor can give, and a far greater opportunity than any church can afford. That appointment is from the heavens, and that opportunity is in the earth, and Paul knew how to appropriate both. PAUL AT ANTIOCH How simple the phrase, “He went to Antioch”, and yet, how important the announcement! Follow now to see what will come to pass! He made Antioch the center of a circuit. It was not merely a starting point; it was a focal point. “He went” in that way. He spent some time there. Every church ought to have a focal point. Every city ought to be a center. The focal point should direct men to missions all about. The center should radiate to a large circumference. It is foolish of men to say, “We are looking for fields of service.” All such need to do is to open their eyes, “They are white already to harvest”.Some years ago a student of the Northwestern Bible School went over to St.

Paul, carefully canvassed certain neglected sections, and found one with thousands of people in it and no Gospel being preached. He discovered an old and closed-up church. He secured it, opened it, announced services in it, and in a few months a new house had been built, a congregation gathered, and a whole community stirred. There are thousands of such neglected spots even in the most evangelized lands, and tens of thousands of them on foreign shores. The need of the hour is not appointment, and it is not opportunity. The need of the hour is a Paul. Appointments will be found; opportunities will be utilized. They are as common as snowflakes in the Northwest at midwinter.

For Paul “went over all the country” in order to strengthen all the disciples. He was followed by a certain Jew. “A certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John”. Undoubtedly Paul’s presence in Ephesus attracted Apollos there. He had an open mind; he had a receptive spirit, but he was conscious of his defects; and when Aquila and Priscilla, Paul’s companions, heard him, they saw the promise in him and immediately applied themselves to the task of teaching him the way of God more perfectly. That is complimentary to Aquila and Priscilla, but more complimentary to their student.

He was teachable; he was tractable! He did not think he knew it all.

He was keenly appreciative of those who proposed to impart to him additional truths. Such a student is a man of promise! Fortunate is the elder who finds him! By this man he was mightily reinforced. “For he [Apollos] mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ”. What work in the church is so beautiful as the aid youth lends to age, and what impression is so profitable as the impression age lends to youth? God’s ways are the ways of wisdom. He sobers youth by the fellowship of age and he makes the old man young by the fellowship of youth, and he gets the latter ready to carry forward the work of the former. Moody is gone, but a Rader and a Philpott have come. Paul passes, but Apollos and Timothy and Titus are coming on.

Such is the Divine wisdom and such is the Divine plan! Our ascended Lord gave gifts to men—“prophets, apostles, pastors, teachers, and evangelists”. One sows, another reaps, but the harvest is unto the Lord!