Acts 18:1-17 - Vitamin J: The Comfort of Jesus

You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor, Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled, Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the Book of Acts.

Spiritual Maturity as Growth in Faith, Community, and Service

I think it's important here at Recast to kind of review our goals and to kind of set out the agenda, the vision a little bit about what Recast stands for, a little bit at a time. And so what I'm going to share right now, I generally at this time introduce my sermon, but what I'm going to say next doesn't necessarily tie in or dovetail perfectly with a sermon, but it's something that God has laid on my heart to communicate to you as a church and kind of as we're thinking through, particularly regarding the question, what does spiritual maturity look like at Recast?

Now, some of you might have noticed that Recast doesn't have a lot of programs. Has anybody who's been here for a while noticed that? Right off the bat, it kind of stands out, especially if you were raised in a church that's a little bit more traditional, a little bit more formed, you would kind of say, well, a lot of programs, a lot of things going on, a lot of activities during the week.

We primarily have a Sunday morning service to worship and to grow in faith, and then we have our small groups that meet during the week, a couple of other little things here or there. And so it could be confusing for those who were raised in a church that has a lot of established programs kind of saying, where do we grow?

How do we grow and what is the vision for that? So I wanted to kind of spell that out and define what does spiritual maturity mean here at Recast? And it's quite simple, actually. It means that we are growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

So I kind of want you to think about those words, and I want you to think about what that means, to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service. The fact of the matter is, notice the word growing in that.

Maturity is not a static thing. Like I've now arrived, and now I've arrived at this place that's called maturity. And you know what I mean when I say arrived. I mean arrived. Have you ever been at a place in your own life where you felt like you arrived?

That's generally a bad sign when we think that we've arrived. It's about growing. It's about process. And maturity is being in process. Does that make sense? It's that we are on the journey, and we are drawing closer to God, and we're growing in faith, we're growing in community, we're growing in service.

Does that make sense? A couple of you look confused. But do you understand the difference between that maturity is defined by being in the process and being engaged in the process versus just simply a place that I've arrived, I've crossed a certain line, and now I'm mature?

Okay. I've got one guy who is on board. Thank you for that.

Okay.

The point being also in this process is that you can grow and be mature with what God has given you. In other words, we start at different levels. We have different backgrounds, different places that we're at in our relationship with God.

Some of you are here, and you're just figuring out who God is for the first time, and you're trying to figure that out. Can you grow in faith? Can you grow in community? Can you grow in service?

Yes.

Some of you have been kicking around the church. Some of you were born in the backseat on the way to a Sunday morning service.

Right?

And you were in church right there from the moment you were born until now. Can you grow in faith? Can you grow in community? Can you grow in service? Do you see what the plan is? That's what we're talking about when we're talking about spiritual maturity here, is that process of growing.

The fact of the matter is we need all those things. We need faith, and we come together on Sunday morning to grow. And by faith I mean taking in God's Word, believing it, and living it. That's the process of faith.

That's how we grow in faith. We cannot grow in faith aside from this. We need this in our lives to grow in faith. And so we take it in. We digest it. We come to a place where we understand it. But is that enough?

Is understanding this enough?

No.

And that's something that really I can't do for you. I can help you. I can try to bring you to a place where you understand it. But then when we walk out these doors, we need to live this out, right? That's what it means to grow in faith is actually take these things on and ask for God's assistance and help in our lives to grow in that.

And then growing in community is through our small groups, yes, that's an avenue that we've set forward. But, man, I just love to hear the discussions and the conversations that go on during the connection time here, before the service, after the service, people staying until 1 o 'clock after just chewing the fat and talking, and hopefully those end up becoming relationships and connections where when things are going tough in your life, you have places to go.

So we need community, and God gave us the church ultimately to help us grow. And then the last thing is service, obviously, and that is just this intention of out of the abundance of what God has given to us and out of the ability, skills, recognizing that those are things that he's given to us, then looking for opportunities and avenues to serve others and serve the church through the way that he's designed us.

The Church in Corinth and the Need for Community

This morning we're going to get a chance to see another step in the expansion of the early church, so kind of going into the sermon a little bit here. We're going to see the foundations of one of the largest churches in the Roman Empire, the church in Corinth.

And it's interesting to note that this church in Corinth that we're going to see founded, we're going to see the very beginning of this church. It was characterized later. Paul's going to write letters back to this church after it's founded.

We're going to get a chance to see it start here in our text. He's going to write letters, and the letters are going to demonstrate what kind of character that church had. And it wasn't a good picture.

This church is going to turn into a place of cattiness, economic segregation, a place of sexual immorality, divisions, and strife. We're going to get a chance to see the church founded. We're going to see the way that it started.

