Bible Commentaries
Acts 21

XXVI

PAUL’S THIRD MISSIONARY TOUR – PAUL AT EPHESUS

Acts 18:23-21:16.

The scriptures, so far as Acts is concerned, devoted to this tour, are from chapters Acts 18:23-21:16. The special theme is "Paul at Ephesus" (Acts 19). The time of the whole tour is from A.D. 54 to A.D. 58 – four years. The time at Ephesus, three years. At this time Nero was emperor at Rome, and under him Paul was to suffer martyrdom.

Let us trace on the map the whole tour from Antioch to Jerusalem. Commencing at his usual starting point, Antioch, he came near Tarsus, and went up into upper Galatia – Galatia proper – confirming the churches at Tavium, Ancyra, and Pessius. Then he went down to Ephesus. He was at Ephesus three years. In that time he made many other runs into the country, so as to reach all Asia. Leaving Ephesus, he went again into Macedonia, stopping at Troas, as before, where Titus met him, or was to have met him, came on into Macedonia, and went to these same churches where he had labored on his second missionary tour, then coming on down to Corinth, where he remained quite a while, three months anyhow, and in that time he wrote the letter to the Galatians and the letter to the Romans; while at Ephesus he wrote the first letter to the church at Corinth; while up in Macedonia he wrote the second letter to the church at Corinth. Then he came on back and took a sea voyage to Tyre and to Caesarea, then he went to Jerusalem, and there he was arrested and remained a prisoner all through the rest of the book of Acts.

A large part of this tour is devoted to confirming churches previously established. Until he goes to Ephesus all that part of the first tour is devoted to confirming churches previously established, and after he leaves Ephesus, all that part of the tour through Macedonia and Achaia is devoted to confirming churches. The advanced work is the work that he did at Ephesus. The letters written during this tour, as stated above, are as follows: While he was at Ephesus he wrote the first letter to the Corinthians, and after he got over into Macedonia he wrote the second letter to the Corinthians, when he got to Corinth he wrote the letter to the Galatians, and also the one to the Romans, and this last letter, the one to the Romans, was to prepare the way for his coming to Rome.

The closing part of Acts 18 tells us that Apollos came to Ephesus; that he was a Jew from Alexandria; that he was a very learned and a very eloquent Jew; that he had heard of John’s preaching over in Judea that Jesus had come, John pointing to Jesus as "The Lamb of God that was to take away the sin of the world." Further than that he did not know. It was a gospel of a Messiah, but what that Messiah he did not know. He is one of the most remarkable characters in the Bible, and his contact with Paul is very special. Just about the time that Paul goes to Ephesus, before he gets there, Apollos has expressed a desire, after being instructed in the way of the Lord by Aquila and Priscilla, to go over to Corinth. They write letters of commendation, and he goes to Corinth, being now fully instructed in the gospel of Jesus, and becomes a tremendous help to Paul in Corinth, but is made the occasion of a division, though himself not intending evil.

Perhaps there was no man living who could, in a more popular way, present the Old Testament scriptures, and their bearing upon Jesus as the Messiah. He did not have an equal in his day as a popular speaker. In his graces of person all the matters preached were lost. At Corinth some brethren were so attached to him that they preferred him to Paul and Peter, or anybody else, and in that way, without his intending it, he was made a part of the occasion of creating a division in the church at Corinth. To show that he had no part in it, Paul, after Apollos came back to Ephesus, wanted to send him back to Corinth, but in view of the troubles that had arisen, he declined to go. He did not want to go there and let a crowd of schismatics rally around him. The scriptures which refer to this man are not a great many, but they are very pointed, showing his real value as a genuine preacher, and Paul was very much attached to him.

A mighty financial enterprise was engineered on this third tour, an enterprise of mammoth proportions to help the poor saints in Jerusalem. We have to gather the history of this work, which was a big enough piece of work for any one man to do, from the various letters. The most notable scriptures bearing upon it are 1 Corinthians 16:1-3; 2 Corinthians 8-9, though there are references elsewhere. When he got there into Galatia that he had previously evangelized, he gave orders to these churches to lay by in store on the first day of every week, and take up a systematic collection. When he got over into Macedonia, he repeated these orders, and the finest response of any of them was made by these poor people living at Philippi. When he came down into Achaia, he repeated the same instructions to the churches there, and in his two letters, particularly the two to the church at Corinth, he tried to stir them up to redeem the pledges they had made the year before. All through this period of four years, that systematic collection was going on. He sent Titus to help out the Corinthians in engineering their collections, and as the funds were raised, they were placed in the hands of representatives of the church raising the money, and some representative of each section went back with him when he went to Jerusalem to carry it. So when he got to Jerusalem, the end of this tour, he put down before the leaders of the church funds that had, during the four years, been gathered in the Gentile churches of Asia and in Europe. What a pity that, coming before that Jerusalem church with these funds, the brethren did not give him a more cordial welcome!

What is written about this financial enterprise is of inestimable value to the churches today. To show how much value could be drawn, I got my first idea from what is a prepared collection from studying these financial enterprises as stated everywhere in these letters. Every preacher should group the references to this enterprise and the different expediences adopted, and learn once for all how a collection is to be taken, how a great contribution is to be engineered. I practiced it in my pastoral life in Waco. When a collection was to be taken for home, state, or foreign missions, or the Orphans’ Home, I spent weeks preceding, preparing for that collection, and when the day came, before a word was said, Is would know within a few dollars what that collection was going to amount to. I had first canvassed the Ladies’ Society, B. Y. P. U., and the Sunday school, and knew what they were going to pledge. I had previously approached the leading contributors as to how much they would give as a start, when the collection was to be taken. As soon as the day came and I had announced the purpose of the collection, Is simply called out, "Ladies’ Society No. I, No. 2," etc., and their amounts would be called out and the money sent up in an envelope; then the Sunday school, then the Young People’s Union, then expressions from leading individuals, BO that by the time this was over, which would be done in Just a few minutes, we would generally have about a thousand dollars. Then would commence the appeal to others that could not do so much, and in fifteen minutes our collection would be over. If any man imagines that that was an offhand business, then it shows that he has not studied the situation; that he did not know what I had been doing for weeks.

PAUL AT EPHESUS

Ephesus, for a long period, had been a famous city. It is near the coast line and they had at this time a magnificent seaport. It was a Greek city. The Ionians had colonized Ephesus, and the day of the Greek glory had passed, and it was now the capital of the Roman province of Asia. While it had its own municipal government, the Greek ecclesia, the very word that is used to refer to a church, and exactly such an ecclesia as that ruled Athens, ruled in other Greek cities unless the power had been taken away from them, but we will have special occasion in this connection to learn what a Greek ecclesia does.

The celebrities at Ephesus constitute a part of the wonders of the world. This very celebrity was the marvelous temple of Diana. This temple had been burned down the night that Alexander the Great was born, and all Asia Minor and Greece proper contributed funds to rebuild it. When Alexander came to be a man, they still had not completed it, and be offered to furnish all the funds if they would just let his name be written on it. They declined. There were 127 pillars of the most magnificent sculpture that has ever been seen in any structure on earth. A prince was proud to be allowed to put up just one of those pillars if he was able. The stairway work into the upper part of it was just one vine, brought from Cyprus, that naturally curved to make the stairway. That temple is listed among the seven wonders of the ancient world.

