Acts 18:1-23

Introduction

I’m not looking for a show of hands, but I wonder how many of us believe that God wants us to be safe or healthy or prosperous or generally happy with our circumstances? I mean in this life… I wonder how many of us (though we may or may not say it out loud) think it is some odd or strange occurrence if we or our loved ones are in physical danger… or mortally ill… or experiencing financial disaster… or in highly stressful or hostile or miserable life-circumstances.

Let me ask this another way… again, please don’t raise your hands… though it would be very interesting to know… Do you believe that God ever means for you to experience danger or illness or poverty or extreme relational/circumstantial discomfort? … Do you believe that God ever intentionally creates such things in your life, or in the lives of anyone else, for the purpose of converting the soul… or producing spiritual maturity… or advancing the gospel… or building up the local church?

I believe our passage today speaks to all of this and more, and I pray that God will help us to come to know Him better and to love and trust Him more even as we consider the Scripture together today. We are picking up with the Apostle Paul’s final leg of his second missionary journey. Let’s read Acts 18 together, and (with God’s help) let’s try to draw out what we might learn and apply from there.

Scripture Reading

Acts 18:1–23 (ESV)

1 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 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, 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. 4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.

5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. 6 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 will go to the Gentiles.”

7 And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. 8 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.

9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 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.” 11 And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, 13 saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” 14 But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. 15 But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” 16 And he drove them from the tribunal. 17 And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this.

18 After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow. 19 And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. 20 When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. 21 But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus. 22 When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch. 23 After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

Main Idea:

God works through both good and bad life-circumstances to bring about both the conversion (i.e., spiritual life and justification) and the edification (i.e., spiritual growth and maturity) of His people.

Sermon

1. Setting the Scene (v1-4)

“1 After this [i.e., after Paul’s brief time in Athens, where he had called philosophers, politicians, and social elites to repentance and faith… and where “some” had “believed” the gospel (Acts 17:34)] Paul left Athens and went to Corinth [about 50 miles West]. 2 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.”

This event is hard to date precisely,[1] but, the expulsion of Jews from Rome had sent “Aquila… and his wife Priscilla” to Corinth, where Paul “found” or “met” them and “went to see” or “approached” them (v2). Luke says explicitly that Paul went to them “because he was of the same trade [as him]” (v3), but the implication is that they were more than mere co-workers.

Paul and Aquila and Priscilla were “tentmakers by trade” (v3), but Luke says that Paul “stayed with them and worked” beside them during his time in Corinth (v3) while “he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks” (v4). The implication is that Aquila and Priscilla were also Jewish Christians, who provided something of a homebase for Paul’s ministry.

Let’s take a moment to notice the significance of what I’ve just now explained. I believe Luke is showing us that God uses the negative and even the terribly painful circumstances of life for His good purposes. Historically, Christians have affirmed that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, according to the counsel of His will and for His eternal purposes.[2]

In our passage, we see that Aquila and Priscilla were kicked out of their home and forced to leave the life they’d built for themselves in Rome, and they just happened to be in Corinth when the Apostle Paul arrived and connected with them. No, they were in Corinth by God’s design! And God used their terrible experience to bring about His good purposes.

God brought Aquila and Priscilla together with Paul, which provided Paul with a way to make a living while he evangelized the Corinthians (Acts 18:2-3). God gave them a bond so tight, that Aquila and Priscilla became traveling companions with Paul when he left for Ephesus (Acts 18:18). God brought Aquila and Priscilla to Ephesus so that they might edify and help a masterful preacher of the gospel (Acts 18:26). God later established a church in Ephesus that met on the Lord’s Day in Aquila’s and Priscilla’s house (1 Cor. 16:19). And their ministry among the church in Ephesus was so long-lasting that Paul mentioned them both in his second letter to Timothy, which he wrote during the very last season of his life (2 Tim. 4:19)… And all of this, because God had previously ordained that the sinful circumstances in Rome would provoke a pagan emperor to expel everyone of Jewish ethnicity from the city they called home.

Friends, we must come to grips with the fact that we cannot believe God is in charge of the good but not the bad. Either God is sovereign over whatsoever comes to pass, or He is not sovereign at all… Sovereignty is the sort of thing that is by definition unlimited, unrestrained, and all-encompassing.[3]

In our passage today, the Jewish expulsion from Rome was only the beginning of the painful, difficult, and even hostile events which God ordained for His purposes. And God had also ordained or designed ongoing missionary efforts, greater gospel preaching among the Gentiles, and the strengthening Christian disciples all over ancient Achaia, Asia, and Syria. We not only see Christianity expand in the first century despite difficulties and hardships, but we also see God use the very circumstances we would easily recognize as bad to bring about His good ends or purposes in the world… and in the individual lives of His people.