And then, unfortunately, through 1 and 2 Corinthians, there's a lot of correction that needs to happen later. But God has given us His church. And after we read this text and sing praises to God this morning, I want to do so recognizing that we're not alone.

God has given us a church. He's brought us together so that we can grow in community. And we need one another to grow. We need to be building each other up, encouraging each other, and doing life together in community.

Do we need each other? We do.

So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Acts 18. We're going to read the first 17 verses of Acts 18. That's page 794 in the Bible. I'm going to sit back in front of you. Again, I say this, if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you.

We want everybody to own a Bible, and that's a gift from us to you. But Acts 18, 1 through 17, follow along as I read. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.

And he went to see them. And because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent makers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.

When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your own heads.

I am innocent. From now on I go to the Gentiles. And he left there and he went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord together with his entire household.

And many of the Corinthians, hearing Paul, believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.

And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. But when Galileo was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, saying, this man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.

But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Galileo said to the Jews, if it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourself.

I refuse to be a judge of these things. And he drove them from the tribunal. And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Galileo paid no attention to any of this.

Let's pray.

Corinth as the Roman Empire’s Most Corrupt City

Make sure that you're open in your Bibles to Acts chapter 18, and that's page 794. Sometimes I forget to say that to you a second time around, but it's good for you to be open to that text, to kind of be able to follow along.

We talked a couple weeks ago about the Bereans that Paul encountered, and they checked the Scriptures to make sure that what Paul was saying was accurate. And so I want you to have your Bibles open. Check the Scriptures to make sure that what I say is in there.

Maybe I'll throw something in there once in a while. Not on purpose, anyways. But Paul was in Athens last week, and so we're going to see right from the beginning in our text, right off the bat, after this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.

Now, we don't understand it. It doesn't give us a reason. You see that in the text? There's no rationale, no reason why he left Athens. We don't know.

He just did.

So he left Athens, went about 40 miles west to the city of Corinth. Now, leaving Athens for Corinth may be confusing. You think in Athens, that's the capital city, right? That's the big one. But it could be confusing until we understand that at this point in history, where we're at in the text, Corinth rivaled Athens regarding its culture, its political clout, its art, all of those kinds of things.

It was a very important city. And so Paul is going to head down to Corinth. It's on an isthmus. Does anybody from geography remember what an isthmus is? Like a land bridge between a peninsula and the mainland.

So to get to the peninsula, you had to cross through Corinth. And then not only that, but it had two ports. Now, how many cities have two ports? It had one port on the west side of the city and one port on the east side of the city, because this was on a narrow land bridge.

So within just a couple of miles, it has a port on the west that can open up into the Mediterranean and all the way out into the Atlantic. And then on the other side, it's got a port on the Aegean Sea and can head towards the eastern side.

So it's a pretty significant town. But one thing that's interesting is it's very, very clear. Historical references to Corinth are all throughout the Roman Empire. Very significant town for one particular thing.

It was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire. Whatever you get in your mind, when I say the Las Vegas of, any of you ever been to Vegas?

Ah, ah, ah.

You didn't want to raise your hand, did you? Whatever was in your mind when you think of, when I say it's the Las Vegas of?

Yeah, okay, that.

Okay, it's a really rough place. To be direct, the word Corinth was used as a verb. It was used as a verb, slang verb in the Roman Empire that was slang for prostitution. That's the way that it was used.

To Corinthianize meant to prostitute. Okay, so you get the picture? It would be like taking Bourbon Street and Vegas and moving them to Amsterdam.

Okay?

Did you get it? A few of you have traveled, you know what I'm talking about. So Paul goes there. Paul goes to this town. That's the town that we're going to see. That's the place where the entire context of this is going to occur.

And then when you get a chance to read the letters that he writes back to them, that's the place you need to have in your mind. The Las Vegas of the Roman Empire. That's when he's writing 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians in these letters.

The issues and the things that they go through there, that's this town. And the question is who else is going to go there? Like who wants to go and reach that part of society? Who wants to go and be a minister in that context?

And Paul goes. Now the fact of the matter is God doesn't call everyone to that type of ministry, right? But that's where he's going. So he heads into Sin City. He encounters a couple right off the bat we see of Jewish Christians who are originally from Asia Minor.

But then they were from Asia Minor. They had moved west to Rome. And now they've been kicked out of Rome. And so presumably they had moved to Rome for business. They'd been kicked out. And historical documents support the idea that Jews were kicked out of Rome at this time.