In the temple were the finest pieces of sculpture in the world. The greatest of the sculptors at Athens prided themselves on putting their masterpieces in this temple. The greatest painters had hanging on these walls their masterpieces. Votive offerings, priceless in value, were to be seen. The shrine part of the temple, that part which held the goddess, was a small dark place somewhat like the most holy place in the Jerusalem Temple, and back of that shrine was a bank, as we now call it. It was the safe place for all the people of that end of the world to put their money.

The Diana of this temple must not be confounded with the Diana of the Greek or Roman religion. That one was beautiful, but this Diana here, so far as the statue shows, was a beastly, Oriental, ugly image that looked like a mummy, wrapped about on the lower part and covered with breasts, the whole idea being to show the productiveness of nature. And it was claimed that that statue dropped down from heaven. I don’t blame anybody in heaven for dropping it, if it was up there. The worship of it was just as bad as the worship of Venus on the Island of Cyprus, or in the city of Corinth.

The time of the great festival was our May Day in May. All Asia poured into Ephesus in May, and this is just the time that this persecution against Paul takes place – just this time of the year. Their May Day festival consisted largely of parades, something like a carnival in New Orleans, but in the city of Rome men put on grotesque masks, some representing Jupiter,, some Mercury, some Venus, some one thing, and some another, and the beating of ten million tin pans, or the scraping of iron, or the grinding of steel, or the letting off of forty steam engines at one time could not equal the kind of noise they made. They thought it great, and that it needed a great noise.

Another celebrity there was its famous amphitheatre. The remnants of it can be seen until this day, in which some of the events in this chapter took place. It would seat thirty thousand people, being somewhat larger than most theatresin this country. These were the notable celebrities – the Temple of Diana, one of the wonders of the world, their famous May Festival, and this magnificent theatre.

I have already given some account of the character of their religion. Just as at the fairs in this country, there are thousands of people who made their living by carving little shrines and temples, either representing the temple itself, or representing the image of the goddess, with magical letters written on it. These visitors would come in and want to carry back a portable temple, portable goddess or portable memento of the time they had had at the May Festival. There were a great many Jews there.

There were three co-existent ecclesias present in this one city, which had a bearing on the essential character of a New Testament church. First, there was the Greek ecclesia – that organized assembly which performed no functions except as an assembly. Then the Jewish ecclesia, and finally that ecclesia of which Jesus said, "I will build my ecclesia" Every one of them was an organized assembly, each one of them had no power to transact business except in session at the regular assembly. I know that some men, just a handful, yet have an idea that the church is not an ecclesia, and they deny the ecclesia idea altogether. Theological professors who take that position have to repudiate 136 references to the Jerusalem ecclesia, and they have to repudiate every reference to Christ’s ecclesia.

One text summarizes the whole situation at Ephesus. Paul, in writing his first letter to the Corinthians, says, "I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost; for a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries." When I was a young preacher I took that as my text and took Acts 19 to expound the meaning of the text. We find that passage in 1 Corinthians 16. That text summarizes the whole situation.

The rest of this chapter will be devoted to expounding that text, "There are many adversaries." Ten special adversaries are mentioned. Acts 19:1-7 tells us that when Paul got over there he found a certain adversary in the form of an incomplete gospel, and it was hurtful to the complete gospel to have the ground overcast by an incomplete gospel. Let us state fully the case of the twelve disciples found at Ephesus, and bring out clearly the following points of controversy: (1) Was John’s baptism and gospel, Christian baptism and gospel? (2) Who baptized the twelve disciples? (3) Were they rebaptized by Paul? (4) If so, what the elements of invalidity in their first immersion? (5) What the bearing of the whole case on valid baptism?

The record states that when Paul got over there and found these men, he said, "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" You know that in Acts 2:38 there was a promise that whosoever would believe in Jesus Christ would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That gift had come down that day with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now Paul, wishing to find out the status of these men, says, "Did ye receive the gift of the Holy Spirit?" And they said, "We did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was given." That is, they had no knowledge at all of Pentecost. "Well," he said, "into what then were ye baptized?" They said, "Into John’s baptism." Paul then explains that John truly preached "repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus," and baptized people, but it was in a Christ to come, John had foretold this thing that had occurred on Pentecost, saying, "When the Messiah comes he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit."

John had been dead twenty years. These men evidently had not seen baptism by John. If they had ever heard John, they would have known that John taught that the Messiah would send this gift of the Holy Spirit, and would baptize his people in the Holy Spirit. He saw that there was a deficiency in their baptism, and that their faith did not go far enough, since it did not take in a Messiah as already come. It was a general belief in a Messiah, but not in Jesus as a particular Messiah. John was the harbinger to Christ. He had no successor; no man had a right to perpetuate John’s baptism; so when people elsewhere, as did Alexander, took it upon themselves to baptize with reference to John’s baptism, it was without any authority. So that a capital deficiency in their baptism was that it was not by an authorized administrator, and so Paul, having explained the matter to them that the Holy Spirit in the baptism of the saints had come down, and that Jesus had come, counting as nothing the unauthorized baptism to which they had been subjected, rebaptized them, and then laid his hands on them and they received the gift of the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. They were thus lined up, and that is the way that trouble was disposed of.

This is a real adversary you find as you go out to work. As a rule you will find people lodged about half way. They believe some things, but they don’t get far enough. Perhaps they are satisfied with the sprinkling they received in childhood; perhaps they have had a baptism like these people, but not by a qualified administrator, and the thing tends to confusion, but if you are ever going to have people drawn into cooperation, you will have to meet those things.

The second adversary is presented in Acts 19:8-10: "And he entered into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, reasoning and persuading as to the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, reasoning daily In the school of Tyrannus. And this continued for the space of two years; so that all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks." That adversary was the Jewish ecclesia – the synagogue – refusing to accept Jesus as the Messiah, blaspheming his name, bitterly obstructing the work, as we have seen in other places. Paul saw that in that city of the gods a line of cleavage must be drawn so he did just what he had done at Corinth. He moved his meeting to the schoolhouse. He had nothing more to do with the Jews; they could not walk together; they could not agree. The Jews were fighting him and fighting the gospel, so that he disposed of that adversary by a separation of the church and the Jews. He drew a line. He did not want a row every time they came to the meeting. He followed this plan for two years, and held the day.

The third adversary is presented in Acts 19:11-12: "And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul; insomuch that unto the sick were carried away from his body handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out." That adversary was the demons, the devil’s spiritual agency, and if there ever was a place on earth where demonology prevailed in its worst extent, and the demons were multitudinous and disastrous, it was right here at Ephesus. As Satan’s sub-agents, his demons had been controlling that city, and its business, and prompting its spirit, it became necessary that some extraordinary power of God should be brought to bear to counteract the influence of those demons. So here we come to a case of special miracles. Here I commend to the reader my sermon on "Special Miracles." The Spirit’s power was displayed in an unusual way. We had a case of that remarkable miracle where the very shadow of Peter healed people near him. An apron that Paul wore while he was at work at his trade, carried and touched by a sick man – a man under demoniacal possession – caused the devil to go out of him, and a handkerchief that Paul used to wipe his face when the sweat would pour down under his labor, had the same effect. These were unusual miracles, like the miracle of Elisha’s bones that brought a man to life when he touched them. God shows extraordinary power in order to meet extraordinary exigencies, and so the demons were wiped out.

The fourth adversary is given in Acts 19:13-18: "But certain also of the strolling Jews, exorcists, took upon them to name over them that had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth. And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, a chief priest, who did this. And the evil spirit answered and said unto them, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye? And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and mastered both of them and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all, both Jews and Greeks, that dwelt at Ephesus; and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Many also of them that had believed, came, confessing and declaring their deeds."