And yet, the reality that God is sovereign over all things does not eliminate human responsibility or culpability. People are responsible for the bad they think, say, and do… and that’s highlighted in our next couple of verses.

2. Rejecting the Messiah (v5-6)

Let’s pick up our passage in v5… Luke says, “When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia…” that is, from Berea particularly. Remember that Paul was the focus of a hostile mob in Berea, so some of the “brothers” or Christians there had helped Paul get out of town (Acts 17:14). Silas and Timothy had stayed in Berea, but Paul sent word back for them to come along as soon as possible. When Paul arrived in Athens, he was still alone, and he boldly witnessed for Christ during the brief time he was there (and that’s a really quick summary of Acts 17).

By the time Silas and Timothy caught up with Paul, he was already in Corinth. And Luke says Paul was doing what he normally did in any new town; “Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus” (v5). As v4 told us, Paul was “reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath,” trying to “persuade” his hearers. Persuade them about what? Well, he was trying to persuade them that “the Christ was Jesus” (v5).

As we’ve noted several times already, this was the central theme of the message proclaimed by the earliest Christians, and it’s the same theme we ought to understand as central to the gospel today. Jesus didn’t come out of nowhere, and He wasn’t merely a new religious guru on the stage of human history. No, Jesus was the culmination of God’s plan to glorify Himself through the salvation of sinners, which God Himself had been unfolding since the beginning of time.

God created everything, including humans, and God made everything good. But Adam sinned against God, and he earned – for himself and every human after him – God’s curse. All creation began to groan with the pain of wickedness, calamity, and sin of all sorts. Storms destroy, nations rage, and people live lives full of dysfunction and sorrow until they finally die.

But God had promised, right from the beginning, that it would not always be this way, and He would somehow make the relationships right again… God with man, man with other people, and all relations with creation itself. And the repeated promise God made was that there would one day be a snake-crusher, a more fluent prophet, a more effective priest, and a more righteous king… God would send His Messiah or Christ, His anointed one, who would redeem sinful people, restore God’s dwelling with man, and renew all creation.

And then, it happened! God Himself became a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus healed the sick, delivered the oppressed from the devil, and He even raised dead people back to life again. And all of this was to show that He had the power to do what God had always promised to do in and through His Messiah or Christ. But, when Jesus came, He was not received by those He came to save. Instead, He was rejected, despised, and ultimately murdered by the hands of both Jewish and Gentile leaders.

But just like we’re seeing in our passage this morning, God’s glorious plan of victory often travels right through the way of shame and apparent defeat. It was exactly according to God’s plan that the Christ would suffer and die, and it was also God’s plan to raise Jesus Christ from the dead… putting on marvelous display the fact that God had done as He said He would and that the redemption, restoration, and renewal of all things was at hand. And then, the resurrected Jesus took His seat of highest authority in the universe, and He commissioned His followers on earth to tell everyone the good news.

Therefore, Jesus Himself preached, and so did all who believed in Him, God commands all people everywhere to repent and believe or trust in the Christ! If you do, then you will enjoy all the benefits God has been promising for millennia. But, if you don’t, then… well, as Paul said to those who rejected his gospel in v6, “Your blood be on your own heads!”

But, even in the rejection of God’s Messiah, God showed that His plan of redemption was far bigger than only those of ethnic Jewish decent. By the Jews of Corinth rejecting Paul’s message about Jesus as the Christ, God thrust Paul into a powerful evangelistic ministry to the Gentiles there. Once again, we see the theme of God’s providential work… He ordains even that some would reject the Messiah, so that others might benefit from the gospel. And yet, those who reject the gospel are fully responsible for their rejection of it… Their blood is on their own heads.

3. Some Believed the Gospel (v7-8)

We learn in verses 7 and 8 that not all the Jews in Corinth rejected Jesus as the Christ. Luke says that Paul left the synagogue and “went to the house of a man named Titius Justus” who was “a worshiper of God” (v7). As we’ve seen before in Acts, there were Gentiles who studied the Scriptures too, and they aimed to live in service to the God of the Old Testament. That’s who Titius Justice was. But “Crispus” too, the “ruler” or “leader” or “chief” of the “synagogue,” he also “believed in the Lord, together with his entire household” (v8). And all of those who “believed” what they “heard” from “Paul” in Corinth “were baptized,” both Jews and Gentiles (v8).