So you have historical non-biblical documents that are supporting the evidence of Scripture. Now how many of you know that when you really get into studying history and you really get into the New Testament and you figure things out and you dig down deep, the deeper you go, the more historical evidence corroborates the New Testament with amazing accuracy.

So that you have 49 A .D. The Jews, there's documents and letters that say that Claudius kicked the Jews out because there was a debate between them and another sect who were followers of Crestus, a corruption of the word Christ.

So the Greek, the Hellenization, the Greeking of that word, Messiah. There were debates in Rome going back and forth and almost riots were starting because of the Jews and the Christians in Rome at this time.

Now how were there Christians in Rome? Were there Christians in Rome during 49 A .D.? How would that have happened? Well, if you were to go back in Acts to chapter two during Pentecost, who was in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost when the church first started?

People from all around Jews from all around the world were present there and it says 3 ,000 of them believed and then what did they do when they got done? They went back home because they were there for the Passover.

There is Jews celebrating on a pilgrimage to the holy place and then they heard the truth about who Jesus Christ was and then they go back. What we have in the book of Acts is not the sum total of what God is doing in the world during that time.

Did you know that? Not the sum total. We're not seeing the full picture. We're seeing kind of what God wants us to know about how the apostles and where they were going and things like that, but the truth is still spreading at a grassroots level in other places so that we actually have Christians in Rome even before Paul is going to get to Rome and we're going to see that.

So they're kicked out. They end up moving over here to Corinth and Paul's connection with Aquila and Priscilla that we see this couple in the text was because of their trade. That's the primary thing that is their first connection.

So what is their trade? It says in the text they were tent makers. Now historical documents again show that the trade of tent maker would have kind of morphed because most of the tents were made out of leather at this time so that really Paul would have been a leather worker.

Making tents would have been a portion of that trade but repairing anything leather would have been what he did. So that's where we actually find that Paul was not merely trained in religious studies, but he actually had a trade as well.

All kinds of working with leather and also the production of tents. It's likely, think about this, so people have been kicked out of Rome. His business is probably booming because people are looking for something to live in.

They've been displaced. How many of you know when people are displaced they need some place to live? So he's making tents and he's probably making tents at a fever pitch here because there's a high demand right now in the Roman Empire.

So Paul works making an income during the week but on the weekends he's going to the synagogue and he's proclaiming the truth to the Jews. Of course he goes to the synagogue. That's what he does. It says in the text he was reasoning with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks who are coming to the synagogue.

So you have some Greeks and some Jews that are there coming to the synagogue every Saturday to try to figure out who God is and to study and to learn and he's kind of like their guest speaker. Again we find the word persuade here and it's important to just think about the way that Christians interact with their society and I've mentioned this a couple weeks running now but Paul was not satisfied to simply stand and shout out the message.

He works to help people understand and to help them to embrace the good news that forgiveness is available through Jesus Christ and he's working with them and he's trying to persuade and to dialogue back and forth with them.

Now if you remember a couple weeks ago Paul had sent for Silas and Timothy. They stayed up in Macedonia in the area of Berea, Philippi, Thessalonica up in the north and he had sent for them and said get down here as soon as possible.

While he was in Athens he sent for them but they don't catch up with him until he gets to Corinth. So he's actually said come meet me in Athens but then he takes off and goes down to Corinth and then they have to catch up with him.

And according to 2 Corinthians 11 .9 if you're taking notes you can just jot these down and look them up later but if you take 2 Corinthians 11 .9 and Philippians 4 .6 you get the notion there that Silas and Timothy actually bring a financial gift with them from the church in Philippi.

So a church that they had started months before and Silas and Timothy stay there then they come down and meet Paul and they bring a financial gift with them. Now Paul is working as a tent maker. Why is he working as a tent maker?

He's got to eat, right? And he's in a city where there's not believers, there's not a church there, there's nobody there that's supporting him and he's working to put food on the table and to have something to eat.

He's got to have a place to stay, right? Whether he's staying at an inn or he's paying somebody room and board or whatever he's got to have a place to stay so he's working that way but now they're going to bring a financial gift to him and that makes sense of what we see in verse 5 because it says when Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia Paul was occupied with the word.

Now is that kind of confusing? Like what does it mean? Was he always occupied with the word? What does that word occupied even mean? Some versions translate this and it's interesting it's very rare but occasionally I like the King James Version better than I like the English Standard Version and this is the only case where I've found it so far but the King James, New King James actually translates this differently and this is what it says in King James.

When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia Paul devoted himself exclusively to the ministry of the word. So he devoted himself exclusively to the ministry of the word. Now what was he doing on weekdays before that?