So we find this adversary to be impostors who assumed to cast out’ demons under the name of Jesus, while having no respect for Jesus, and hating Paul – impostors that borrowed Paul’s reputation there and the idea of the power of Jesus in casting out demons, and these impostors came from the Jews. I once heard a preacher say, shaking his head, "Those were smart demons, saying, ’Jesus I recognize, Paul I know, but who are you? You liar, you impostor, you can’t come to meeting shaking the name of Jesus over me. I can whip you.’ " And so that is the way that adversary was overcome.

The fifth adversary we find in Acts 19:19-20: "And not a few of them that practiced magical arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed." What was that adversary? Evil literature, called "Ephesian Letters." Certain letters were written on little slips to carry in the vest pocket, pinned on the lapel of the coat; certain magical incantations were written out. You find abundant reference to it in ancient literature, plays about a certain athlete who never could be killed until he had lost the magical letters on his person. Like a Negro with a horseshoe above his door, or with a rabbit’s foot to keep good luck. It is asserted that that literature obtained a hold over a great many of their minds, and it obtains it yet over many minds. A great many people now will turn back if a rabbit goes across the path ahead of them. They go back and start over if they happen to take a ring off the finger. They will not start on a journey on Friday. In our time there is a vicious literature, vile and corrupt, and that is one of the greatest enemies of Christianity. Good literature has to fight evil literature, and the gospel triumphs when the evil literature goes down. When those books were brought together and piled in that street, and a bonfire made of them, and the smoke of that fire hailed the stars, it stood a lurid monument of the mighty power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The sixth adversary is found by examining several scriptures, viz.: Acts 19:21-22; 1 Corinthians 1:11; 1 Corinthians 4:17; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 1 Corinthians 7:1; 1 Corinthians 16:8-9; 1 Corinthians 16:17. What was that adversary? The devil was very anxious to get Paul away from Ephesus, and so he starts a row at Corinth, the church that Paul had established, and appeals to him to come to Cloe’s household, and so the church at Corinth writes him a letter in which are all sorts of questions about the contention, for him to settle, and an appeal made to him to come and help them. Paul says, "I will tarry at Ephesus." The devil led them astray that far, and had already weakened his force, since he had to take Timothy and Erastus and send them over to stay that tide until he could get there.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the general theme of this chapter, and what the scriptures?

2. Trace on the map the whole tour from Antioch to Jerusalem.

3. What part of this tour is devoted to confirming churches previously established, what the churches, and what part to advance the work?

4. What letters were written during this tour, what the order of writing, what the place and time of each, and which was to prepare for new work?

5. Give a connected account of Apollos.

6. What mighty financial enterprise was engineered on this third tour?

7. Give an account of Ephesus, its celebrities, its prevalent religion, and the Jews there.

8. What three co-existent ecclesias were present in this one city, and what the bearing of the fact on the essential character of a New Testament church?

9. What one text summarizes the whole situation at Ephesus?

10. What is the first adversary, and how overcome?

11. State fully the case of the twelve disciples found at Ephesus answering the five questions in the body of the text?

12. What is the second adversary, and how overcome?

13. What is the third adversary, and how overcome?

14. What is the fourth adversary, and how overcome?

15. What is the fifth adversary, and how overcome?

16. What is the sixth adversary, and how overcome?

XXVII

PAUL AT EPHESUS PAUL’S THIRD MISSIONARY TOUR (Continued)

We continue in this chapter the discussion of Paul’s adversaries at Ephesus. The seventh adversary was the craftsmen’s ring, organized by Demetrius, the silversmith. In making the silver shrines or other souvenirs of the temple, whether of wood, stone, or metal, or the portable images of the goddess, or the amulets, charms and talismans inscribed in the "Ephesian letters," or the costumes for the May festivals, a multitude of craftsmen were employed – designers, molders, coppersmiths, sculptors, costumers, painters, engravers, jewelers. Perhaps one image or shrine would pass through the hands of several craftsmen before it received the delicate finishing work of the silversmith. The enormous crowds assembled in the annual May festivals, the steady influx of strangers from a world commerce, the devotees of the displays in the theatre, all inspired by curiosity, superstition, lewdness, or the greedy spirit of traffic, would create a demand for such wares surpassing the value of a gold mine. But the preaching of Paul, so far as accepted, undermined the whole business, dried up the springs of demand, and tended to leave all these craftsmen without an occupation.

Demetrius, anticipating the genius of modern times, organized the several guilds to make a life and death fight against a common enemy threatening all alike. His own inspiration was the love of money. His business was as profitable as the slave trade, the whiskey traffic, or the panderers who supplied the victims of lust. But formidable as a craftsmen’s union may be when used as a unit to promote evil, Demetrius was too shrewd a politician to rely on only one means of war. While perhaps religion was nothing to him, he caring only for gain, yet he recognized the value of alliance with that mighty factor, religious fanaticism, the eighth adversary, and so stirred it up in these crafty words: "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no little business unto the craftsmen; whom he gathered together, with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this business we have our wealth. And ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they are no gods that are made with hands: and not only is there danger that this our trade come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana be made of no account, and that she should even be deposed from her magnificence whom all Asia and the world worshipeth."

The devil never inspired a craftier speech. From his viewpoint the facts justified his fears. We learn from the letter of Pliny, fifty years later, that the gospel had put all the gods of Mount Olympus out of business, and left all their temples desolate. Combining gain, superstition, and civic pride he necessarily stirred up the ninth adversary, namely – a howling, murderous, senseless mob. A tiger aroused in the jungle is not swifter in his leap, nor a pack of ravenous wolves more cruel, nor a flood of molten lava, vomited from the hot throat of a volcano, more insensible to argument. If the mob spirit lasted it would be hell. Its own violence exhausts it, or who could escape? A conflagration in heat and roar could not surpass in swiftness and terror the gathering of that Ephesian mob.

"Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" rolled in surges of repetition and reverberation through the streets of the city, and every palace, tenement and house of traffic poured its occupants into the streets to swell the volume of the frenzied throng, saying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" "Where is this Paul? What house dares to harbor him?" They rush to this place of abode. Aquila and Priscilla interpose and "lay down their own necks" to save their guest. Paul cannot be found. The mob seizes two of his co-laborers, the Macedonians, Gaius and Aristarchus. Had they found Paul he would have been torn asunder, limb by limb, but not finding him against whom their hate burns, they think to invoke another ally, the tenth adversary, the Greek ecclesia, or municipal authority, and so pour themselves, 30,000 strong, into the great theatre, its place of gathering, and keep on howling.

Here occurs a sideshow, or injected episode, unwise, impotent, ludicrous, shameful. The Jewish ecclesia, the unbelieving synagogue, becomes alarmed. They know they are a stench in the Gentile nostril. They know that such a stormcloud charged with electricity will strike somewhere, and in the absence of the particular victim sought, their pitiable experience has taught them that it will strike the Jew. So they put in Alexander, one of their officials, as a lightning rod to assure the dear Ephesians that they did not do it – that they hate Paul as much as the mob does. Poor Alexander never got a hearing. Being recognized as a Jew, his appearance was like waving a red rag in the face of a mad bull. The howling was renewed, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" and did not stop for two hours.

In the meantime Paul, informed that his friends were held in jeopardy, with characteristic and magnanimous courage, sought to push his way into the theatre to say, "Here I am; if ye seek me, let these men go." But prudent friends interposed to restrain him. Even certain of the Asiarchs, officials selected from the province to be managers of the May festivals and masters of ceremonies, who were attached to Paul, besought him not to venture himself into that theatre where he could get no hearing, and would only needlessly sacrifice his life.

