The Bible Recap - Day 332 (Acts 18-19) - Year 3

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap. Yesterday, we read Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, and today we jump back into his second missionary journey. He leaves Athens and makes the two-day trip to Corinth. There, he meets Aquila and Priscilla, a married couple who have just moved back from Italy because they were forced out of Rome. Their tent makers by trade, which happens to be help Paul makes a living too. He probably makes tents Sunday to Thursday, then on Saturday, he heads to the synagogue to do some reasoning, as is his way. When Paul and Silas finally make it to Corinth,

Paul is shaking out his tunic at the Corinthian Jews. You may remember that Jesus told the apostles to shake the dust off their feet in the towns of the people who rejected them, Paul is shaking out his tunic at the Corinthian Jews. You may remember that Jesus told the apostles to shake the dust off their feet in the towns of the people who rejected them. That's in Matthew 10. And if you were with us in the Old Testament, the prophet Nehemiah, shook out his tunic for a similar reason in chapter five.

This shaking out is a dismissive gesture. It's the bifle Asia of the Bible. Paul has done all he can do. He shared the gospel with them and their outright rejecting it. So while he's in Corinth, he's going to focus on talking to the Gentiles there instead. What Jesus said about shaking the dust off and what Paul does here, these actions are location specific. This isn't a dismissal of the Jews at large. Even by the end of the chapter, other Jews have come to Christ. But after Paul changes his focus

to the Gentiles, a lot of them turn to Christ too. God speaks to him in a vision and encourages him to keep at it, because God will protect him and his work will bear fruit, because God has plans to save a lot of people there. Getting this kind of encouragement from God about protection usually means there's going to be some kind of threat to be protected from. As Paul sticks around for a year and a half preaching the gospel, the local Jews eventually bring an accusation against him, but the local governor dismisses it and lets Paul go. God protects him just like he promised. After leaving Gaurant, he stops in at supercuts for a trim. This may seem like strange information

to put in the Bible, but Luke mentions that it's related to a vowel Paul took. Most likely, this is the Nazarite vowel. We talked about this on our first day in the New Testament. This is the kind of vowel the angel commanded JTV to live under for his entire life. When you take this vowel, you don't cut your hair and you don't drink any alcohol or even eat grapes. Most people take this vowel voluntarily

and for a specific period of time. Then, at the end of the vowel, they go for a haircut. Most likely, Paul adhered to the Nazareth vow while he was living in Corinth, which is known for its worldliness. It would have been a way to set himself apart as someone who is serious about the things of God. If you want more info on the Nazareth vow, check out the article in the show notes. Paul drops Aquila and Priscilla off an Ephesus before popping around to preach in a lot of

different cities, seemingly without incident. In Ephesus, A&P ran into a guy named Apollo's who is a compelling, precise teacher, despite the fact that he doesn't even have the Holy Spirit. So they both pull him aside and together they explain things to him to fill out his theology a bit more. And Luke seems to imply that his faith is made whole at that point. He becomes a huge asset to the early church. While Apollo said to Corinth, Paul goes back to Ephesus where Apollo's had just been. It's unclear if they run into each other along the way, but Paul does seem to run into some of the people who'd been hearing Apollo's preach perhaps because they're not aware of the Holy Spirit either. In fact, they were baptized by JTB before Jesus ever started his public ministry, and they probably moved out of the area at that point.

But as soon as they hear about Jesus and the Spirit, they're on board. They're filled with the Holy Spirit and start prophesying and speaking in tongues. By the way, we often think of prophecy as telling the future, but what it really means is telling the truth. Though it may be the truth about the future, but we don't know which version this was. And as for the speaking intungs, this is the second time we've seen this in scripture, but we don't have nearly the amount of information here that we did in the other account, so it's hard to say how this was used here specifically. Paul sticks around and teaches in this synagogue every week, and he's very persuasive. But after a few months, some of the people who've

been hearing the same thing over and over, but noting to the truth are starting to push back. So Paul says, that's my cue. I don't have any interest in casting my pearls before swine. So he goes down the street to teach in a different building, one that is probably more of a cultural space where non-religious people gather. It's called tyrannous hull. And if you think I didn't imagine a T-Rick statue behind him as he's teaching, think again. He keeps teaching there daily for two years. And because Ephesus is a major city for business and travel, a lot of people passing through hear his teaching,

and take it home with them, and the word spreads throughout Asia. As Paul keeps teaching in the area, God begins doing some uniquely miraculous things through his ministry. People are even healed by his handkerchiefs. These things are so unique in fact that even scripture notes how odd it is. And one of the side effects, of course, is that people who are power-hungry want in on the action. Some local exorcists who don't know Jesus, start trying to invoke His name's second hand, mimicking what they've seen Paul do. They're treating Jesus' name like an incantation. Like we've talked about before, there isn't power in the word Jesus.

There's power in the person of Jesus, and we can't access his power apart from his person. So when seven brothers are trying to gang up on a demon by using Jesus' name like a magic spell, it backfires on them. The demon basically responds by saying, I know who Jesus is, of course, and I've heard of Paul, but I don't know you, and I don't have to listen to you. Since these guys don't have the Holy Spirit, they have no authority over the demon. It beats up all of them, and they leave the house naked and wounded. Yikes.

As word spreads about this event and the gospel, people start repenting. They start confessing their sins and turning from them. They renounce the dark arts that have been practicing and demonstrated that they value God and His Word above everything else. In 1920, says, the Word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Meanwhile, a silversmith starts to get nervous that his livelihood is in jeopardy. He makes statues of false gods for a living, and the gospel is a threat to that. What's more, their whole culture is built around the Greek goddess Artemis, an idol. So this guy calls a meeting of the local silversmith union, and they begin to riot.

They drag to the disciples out, but some of the others protect Paul from the crowd. A mob mentality takes over, and some of the people who are rioting don't even know why they're rioting. Finally, the town clerk speaks up. He tries to reason with them by saying, look, we all know Artemis is in charge. We have our statue and our holding meteorite, so you can all calm down. He knows they need to reel it in, otherwise the Romans will be breathing down their necks for being out of control, so they stop. What was your God's shot today? Mine was in his sovereign timing and placement of every detail.

Here are just two examples I saw today, one from each chapter. In chapter 18, it showed up like this. If Paul hadn't been a tent maker, and if A and P hadn't been forced out of Rome, they never would have met and bonded, and they wouldn't have gone to Ephesus with them where they eventually met Apollos, who they trained in preaching. And that is how the early church was built up through Apollos, because Paul made tents and because A&P were forced to leave Rome. In chapter 19, it showed up like this.

If the Jews in the synagogue at Ephesus hadn't grown stubborn, Paul wouldn't have had to find a new spot to teach, and he never would have ended up at T-Rex stadium, where people from all over the world stopped in every day and heard about Jesus. And that's how the Gospel spread to Asia, because the Jews in Ephesus rejected it. God is weaving all these little details together behind the scenes, everything from jobs to timing to rejection, he has his hands in everything. Because how else could he work all things together for the good of those who love him? Like Romans 8.28 said, If he weren't working in all things, he's always at work on our behalf.

I love him. He's where the joy is. Tomorrow will be starting first Corinthians. It's 16 chapters long. We're linking to a short video overview in the show note, so check that out if you've got eight minutes. We hear from a lot of you who are interested in getting transcripts of our daily podcasts for a variety of reasons. Maybe you're a visual learner, maybe you want to use them to take

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