Making tents and then just basically preaching in the synagogue on the weekends but now it makes sense that they brought him a gift do you see how that works? They brought him a gift and it's enough that he's able to quit the tent making and go basically full time and he's now occupied with the word basically full time trying to reach the Jews for Christ at this point.

In other words, Paul hasn't been fully hasn't been able to fully devote the time that he wanted to ministry because of his tent making but now the support of a recent church plant is able to free him up to deeper ministry in Corinth.

We still have missionaries who move out into other cultures right? Even in our era, in our time. We had the McGuinnesses in to speak about what they're doing in Costa Rica and raising support.

And all of that.

And this is just an image a picture of how that works. A church like us being able to financially help a couple who is moving their family to another culture so that they can put food on their table so that they in turn can devote their time and energy to the ministry.

Of the word.

Does that make sense? But we still even today sometimes have tent makers and we'll use that word in the church. Have any of you ever heard that word used in church before? Tent maker. A tent maker is an image of a person that comes right from this text right here.

It's the image of a person who goes over to a foreign country and then gets full-time employment in order to work in order to work and then sometimes that's an excuse to be in the country because some countries don't issue visas to missionaries.

That wouldn't be so great. So they'll go and they'll work as an English teacher or something like that and have full-time employment and then try to get the opportunity to present the gospel in there as they can.

So we'll use the word tent maker from time to time in that way in the church. So what is the focus of Paul's ministry? What is it that he's trying to accomplish? It says he was testifying that Jesus was the Messiah.

He's trying to explain.

To the Jews.

He's speaking with Jews. They are looking for the Chosen One of God. How many of you know Jews are still looking for the Chosen One of God? He already came 2 ,000 years ago but they've kind of missed some of that but he's trying to convince them that Jesus Christ is the Chosen One.

Let me show you from the Old Testament. Let me show you Isaiah 51 -53 and get the picture of who Christ is and does that match up or not. So that's what he's trying to do. He's opening up the Old Testament every week.

How many of you would like to have been able to be there to hear Paul explain Jesus Christ from the Old Testament? That would have been amazing.

I would have loved.

That opportunity. Better yet would have been to be one of the guys on the road to Emmaus when Jesus opens up the Old Testament and explains who he was all the way to these two guys walking on the road.

Do you know the story.

I'm talking about?

That would have been phenomenal to hear Jesus give evidence for himself as being the Messiah. But here this would have been.

Awesome too.

When the Gospel Is Blasphemed and Rejected

But in verse 6 we see an organized opposition is going to form against Paul speaking in the synagogue.

The Jews.

And it says that there's an opposition and they reviled him. The word opposition implies an organization to their opposition. It's not just a couple of guys standing up and yelling at him or screaming at him or calling him names.

Another thing that's interesting. I hate to disagree too much with the English Standard Version but I'm going to do it twice this morning. The word that's reviled him the word him does not appear in Greek.

So occasionally the translators.

Throw in a word like that to try to make the flow seem better.

Or something like that. But the word him doesn't appear there. So again the King James says exactly translates that word exactly from Greek into English. And the word is blasphemed. And they blasphemed.

They opposed him. They brought a formal organized opposition against him and they blasphemed him. Do you know what blasphemy is? They are speaking derogatory harsh, critical obnoxious words about Jesus Christ.

And it's important that we get that because of the way that Paul is going to respond here. It would be kind of kind of petty if they revile him and then he responds the way that he responds because he's going to say your blood is on your own heads.

Basically you're all condemned. That's what he's going to say to them. Like how many of you think that would be a little bit harsh if somebody called me a name and I'm like you're condemned.

You're done.

How dare you say that to me. Do you see what I'm saying? But that's not what the picture is here because Paul the text Luke is telling us that it's not Paul that was reviled but it's Christ that was reviled and he was blasphemed.

Basically make a mockery of Jesus Christ. And so Paul responds.

Aggressively.

He ultimately judges them condemned and says I'm innocent regarding you. Your blood is on your own heads. It's not on my hands. I've done what I've been called to do. I've proclaimed the truth to you and you've rejected it and you've made fun of it and you've mocked it and you've mocked him.

And so your blood is on your own heads because you have taken that on yourself. You have judged yourself because of your response to the good news. What he does next is kind of a little bit confusing.

He shakes the dust off of himself. What's that got to do with anything?

Right?

You see that in the text? He brushes the dust off of his clothes.

He shakes it out.

Jesus mentions that symbol of shaking the dust off when people reject the message and he does so in Matthew 10, 14. So if you wanted to look at that sometime later you can write that reference down but Matthew 10, 14.

So when you're talking with your co-worker and they basically swear about Christ or they make fun of him or they curse him or something like that you just do one of these. Any of you ever do that?