The mob, having shouted itself hoarse and exhausted its cyclone fury, the opportunity brought forth a matchless political orator, the town clerk, or recorder of the Greek ecclesia. Using a faultless address as a broom, he coolly swept that exhausted mob out of the theatre a limp, ashamed, inert mass of trash. Truly, he was a master of assemblies. He filled Virgil’s description of Neptune assuaging the storm which inconsiderate Aeolus had let loose against the frail Trojan fleet, or was like Dr. Broadus at the Fort Worth session of the Southern Baptist Convention, in 1890, quieting in a moment the controversy on Sunday school publications.

Young preachers aspire to be masters of assemblies. They ought to study this town clerk’s speech. Note its excellencies. He awaited his opportunity. He would not have been heard earlier. He quietly showed them that their proceedings were undignified, unlawful, unnecessary, and dangerous. Is paraphrase what he said: "Everybody knows that Ephesus is the sacristan, or custodian of the temple of Diana, and of the image of the goddess which fell down from Jupiter. Nobody has questioned the city’s jurisdiction. These men whom you have unlawfully arrested and brought here, are not charged with the sacrilege of robbing the temple or blaspheming the goddess. A mob has no authority to arrest men, and cannot be a court. An ecclesia has no authority unless lawfully summoned. If Demetrius has a grievance against Paul for an offense coming under Roman jurisdiction, let him carry his case before the proconsul. If the grievance touches matters over which the Greek ecclesia has jurisdiction, let him bring this case before the regular session of that court. These courts, both Roman and Greek, being accessible, why raise a tumult so obnoxious to our Roman masters? Indeed, we are liable already to answer to the Romans for this disturbance, this being only a mass meeting and a violent one at that. Rise, be dismissed, go home, keep quiet, do nothing rash."

We will now analyze the "great door and effectual" opened to Paul (1 Corinthians 16:9) : (1) Hearts are locked against the gospel so men will not give attention; God opens the heart to attend, as in Lydia’s case (Acts 16:14). (2) The door of faith is closed against the gospel; God opens it so men will believe (Acts 14:27). (3) Jesus is the door to the sheepfold, but man cannot see except that the Spirit directs his eyes (John 10:7; 1 Corinthians 12:3). (4) Utterance, liberty, or afflatus, does not come to the preacher at his will, but the Spirit can open the door of utterance so that he can speak with a tongue of fire (Colossians 4:3). (5) The door of access to the Father can be opened only by him who has the key of David. He can open and none can shut and none can open. He has the keys of death and hell (Revelation 1:18; Revelation 3:7-8). So at Ephesus, God opened to Paul a door of utterance, and to the people the door of attention, faith and salvation. It was great and effectual. Neither the synagogue nor the Greek ecclesia, nor the proconsul, nor Satan and all his demons, could shut it.

The expressions in the chapter that mark the progress of the work are: (1) The baptism of the twelve disciples in the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:6) so that Paul at one stroke gained twelve mighty helpers; (2) all Asia heard the word (Acts 19:10); (3) special miracles conquer demons (Acts 19:11-12); (4) fear fell upon all, and the name of Jesus was magnified (Acts 19:17); (5) confessions were made (Acts 19:18) ; (6) the burning of the books (Acts 19:19) ; (7) so mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed (Acts 19:20); (8) demons were made to refuse recognition of impostors.

Acts 20:17; Acts 20:28; Acts 20:35, proves that under Spirit-guidance elders were ordained and instructed. The great converts of this meeting were Tychicus and Trophimus (20:4) Epaphras (Colossians 1:7), and the family of Philemon (Philem. 2). The following scriptures show that no other preacher in the history of the world labored under such hard conditions, suffered as much, or carried such a burden. He was in the shadow of death, and exposed to the daily malice of earth and hell for three years: Acts 20:18-21; Acts 20:26-27; Acts 20:31-35; 1 Corinthians 4:11-13; 1 Corinthians 15:19; 1 Corinthians 15:32; 2 Corinthians 1:8-10; 2 Corinthians 4:5-15; 2 Corinthians 6:4-10; 2 Corinthians 11:23-28. It is evident that in this three years occurred many of the horrible privations, perils, imprisonments, scourgings, hunger, cold, sickness, and daily death, and the burdens enumerated in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28. The fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus (1 Corinthians 15:32) has no reference to the Demetrius mob, for that had not yet occurred.

It must be understood literally, that he had been thrown to the wild beasts in the arena of the theatre, and died under their claws and fangs) but, as at Lystra, where he was stoned to death, was restored by the miraculous power of God (2 Corinthians 1:8-10). He expressly says of this occasion: "We are made a spectacle unto the world, both angels and men" (1 Corinthians 4:9). The Greek is theatron, to which he again refers in Hebrews 10:33. It was at this time he wrote: "If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we of all men are most pitiable" (1 Corinthians 15:19). It was of this period he wrote: "I bear branded on my body the marks [Greek: stigmata] of Jesus" (Galatians 6:17). From head to foot he was crowned with ineffaceable scars. It was of this time he wrote: "Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and we toil, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things, even till now" (1 Corinthians 4:11-13).

He never knew where he could stay at night. Consumed with hunger and thirst, he preached in rags. We would not do it. See the spruce, dapper messengers gather in our assemblies, shining in spotless collars and cuffs, and think of Paul in rags. See him burdened with the care of all the churches. See him going from house to house by day and night for three years, pleading with tears. See him the victim of foul aspersion and misrepresentation. Scorn gibes him. Mockery crowns him with thorns. Envy, jealousy, and malice, raging furies, seek to tear him limb from limb. Defeated greed, slanderer, and exposed uncleanness, like harpies, pick and hawk him with beak and talons. Tyranny binds him with chains to cold rocks that vultures may gnaw his vitals. Every day he dies, every day he is crucified, every day persecution drives cruel spikes and nails through his hands and feet. In the gloom of every night demons come like vampires, or hooting owls, or howling wolves, or hideous nightmares, or croaking ravens, to break his spirit. Hell’s cartoonists sketch his future in a background of evil omens and apprehensions. It was of these trials he wrote:

"But in everything commending ourselves, as ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; in pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things" (2 Corinthians 6:4-10).

There are several items that need to be noted in particular: He was supported there by the work of his hands. Perhaps once Corinth sent him a contribution, or at least some kind words, which he counted as food (1 Corinthians 16:17-18). The designation given to the gospel here and the preceding and subsequent references thereto is "The Way," i.e., the way of life (vv. 9, 23). The name originated with our Lord: "I am the Way" (John 14:6), and it was twice used in Acts before the double use of this chapter (Acts 9:2; Acts 18:25) and three times subsequently Acts (22:4; 24:14, 22). It became common in the early centuries.

Note the great special service rendered to Paul by Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus. When the mob sought him at their house they offered to "lay down their own necks" that their guest might escape (Romans 16:3).