Let’s notice just a couple of things here.

First, the rejection of Jesus as the Christ in the synagogue was immediately followed by the conversion of “many of the Corinthians” (v8). This does not mean that it was good that most of the Jews rejected Christ, but it does echo what I believe is the major theme of our passage… God uses both good and bad circumstances to bring about His good ends. Some will reject the gospel, but others will hear it and believe! God has His chosen or elect “people,” as is made clear in v10, and He will draw them to Himself![4]

Second, let’s also note in passing the consistent pattern of Christian conversion. Those who hear and believe the gospel take on the name or label of Christ by baptism… They become identified both with Christ and with the people of Christ in the world through the ordinance which Christ instituted for this very purpose – baptism. Friends, Baptists didn’t invent baptism, nor did any other Christian denomination. Christ Himself instructed believers to “go public” with their faith by baptism in the context of the local church, so that the kingdom of Christ would be visible in this world.[5]

If you want to talk more about what this means or if you are having a hard time connecting the dots between your own spiritual life and membership with a local church, then let’s talk about it as soon as the service is over.

4. Gospel Growth by Divine Design (v9-18)

Normally, the sort of response we just read about in verses 7 and 8 would have been Paul’s indicator that his job is done, and he would have moved on to the next town. Throughout the book of Acts so far, Paul’s missionary efforts have been focused on evangelizing, planting churches (when there was a group who responded with repentance and faith), and then traveling on to start the process again. This is what Paul did (just from the example of his first missionary journey) in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:13-52), in Iconium (Acts 14:1-7), and in Lystra (Acts 14:8-21). We know that Paul’s evangelism resulted in churches being planted because, though Paul had left each of those towns fairly soon after some sinners were converted, Luke told us that Paul went back through “Lystra” and “Iconium” and “Antioch” to “appoint elders for them in every church” (Acts 14:21-23).

But, in Corinth, God intended for Paul to stay a bit longer than normal. God planned for Paul to stay there a year and a half, in fact (v11). Luke says in v9 that Paul got special revelation from God in the form of a “vision,” wherein God told Paul, “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” (v9-10).[6] In other words, God intended Paul to go on preaching and teaching the gospel in Corinth so that the full number of God’s elect people there would come to hear and to believe. This is not to diminish the evangelizing and discipling work of everyday Christians, but God planned to use Paul’s evangelistic and teaching ministry to establish the church in Corinth in a way that was unusual.

But Paul’s prolonged time in Corinth finally ended much like it had in other towns. Luke says, in v12, “But when Gallio was proconsul [or governor] of Achaia [which was 51AD to 52AD], the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal.” Like many times before, those Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah also turned hostile against Christians. They accused Paul here of “persuading people to worship [or show devotion toward or revere] God contrary to the law [that is, the Jewish law or tradition]” (v13).

Apparently, the Jewish leaders wanted the Roman civil court to put an end to Paul’s Christian witness. It’s hard to put ourselves into this scene in our day, since twenty-first-century Americans have lived under the illusion that there is such a thing as secular law and secular society. We are quickly learning these days that everyone brings their gods to the courts, and everyone serves or worships or reveres their gods in the public square, but it’s not as obvious to many of us as it was in first century Rome. There was no such thing as a separation between church and state back then… or during much of any time in human history or geography. Religious allegiance was closely tied to one’s national or civil allegiance, and the Jews were accusing Paul of being a renegade Jewish citizen of the Roman empire.

Gallio’s response, however, shows us that Jews were a sort of second-class citizen demographic. We already talked a bit about this when we looked at the first few verses of our passage, where Luke told us that the emperor Claudius “had commanded all the Jews to leave [the city of] Rome” in order to stop the unrest between Jews and Gentiles there (v2). Similarly, here, Gallio “drove” or “ejected” the Jewish accusers from his “tribunal” or “court,” saying that their accusations were no concern of Roman law (v14-16). “See to it yourselves,” he said; “I refuse to be a judge of these things” (v16).

Ah, but Gallio was a judge of these things, in one sense or another, when he “paid no attention” to the mob justice that was doled out to “Sosthenes,” who was apparently the replacement leader or ruler of the synagogue after Crispus became a Christian (v8, 17). It’s hard to tell exactly who did the “beating” in v17. The KJV says “all the Greeks took Sosthenes… and beat him” (v17), but all of the modern translations go with the older manuscript reading, which just says “they all seized [or “took”] Sosthenes” (ESV, NASB, NIV84). The point is that Gallio and most of the citizens of Corinth seemed to be quite uninterested in the dispute between the Jews and Christians about just exactly who Jesus was and is.