No.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I think though a modern day equivalent to something like that is something that I had to do recently on Facebook. Literally two weeks ago I had this encounter. It's been an ongoing relationship for years that I've had.

I had to do something about. The man who performed my wedding so actually did the ceremony for Lynn and I. A man that I respected greatly a mentor a pastor for many many years. A godly man. Through a series of life circumstances.

Devastating life circumstances. His oldest son was hit by an IED in Iraq in Baghdad thrown into a sewer ditch and his arm was infected and he's had multiple surgeries over the last few years and just devastating.

This is his oldest son. While he's engaged that happens to him. And he's down in Texas having surgery after surgery after surgery. This is a friend of mine from the other side of the state the guy who performed our wedding.

So some tough things. About the same time that his son is hit by an IED his other two sons are in a car on the way to a Christian gathering and are both killed. Accidentally run through a stop sign and both die.

So can you just get the picture of what kind of devastation this guy is facing? He now ultimately declares himself an atheist. He says there is no God. And now all of his Facebook posts and everything are Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or all of these atheists and he's just vehemently angry at God.

Now how many of you know that I don't believe for a second that he doesn't believe God exists? I believe he's just angry at Him. Do you know there's a difference? There's a difference between not believing that God is there and being angry at Him.

How many of you think that God can handle his anger? Like if he were just being intellectually honest, God could handle that. And he would have somebody to turn to and be angry at. But technically, I've been like, dude, you don't have any right to be angry if there is no God.

It's just chance and circumstances and stuff, right? But anyway, so all of this. He's become very inflammatory. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. So he writes these things or posts something on Facebook.

Or whatever.

And I just get in this dialogue. And I've worked to be very cordial and very kind to him. But this last interaction a couple of weeks ago pushed me over the edge. He eventually has moved into a place of intellectual dishonesty in order to defame the name of Christ.

He quoted a verse, fight the good fight of faith, and said all you Christians are just violent and haters and violent and trying to blow everybody up and kill everybody. I wrote him and I said, Cliff, you know that that's dishonest.

You know you're abusing the text of Scripture. It's your text that I've heard you preach on. You know better. You know that's a metaphor. You know that's not about picking up swords and that Jesus didn't encourage us to carry machine guns and shoot unbelievers and stuff.

How intellectually dishonest. And at that point, I wrote him and I said, I want you to know I am your real friend but I am unfriending you from Facebook because I can't spend this time that is just eating up my time and chewing up my energy and my emotion for you.

I will continue to pray for you. Here's my phone number. Here's my email address. If you'd like to really get in touch with me, if you ever get in a place in life where you need a real friend, give me a call.

And I unfriended him. I shook the dust off of my clothes, in essence. Do you see how there comes a point in a relationship where you might need to do something like that? Have any of you ever had to unfriend somebody on Facebook?

That's really awkward when they ask, when they find out and they ask you to be their friend again later and you're like, Oh no, now they know. But I actually... Go ahead. I'm going to keep after you. I'm going to keep trying to be your friend.

But no, I told him. I told him I'm unfriending you and here's the reason why. The dishonesty and the intellectual dishonesty. I could handle a genuine, honest discussion up to a point but once it became dishonest then I knew he was being deceptive.

I just couldn't stand for that anymore. And he was being dishonest for the sake of defaming Christ. So Paul turns to the Gentiles in Corinth which is ironic because turning to the Gentiles in this context means that he's just going to move next door.

Like he's got a lot of chutzpah.

Right?

His synagogue's right here and then he goes over to this guy, Titius Justus and he meets in his house right next door to the synagogue. What do you think? There might have been some awkward moments out on the sidewalk before the meeting started.

Like the synagogue is Kitty U and they're meeting in the synagogue right now and we decided to just kind of start a church right next door and we're trying to draw from their crowd. Hoping that maybe they empty out and start coming here.

You think that would be a little awkward? Maybe a little bit tense? I tend to think that that would be.

A little bit rough.

The Comfort and Courage of Jesus in Corinth

Verses 7 and 8 highlight two of the new believers in the church of Corinth and I think they're there for the purpose of highlighting them and much can be determined by the names of people in the Roman world.

So the name Titius Justus is the name of a Roman citizen. It's very clear by the name itself that he would have been a Roman citizen. The fact that his home was able to house the church. Does that say something about him?

Again, this time if the church is able to meet in his house, he's doing fairly well. And we actually find out later that there was a significant contingency of wealth in the church in Corinth because we're going to see later on Paul writing and saying, you wealthy people need to get past your wealth and start ministering to those who are poor in your midst.