This tour, in its preaching, and particularly in the four great letters, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, settled forever the systematic theology of salvation by grace through faith, and furnished all subsequent ages with the storehouse of arguments for justification by faith, and vicarious expiation. Out of these letters came both the inspiration and power of the reformation. No man questions their authority. They constitute Paul’s Gospel. A summary of the events condensed in Acts 20:1-6 is as follows: While yet at Ephesus, Paul, on varied information, had written I Corinthians, in which he had promised to visit them. But Timothy’s report made him hesitate. He then sent Titus, intending to go to Corinth first, after leaving Ephesus, if Titus brought back a good report in time. But as Titus had not returned up to the time he left Ephesus, he went to Troas expecting there to meet Titus with such a report as would justify going to Corinth from that point. While waiting there he preached effectually and established a church, but though God opened him a door of success, he was consumed with anxiety about matters in Corinth, and as Titus did not come with news, he closed his meeting and passed over into Macedonia to visit the churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. In Macedonia, Titus joined him with good news in the main from Corinth, and so from Macedonia he wrote the second letter to the Corinthians, again promising to be with them speedily (2 Cor. 1:1-2:13). Passing through Macedonia, confirming the churches, he came to Corinth at last (Acts 20:1-3), and spent the winter there. It was during this winter’s sojourn at Corinth that he wrote the letters, Galatians and Romans. From Corinth he had expected to sail direct for Syria. Finding out a plot of the Jews to entrap and slay him at the seaport Cenchrea, he returned by land to Macedonia. And from Philippi he sent ahead to Troas, the brethren named in Acts 20:4, and then after the Passover he, with Luke and maybe others, followed them to Troas. The time in Europe was nearly a year.

AT TROAS

The incidents at Troas are these: After a space of five days, he arrived at Troas and stayed a week, and on the first day of the week they all came together to partake of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper was administered probably by the church at Troas, and all the context shows that these visiting brethren from sister churches participated in all particulars of that supper. Luke says they assembled to break bread. Dr. J. R. Graves took the position that only the members of a local church, celebrating the supper, should participate in its observance. He once asked me what I thought of his position. I told him that as a matter of right, only the church could administer the supper, and only the members of that church could claim as a right to participate, but inasmuch as visiting brethren and sisters are of like faith and order, that on invitation they might participate. Then we had it on this case at Troas, and on the uniform Baptist custom. Notice that whenever they go to observe the Lord’s Supper the preacher says, "Any brethren or sisters of sister churches of like faith and order, knowing themselves to be in good order [not disorder], are invited to participate with us." That is what is called inter-church communion, but not a very good name for it. I always invite the visiting brethren and sisters, but I specify very particularly who is invited.

Another incident occurred that interrupted the preaching a little. Paul, knowing that he had to leave the next day, preached a sermon that night. He was in the third story preaching. It was hot in that country over there, so they had all the windows open for air, and a boy, Eutychus, bad the best place in the house, right in the back window, and as Paul went on preaching until midnight (he did not deliver fifteen-minute essays – he preached a sermon) Eutychus’ eyes got heavy, and he went to sleep. Something perhaps disturbed him, maybe a fly lighted on him, anyhow he fell out of the window – fell from the third story and was killed instantly. Therefore don’t get sleepy in church. Paul went down and brought him back to life by the exercise of miraculous power, and went right back and resumed his sermon. When he got through they celebrated the Lord’s Supper. Some Campbellite brothers and sisters say it should be administered only on the first day of the week, and every first day of the week, and cite this case here at Troas when they came together on the first day of the week to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It was a splendid day of the week to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, but Paul’s sermon was so long that it was next day before he even got through that sermon. They did not partake of the Supper until Monday.

When we get a three years’ sample of a man’s preaching we can have some idea, especially if he is preaching every day and every night in that three years, as to the matter, the scope, and the manner of his preaching. Of course, if he hasn’t got much to preach, he could not preach three years right straight along – he would run out of material – but Paul was brimful, and the scope of his preaching is expressed in two ways: (1) That he had withheld nothing that was profitable. (2) That he had not shunned to teach the whole counsel of God. That would have been a fine seminary course if we could have been there three years; could have taken that three years in the Bible by the greatest expounder since the Master went to heaven. He preached at every town, and particularly in preaching to the unconverted, he says, "Is testified both to the Jews and to the Greeks) repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." Some preachers go around and leave out repentance. He ought to preach the gospel, and he should preach repentance as he preaches faith, and he needs to preach it in the order – repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. As to the manner of his preaching, notice the address itself, how he describes it. He says, "Why, brethren, you know that I was with you in humility. By the space of three years, publicly and privately, from house to house, day and night, with tears, I ministered unto you."

If we should put together all we have suffered, it would not be as much as that man suffered in that three years. We have not made half as many sacrifices as he did. We have never come as near laying a whole burnt offering upon the altar of God. In analyzing this address, observe that there are three prophecies in it: (1) He says, "After I am gone, wolves are going to come and ruin the flock." (2) "After I am gone many of your own selves, right on the inside of the church, will rise up and mar the work that has been done. (3) And he says, "Brethren, you will never see me again." This is his farewell discourse. Those are the three prophecies. The events of this tour testify to the first day of the week as the Christian sabbath. We have the record of this assembly on the first day of the week, and in a letter on this tour he says, "On the first day of the week [and this applies to the churches generally] lay by in store, that there may be no collections when I come." In other words, he says, "Every week, just according to your ability, give what you give liberally, cheerfully, and lay it by in store, so when I come you will have the collection ready."

QUESTIONS

1. What the seventh adversary?

2. How did this one stir up the eighth adversary?

3. How was the ninth adversary stirred up?

4. How was the tenth adversary stirred up?

5. What was the outcome of it all?

6. What are the excellencies of the town clerk’s speech?

7. Analyze the "great door and effectual," opened to Paul.

8. What the expressions in the chapter which show the marvelous development of the work?

9. Who were the great converts of this meeting?

10. What the character and hard condition of Paul’8 ministry in Ephesus?

11. How was Paul supported there?

12. What designation was given to the gospel there, and what the preceding and subsequent references thereto?

13. What great special service rendered to Paul by Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus?

14. What is the full significance of this missionary tour?

15. Give a summary of the events condensed in Acts 20:1-6, and the time covered by them.

16. What the incidents and lessons of the stay at Troas, and what the bearing of the observance of the Lord’s Supper there on interchurch communion?

17. Who was a great advocate of the non-interchurch communion, and what his main argument?

18. Analyze the address to the Ephesian elders, showing particularly the matter, scope, and manner of Paul’s ministry.

19. What is the testimony of the events of this tour to the first day of the week as the Christian sabbath?

Verses 1-36

XXVIII

FROM EPHESUS TO JERUSALEM

Acts 21:1-36.

The scripture for this chapter is Acts 21, and the theme is "From Ephesus to Jerusalem." The party that journeyed from Ephesus to Jerusalem was Paul, Luke, and Trophimus, and doubtless others. They saw at Rhodes one of the seven wonders of the world. The entrance to the harbor at Rhodes was narrow, and straddled across that entrance was the Colossus of Rhodes, a gigantic bronze image in the shape of a man – an image designed to represent the sun. Vessels sailed between its legs, but at the time of Paul this image by an earthquake had been broken in its legs, had fallen over on the ground, and was lying there. It remained there on the ground for many centuries after Paul. Finally a Jew bought it, and it took nine hundred camels to carry the bronze away.

AT TYRE

In Acts 26 Paul says that he had preached on all the coast of Judea, and Philip, the evangelist, having his headquarters at Caesarea, could very easily have planted a church at Tyre. Our Saviour himself visited Tyre once, and there occurred an instance of salvation to a Gentile, granting of the prayer of the Syrophoenician woman. We learn from Acts 11 that there were people in Tyre who had been converted in Jerusalem, and dispersed by the persecution of Saul, and through these men that church at Tyre may have been established.

There are two notable events in the week’s stay of Paul’s party there, to which I think it necessary to call attention. One is that the prophets there distinctly made known to Paul by the Holy Spirit that he should not go to Jerusalem. The other event is the exceedingly touching farewell of the body of Christians there when they followed Paul – men, women and children – all of them, down to the beach, and had a prayer on the beach just before he left them.