At any rate, this scene was Paul’s signal to begin packing his bags. Luke says that Paul “stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria” (v18). It is as though Paul would take all the heat in a given town, and then he would leave behind the new Christians to do the everyday ministry of making disciples and evangelizing among their own social and family circles.

Maybe this should be a comfort to some of us today who might feel guilty for not being bolder in our “cold-call” evangelism. You might be the sort of Christian who evangelizes complete strangers, but let’s all recognize that God has given us everyday opportunities to talk about Jesus with people we already know. Rather than feel guilty for all the strangers we pass by, how about we pray that God would help us do the everyday sort of evangelism that regular Christians do?

5. The Mission Continues (v19-23)

This last section of our passage today is the last segment of Paul’s second missionary journey. It is the close of another episode for Luke’s record of the Acts of the Apostles, or more appropriately the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. There are some striking and fascinating aspects of this closing set of verses, and I’d like to briefly touch three of them.

First, though Paul’s time in Ephesus was intentionally short (he was only stopping there on his long boat journey back home), he still took some time to go “into the synagogue and reason with the Jews” (v19). No matter what Paul was doing or where he was going, he kept the mission – to live as a witness of Christ in the world – on his dashboard. It seems as though there was nothing he ever faced that made him lose sight of that basic goal. Brothers and sisters, may God help us to live our lives that way… as witnesses of our Lord Jesus Christ wherever we are.

Second, though the Jews in Ephesus asked Paul to stay longer, “he declined” (v20). This may seem to contradict the observation I just made! If Paul’s basic and ultimate goal was always to be a witness of Christ in the world, then why would he leave a ready audience without talking with them more about the gospel?!

This is a Christian quandary, isn’t it? We know the good news that saves sinners, and we know that many people in the world either don’t know the gospel or at least do not presently trust and obey the Lord Jesus, so what responsibility to we bear for their souls? Well, on the one hand, I feel the need to apply pressure to those of us who are prone to avoid gospel conversations. Like I just said a moment ago, we ought to never lose sight of the main task of our lives. We are to know and glorify and enjoy God through the person and work of Christ, and we are to give testimony of the saving gospel, so that others might join us in knowing and glorifying and enjoying God through Him.

But, on the other hand, I want to offer a word of comfort to those of us who are prone to bear a load of guilt for never doing enough. Brothers and sisters, we will give an account for what we did with our time, our treasure, and our talent, but we are not personally responsible to save every sinner, to sustain every local church, or to ensure that every good Christian effort in the world continues. If the Apostle Paul is allowed to say to sinners in Ephesus, “I’m going to head home for a while, and I’ll come back to gospelize you a bit more if God will make that happen on a later date,” then surely we are allowed to do what we can with what we have and trust that God will use more than just us in His purposes to convert sinners and to edify Christians.

Friends, you and I cannot do it all, and the faster we come to grips with that reality, the better we will be able to celebrate the wins, acknowledge our own limitations, and benefit from the help of others.

Third, and finally, after Paul made an intentional stop at the church in Jerusalem,[7] and after he “spent some time” with the church in Antioch of Syria (v22-23), “he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples” (v23). These were exactly the same regions where Paul had begun his missionary efforts several years before, and this was now the third time Paul had gone back to these churches to “strengthen” the “disciples” or Christians there (Acts 14:21-23, 16:1-6).

Friends, Paul’s missionary efforts were not merely aimed at making converts. Paul knew that the gospel he preached creates churches, and that local churches are where disciples are made. To bring us full circle back to the theme I emphasized at the beginning, it is in the context of the sometimes messy and sometimes difficult and sometimes even painful relationships within the local church that God has designed to grow you and comfort you and challenge you… and even to make you persevere through to the end. Don’t be so gullible or childish to think that God doesn’t want you to go through hard times or deal with difficult people… No, friends, it is precisely through hard times and in difficult relationships that we learn and grow the most!

In fact, this is one of the reasons why Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper as a church ordinance. The Lord’s Supper is something we can’t do by ourselves; we need others to join in with us in order to observe this ordinance as a united group who are collectively embracing both Christ and one another.