Combining the statement in this section (Acts 21:4), about what the prophet said to Paul, that he should not go to Jerusalem, and the full statement in this same chapter when Agabus came down from Judea and in an emblematic way showed what would happen to Paul if he did not go to Jerusalem, and the passage in the next chapter (Acts 22:17-21), where Paul relates an experience of his that took place on his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion, in which Christ had appeared unto him and told him that the Jews there would never receive his testimony, and to get away and go far hence to the Gentiles, I do not think that Paul was justifiable in going to Jerusalem.

He went against the expressed declaration of the Spirit of God speaking through the prophets; and the explanation of his going is that the man’s love for home mission work, and his intense desire to save the Jerusalem Jews, always kept him looking back toward Jerusalem. In the letter to the Romans he says that he could wish himself accursed from Christ for his brethren’s sake according to the flesh. And there is no doubt that his going to Jerusalem at this time was wholly unnecessary. The purpose of the going was to carry the big contribution that had been collected, and the representatives of the churches were right there with him, and were carrying the money.

It is a fact that his going at that time kept him shut up in prison four years – two years of the time at Caesarea, in which we have no history of him. If there were any letters written they were not preserved. The other two years of the time he was at Rome, where he was carried. There we have Borne great work done by him, but I can’t persuade myself that it was the will of God for him to go to Jerusalem at that time. It puts the greatest worker in the world out of commission for four years, except as I think, it is quite probable that when he was at Caesarea that two years, he helped Luke write his Gospel, and later gave us his prison letters from Rome.

AT PTOLEMAIS

We account for disciples at Ptolemais just as we account for them at Tyre. Paul came from Tyre to Ptolemais by ship. There are two historic events for which Ptolemais is noted. First, for the most heroic daring events by Richard the Lion Hearted during the Crusades, when he took this impregnable place by storm, and second, the vain attempt of Napoleon to take it by storm or siege.

There is a relation between Paul and Philip. When Paul got to Caesarea, Philip, the evangelist, entertained him. It will be remembered that Philip was one of the seven deacons, and that when Paul’s persecution drove him from Jerusalem he became Philip the Evangelist, and he is the next man after Stephen to enlarge the thought of the spread of the gospel among other nations, which Paul himself ultimately carried to its greatest expansion. This is the first time that they had met since Paul’s persecution drove him out of Jerusalem. How delightful must have been their conversation upon the great growth of the idea that the gospel was meant for all men!

An Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in the case of Philip’s four daughters, which has a bearing on woman’s work in the gospel. The Old Testament prophecy was a prophecy of Joel quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost that the Spirit would come upon women as well as men, and upon girls, or handmaidens. This shows that the women were to have an active part and an influential part in the kingdom of God, and they have always had. There is another Old Testament prophecy, the famous song-story of Deborah. They always were good at publishing news, and when it is good news, one woman can tell it to as many people as ten men can, especially if she has a telephone.

Here the question arises about the sphere of her prophesying. In 1 Corinthians 11:5; 1 Corinthians 11:13, Paul says that when she does prophesy she should prophesy with her head covered, and in 1 Corinthians 14:31; 1 Corinthians 14:34 he says that it is not her province to prophesy before mixed audiences in the churches, but that leaves a very wide margin for her work.

From the history here (Acts 21:10-11), I suppose that Agabus had heard of Paul’s arrival at Caesarea, and of his purpose to go to Jerusalem, and came expressly to warn against his going there. Caesarea was not a great distance from Jerusalem. Paul was at Caesarea two weeks. Men of his reputation, and with travelers going to and fro, it is likely that Agabus heard of his being there (Agabus the same prophet we have heard of before in Acts II), and under the promptings of the Spirit comes down there and shows Paul what will happen if he goes.

Those enormous contributions that had been gathered from all over Macedonia and Achaia, and possibly the contributions of the Galatians were added, though there is no record of it, but certainly all Macedonia and Achaia had part in it. Considering Acts 21:16, we see that it was necessary to take with him from Caesarea a Jerusalem host to entertain him when he got to Jerusalem. Mnason was the man who went. He was an early disciple, and he went with Paul from Caesarea in order to entertain him when he got to Jerusalem, since this was the interval between the Passover and Pentecost. Paul at first tried to get there for the Passover, and finding that impossible, he stopped at Philip’s for the Passover, and was now hurrying to get there for Pentecost, which is fifty days after, and during these great feasts Jerusalem had a million strangers in it, and if one didn’t know beforehand where he was going to stay all night, he couldn’t find out after he got there. In a marvelous modern book by a Baptist, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Mnason of this section and Gaius of 2 John are made the types of Christian hosts and of hospitality. When he was taking his pilgrim from earth to heaven he made him stay one night with Brother Mnason and another night with Brother Gaius on the way, since they are so noted in the New Testament history for their hospitality. The brethren of Acts 21:17 were of the Jerusalem church, being the brethren of the house of Brother Mnason. Next day they met the Jerusalem brethren and apostles.

Paul took his companions with him because they were messengers from the churches that had contributed, and the elders were present because they were to receive and disburse these contributions. We learn in Acts II that when Paul and Barabbas went to Jerusalem to carry a contribution to the Christian brethren in Judea, they delivered it to the elders. The Gentile that he took with him was Trophimus, the Ephesian, and in Acts 15 we learn that he took Titus with him for a special reason; so he takes Trophimus on this journey for a special reason, i.e., as if to say, "Here is a Gentile. And he has a bag of money for your people. Are your Jewish prejudiced brethren going to receive this money brought by this Gentile brother?"

Though Luke does not here refer by name to the business part of this meeting, we see from a subsequent statement that he knew it, and did not mean to suppress the evidence of it. The passage is Acts 24:17, which Luke wrote, and which shows that the purpose of going to Jerusalem at this time was to deliver this money.

Paul was apprehensive that this business might not be well received. Romans 15:25-31 says, "But now, I say, I go unto Jerusalem, ministering unto the saints. For it hath been the good pleasure of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints that are at Jerusalem. Yea, it hath been their good pleasure; and their debtors they are. For, if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, they owe it to them, also to minister unto them in carnal things. When, therefore, I have accomplished this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will go on by you unto Spain. And I know that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of Christ. Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from them that are disobedient in Judea, and that my ministration which I have for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints."

We see from this that Paul was a little uneasy on this question, and that he wrote to these Romans to ask them to pray that it might work out all right. It is a little singular that when he set out after that decision, given in Acts 15, that they charge him to remember the poor saints in Judea, since he always did that very thing, and yet he knew how intense was the prejudice there. He not only worked to get a good contribution, and from the right motives, and was anxious that it might be rightly distributed, but he prayed for it after he got it, that it might get there and accomplish its office.

One of the most remarkable prayers of that kind occurred in connection with the history of Brown University, the first Baptist college in the United States. It was very small when it started, and the day they took the first contribution for it, eleven men put up a dollar apiece with which to start it, and they got down around that little pile of money and prayed and prayed that God, who multiplied the loaves and fishes, would let it eventuate in a great institution of learning. I preached a sermon once on the thought: "After making a great contribution, what then?"

Having gotten through with the money part of this meeting, Paul rehearsed the events of this tour. I can imagine that scene there, and all those Jerusalem preachers sitting there, Trophimus, the Gentile, standing by, when he rehearsed one by one every marvelous triumph of God in the salvation of the Gentiles. When they heard it they glorified God, and it is to their everlasting credit that they did. What took place immediately after would indicate that they didn’t glorify him much, but they did glorify God, and Paul thus secured from James and from the Jerusalem brethren, praise that God was saving the Gentiles. That was a fine point gained.

Let us expound Acts 21:20-26, showing first how James and the Jerusalem church understood a Jewish Christian’s relation to the Mosaic law; second, a Gentile’s relation thereto; third, the difference between them and Paul; fourth, the motive prompting the suggestion that they made to Paul; fifth, the reason for Paul’s adopting the suggestion; sixth, the good that it did. They said to him (for his presence was embarrassing), "You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are here in Jerusalem who are believers, and every one of them is zealous for the law. They all observe every Levitical custom, and they have been informed that you are teaching the Jews all over the world to forsake Moses, not to circumcise their children, and not to observe the customs. Now, in order to convince these people that you yourself correct errors and do observe these customs, we suggest, as four men have taken the Nazirite vow, that you take them and be at the charges necessary for the accomplishment of their vow, footing the bill, and go with them to the Temple; and that will prove to these thousands of Jewish Christians that you are all right as regards the law." Those are the facts as stated in that suggestion. The suggestion was closed this way: "This doesn’t apply to Brother Trophimus here. He is a Gentile, and we have already decided in the council that we held that the Gentiles shall have no burden put upon them but to refrain from eating blood, and from fornication and from idols." So we see that James and that whole crowd, while truly Christians, yet made their Christianity simply a sect of the Jews, and they kept up all the Mosaic customs. We see that they did not now hold that a Gentile, in order to be a Christian, must do that. The difference between them and Paul was this: It was just as plain to Paul as sunlight that the whole Jewish economy was about to pass away, in fact, as it had already done in divine order. He had said that circumcision and uncircumcision, neither availeth anything; that a man was not a Jew who was simply a Jew outwardly, but one who was a Jew inwardly; that all these things were shadows. The substance was in Christ, and when the substance came it was foolishness to go back and take up the weak and beggarly elements of the world. That is what he taught and believed, and therein he differed from them. Just twelve years from the day that this event occurred, Jerusalem and the Jewish nation were wiped off the map by the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, and after that nobody thought about going up to the Temple and observing the days and the services and the customs of a shadowy covenant that had passed away forever.

The motive that prompted their suggestion to Paul was very probably a kind one. He had shown such signal generosity in devoting four years to raising this fund, getting the churches to send messengers, always going by and showing the utmost courtesy and deference to the Jerusalem Christians, and to the other apostles, that they didn’t want the rabid members on their side to raise a row with Paul. I think that was the motive, and so far as the history goes, the Jewish Christians didn’t raise any row with him at this time at all.

How do you account for Paul’s adoption of the suggestion? I have no doubt that it seemed to him just like a grown-up man riding corn-stalk horses, as if to say, "When I was a child I thought as a child, I spake as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things, and these things have served their purpose." After showing that nothing could induce him to circumcise a Gentile in order to his salvation, he would be a Jew to gain a Jew, and he would be under the law to gain those under the law, and in matters of expediency, when no great principle was involved, and when it was merely his giving up a privilege of his, he was willing to give it up, and thus Paul did concede in this case. And he said that he did it in order to put himself in saving touch with those under the law, though he himself was not under the law.

Did it do any good? Not a bit in the world. It was the most unwise thing that could possibly have been done, for it put Paul conspicuously in the Temple for a week. It required seven days to consummate this vow, and Jerusalem was full of Jews who were not Christians, from all over the world, and somebody from some of the places where he had been would be sure to recognize him, and they hated him worse, than they did the devil. Indeed, they called on the devil to help them hate him, and that very thing happened. The Jews from Ephesus saw him, and one of them had noticed him on the streets walking with this Gentile, Trophimus; so when they recognized him in the Temple they raised the row that led to his four years of imprisonment. They rushed up and grabbed him and dragged him down the steps in order to get him out of the holy precincts and then kill him. They meant to kill him, and nothing but the interposition of a third party kept them from killing him. And the cry went over Jerusalem ; it was like touching a powder magazine with a spark of fire; the streets were soon thronged with people. The tower of Antonio overlooking the Temple, was held by a strong band of soldiers. There were two garrisoned places, one, the Praetorian, and the other, the Tower of Antonio. The centurions held the tower, and the chiliarchs, captains of thousands, held the Praetorian, and when they saw a tumult and a man about to be killed, the centurion notified the chiliarch (Roman legions were divided into ten parts of a thousand men. Each thousand was divided into ten companies of one hundred men each; a centurion commanded a company of one hundred and a chiliarch was a captain of a thousand, a cohort, a band) and they rushed in and rescued Paul from his murderers.

Similar recent occurrences had prepared the Roman guards for such an emergency as this. It is a matter of fact that from the crucifixion of Christ until the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, a little less than forty years later, Jerusalem was like a volcano preparing for an eruption, and occasionally breaking out. In A.D. 44, when Cuspus Fadus was made the procurator on the death of that Agrippa (Herod Agrippa mentioned in Acts 12), he declared that the crown of Herod and the gorgeous robes of; the high priest (those were the two highest symbols of authority) should be carried into the tower of Antonio and kept so that the Romans holding the crown of the ruler and the robe of the high priest, could fill both offices as they wished.

When the Jews learned that these sacred things were defiled by being put in charge of the Roman soldiers, they raised an awful row – just such a tumult as occurred here – and they raised such a big fuss that the Emperor Claudius had to revoke the order. He saw it meant war, and how much bloodshed the war would occasion, it was hard to tell. It put him to the expense of sending seven or eight legions over there and revoking the order. Then, in A.D. 49, when Gumanus was procurator, one of the soldiers on the Tower of Antonio, looking down and watching the Jews, what they were doing around the Temple, and becoming disgusted at them, made a most insulting gesture, and the Jews took up rocks and began to stone him, stormed the tower itself, and raised such a mob that it called out the entire Roman force there and from ten to twenty thousand Jews perished. A great many of them were just trampled to death in the crowd.

Then a little later, while Cumanus was procurator, a bandit highwayman, by the pass from Jericho to Jerusalem, to which our Saviour referred when a man fell among thieves on that trip, robbed a Roman messenger, and the Romans held the neighboring villages responsible, and in burning those villages one soldier came across an Old Testament, the Old Bible, and he burned it openly in sight of the Jews and blasphemed as he burned it. That made such a row that the Romans themselves had to execute that soldier.

Then again in A.D. 54 (four years after that time), the Samaritans, who had refused to entertain Christ because he was going toward Jerusalem, killed a party of pilgrims on their way to the feast at Jerusalem, whereupon Eleazar, a patriotic bandit like Barabbas, gathered a squad and killed a large number of the Samaritans. The Samaritans; appealing to Cumanus with a bribe, he decided against the Jews, and the Jews fought him. One of the leading Jews of the family of Annas went to Rome and a female slave named Pellas at that time had a great deal of influence through a Jewess that was a favorite of the Emperor, and they secured a decision in favor of the Jews on condition that the Jews would then petition that Felix, the brother of the slave, Pellas, should be procurator; and so Felix comes, and when this Felix came to be procurator, he stirred up things greatly. He entrapped that bandit chief, Eleazar, and sent him in chains to Rome. He, through a machination of the very Simon Magus that Peter denounced, seduces Drusilla, the wife of a king, who was the sister of Agrippa. Then, because Jonathan protested, he hired assassins to stab Jonathan, and thus, from A.D. 57 (within a year of the time Paul was there), everybody employed assassins.