Endnotes

[1] The one record we have of an edict from the Roman emperor Claudius that targeted Jews in Rome is dated 41AD, but Luke says that “Gallio was proconsul of Achaia” when some of the events of Acts 18 occurred (v12). Gallio was the “proconsul” or governor of the province known as “Achaia,” which included both Corinth and Athens for the last half of 51AD and the first half of 52AD. This makes Aquila’s and Priscilla’s “recent” departure from “Italy” more likely to have been later in the 40s (v2). A simple historical explanation can harmonize this dating by recognizing that Claudius’s edict in 41AD didn’t demand the immediate expulsion of the Jews from Rome. It called for a de-escalation among both Greeks and Jews – both sides were instigating unrest, and the Jews in Rome were especially antagonistic against those Jews who had converted to Christianity. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that Claudius finally decided to expel the Jews from Rome in the late 40s when his edict in 41AD had proven unsuccessful in producing civility in Rome. [2]See this in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, especially questions seven and eleven. https://www.shortercatechism.comSee also the Baptist Catechism (also known as Keach’s Catechism), especially questions ten and fourteen. https://founders.org/library/the-baptist-catechism/ [3] For more study on this topic, consider John Flavel’s quintessential work on providence, The Mystery of Providence (224 pages). Available for purchase at https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Providence-Puritan-Paperbacks-Flavel/dp/085151104X. And for a larger and more recent volume on this subject, see John Piper’s book, simply titled Providence (752 pages). Available as a free PDF or a physical copy for purchase at https://www.desiringgod.org/books/providence. Both are excellent resources. [4] The word “elect” is a thoroughly biblical word, which refers to believers or Christians (Titus 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1). So too, the concept of God’s “chosen” people or God’s “choice” in electing some sinners for salvation is drawn from rich and repeated references in the Bible (John 15:16-19; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, 12:18; Ephesians 1:4; Colossians 3:12; 1 Peter 2:4; Revelation 17:14). [5]For a great resource on this topic, see Going Public: Why Baptism Is Required for Church Membership by Bobby Jamieson https://9marks.myshopify.com/products/going-public-why-baptism-is-required-for-church-membership. [6]During the apostolic period, when living, breathing Apostles were walking around, this sort of special revelation from God was not the norm (it didn’t happen every other Tuesday), but it did happen on rare occasions. Miracles are God’s way in human history of pointing to a major event in the unfolding of His plan of redemption. Miracles happened when God used Moses to deliver His people from Egypt and to reveal His covenant. They happened when God spoke specially through several prophets over the course of about a thousand years during the Old Testament. And miracles happened again during the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles. Outside of these three major episodes in human and redemptive history, miracles are nearly entirely absent. Therefore, we ought not expect special revelation or miracles today. In fact, the Apostle Peter said that Scripture itself is a word “more fully confirmed, to which [we] will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place” (2 Pet. 1:19). It is fascinating to know that Peter said the Scripture – the written word of God – is better for Christians even than Peter’s own personal experience of seeing Jesus gloriously transformed on a mountain (2 Pet. 1:16-21). [7]Though most translations exclude “Jerusalem” in verse 22, this does seem to be “the church” intended by Luke there. First, Paul “landed at Caesarea.” This port was far South of Paul’s ultimate destination, Antioch of Syria, though it was quite close to Jerusalem. In fact, when Paul had departed from Antioch by boat before, he sailed from the port in Seleucia (Acts 13:4), and when Paul returned to Antioch afterward, Luke simply says he “sailed to Antioch” (Acts 14:26). Therefore, the landing in Caesarea indicates that Jerusalem was Paul’s intended travel stop on his way to Antioch of Syria. Second, when Paul laded at Caesarea, “he went up and greeted the church.” Jerusalem was always “up” topographically because whatever direction one was going, Jerusalem was on a higher altitude. Furthermore, the Jewish way of talking always mentioned one’s travel to Jerusalem as an ascent. This verbiage is only amplified by Luke’s statement that Paul afterward “went down to Antioch,” though Antioch was most certainly North of whatever “church” Paul “greeted” when he first landed at Caesarea. Therefore, the language of the passage indicates that Jerusalem was the church Paul greeted before arriving in Antioch. Third, and more speculatively, Luke says that Paul “cut his hair” before leaving Cenchreae, which was the port just East of Corinth (Acts 18:18). Such a note seems inexplicable apart from some possible rationale which included Paul soon visiting a place with a high concentration of ethnically Jewish people. Neither Ephesus nor Antioch of Syria were such a place, but, of course, Jerusalem was. Therefore, Paul’s vow seems to indicate that his plan was to stop in Jerusalem on his way to Antioch of Syria.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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