It was just about as bad as it was when Caesar Borgia was pope of Rome. He was the worst assassin, except Philip II of Spain) that the world ever saw. Seven weeks before Paul came to Jerusalem, an Egyptian came and claimed to be the Messiah according to the Jewish idea, and he said if they wanted to have proof that he was, and would follow him outside of the city he would stand there and look and the walls would fall down, and the Roman power would be overcome. About 30,000 Jews followed him. The Romans charged them, killed about 400, captured a few thousand, and that Egyptian escaped, and what became of him nobody ever found out, but that is what is meant by Claudius Lysias, the chiliarch, when he said to Paul, "Are you not that Egyptian that led out the four thousand assassins?" It happened just seven weeks before. And it was not long until Jerusalem fell as a result of another such uprising, when Titus came and took the city and many thousands perished with the Temple and the holy city.

QUESTIONS

1. Who constituted the party of this part of the tour?

2. What was one of the seven wonders of the world did they see at Rhodes, what its history and purpose, what its state then, and what became of it?

3. How may we account for the disciples at Tyre, and what the recorded instance of its touch with Christ and his gospel?

4. What notable events in the week’s stay of Paul’s party there?

5. Was Paul justifiable in going to Jerusalem on this trip, and what the proof?

6. How may we account for the disciples at Ptolemais?

7. For what two historical events is Ptolemais noted?

8. What the relation between Paul and Philip, and what the reasonable supposition of the matter of their conversation for nearly two weeks?

9. What Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in the case of Philip’s four daughters, what its bearing on woman’s work in the gospel, and according to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, what her sphere of prophesying?

10. What the purpose of the coming of Agabus to Caesarea to see Paul, and what the proof?

11. What was the most valuable part of that baggage which they carried to Jerusalem?

12. Why was it necessary for Paul to take from Caesarea a host to entertain him at Jerusalem, and who was the man?

13. In what great modern book are Mnason and Gaius made the type of Christian hosts and of hospitality?

14. Were the brethren of Acts 21:17 of the Jerusalem church?

15. Why should Paul’s companions go with him to see James, what Gentile was among them, on what other occasion had Paul taken a Gentile with him, and why the elders all present at the interview?

16. Prove from a subsequent statement that Luke knew of the business part of this meeting, and did not mean to suppress the evidence of it.

17. What striking proof that Paul was apprehensive that this business might not be well received?

18. What followed the business part of this meeting, and what the moral effect of it?

19. Expound Acts 21:20-26 in six distinct items.

20. What similar recent occurrences had prepared the Roman guards for such emergency as this?

Verses 8-9

XII

PHILIP TO THE FRONT

Acts 8:4-40; Acts 21:8-9.

You will find in the four lists of the twelve apostles the name of Philip (see Matthew 10:2; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:14 f; Acts 1:13 f). Was the Philip we are to discuss here, Philip, the deacon of Acts 6:5, or was he Philip, the apostle, and what the proof? My answer is: (1) In Acts 8:1 it is declared that in the persecution conducted by Saul of Tarsus, all of the congregation was scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles, and these latter were not scattered; (2) Acts 8:14 locates the apostles still at Jerusalem when they heard of Philip’s work in Samaria; (3) Acts 8:40 carries this Philip to Caesarea; (4) Acts 21:8-9 shows that many years later he was still living at Caesarea where he entertained Paul, and expressly declares that he was one of the seven deacons. I submit this circumstantial proof of identity because Romanist traditions confound him with Philip the apostle, just as they confound James (Acts 15:13) and Jude (Judges 1:1), half-brothers of our Lord, with the apostles – James, the son of Alpheus (Luke 6:15), and Judas, the brother of James (Luke 6:16). The scriptures concerning this Philip are Acts 6:5; Acts 8:4-13; Acts 8:26-40; Acts 21:8-9, which show that he was a Hellenistic Jew, and that he is said to have had four daughters who prophesied.

It is well just here to locate on a map the Azotus of Acts 8:40 and trace a line to Caesarea. Gaza is near to Azotus, the most southern of the Palestinian cities on the Mediterranean coast, and going up that coast to Caesarea, straight up the coast line, you have the line of Philip’s travels, and the cities in which he preached. On this same line are Lydda (Acts 9:32) and Joppa (Acts 9:36). This shows that Philip’s work probably led to Christ the disciples whom Peter found at these two cities.

In Acts 10:37 Peter declares that Cornelius, the centurion at Caesarea, already knew the word published about our Lord. It is quite probable that through Philip’s preaching at Caesarea he had obtained some of the knowledge which prepared him to receive Peter, as he is the only preacher that we know of at that time preaching in Caesarea.

Now, trace a line on the map from Tyre through Ptolemais to Caesarea. Tyre is in Phoenicia, the northern part of the Mediterranean coast of Judea. Going from Tyre south of Caesarea, an intervening seaport between Tyre and Caesarea is Ptolemais. It is probable that the congregations at Tyre and Ptolemais found by Paul (Acts 21:3-8) were established by Philip. If we connect Acts 2:17-18 (Joel’s prophecy), that on the handmaidens should the Spirit of God be poured out, with Acts 21:9, "Philip had four daughters who prophesied," and Mark 16:17-18, and connect, "These signs shall follow them that believe," with Acts 2:43, which tells us that the apostles gave many signs and wonders, with Acts 8:7, where Philip works miracles, it is evident that both Philip and his daughters had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

With these facts and probabilities before us, let us give a summary" of the scriptural history of the life and labors of Philip. He was a Hellenistic Jew, attending the Passover at which our Lord was crucified; was in the great audience addressed by Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:5-11); was converted, with his daughters, and all received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and were well-known factors in all the marvelous history of that series of great meetings, lasting for three-and a-half years, recorded in Acts 2:5-8:4. Being well known to all the multitude of the disciples, he was by them elected to the office of deacon, and was second of the seven. But when the persecution of Saul ended the great series of meetings, dispersed the congregation, and thereby left no deacon’s work to do, he became an evangelist, and boldly carried the gospel to the Samaritans, as our Lord himself had done (John 4), and under Spirit-guidance went into the desert near Gaza, and led the Ethiopian treasurer, a Jewish proselyte, to Christ, through which convert, according to history and tradition, Ethiopia was evangelized. Then, under the same Spirit-guidance, he carried the gospel to the whole Mediterranean coast of Judea, from Azotus to Tyre, establishing congregations at Saroaria; Peter following him at Lydda, Sharon, Joppa, and Azotus, Lydda, Sharon, Joppa, Caesarea, Ptolemais, and Tyre, thus influencing the tides of commerce and merchants that through these great seaports reached all the western world.

The remarkable things in these labors are: (1) He commenced at the important city of Samaria, on the great northern thoroughfare from Jerusalem to Galilee, Damascus, and the Euphrates. (2) Then near Gaza on the great thoroughfare from Jerusalem to Africa. (3) Then the coast line of the Mediterranean, whose seaports were the starting points of the sea thoroughfares over which travel and commerce reached northern Africa, Asia Minor, and all Europe. (4) With headquarters at Caesarea, the Roman capital of the East, he was in touch with all the thought, official power, and intercommunication of imperial Rome, the mistress of the world. (5) The selection of these strategical positions was not accidental, but Spirit-guided in every instance; so we see from the record that he was to be the forerunner of the Jerusalem apostles and of Paul, Peter, and John following him to the city of Caesarea; Paul following him at Tyre, Ptolemais, and Caesarea. (6) He was the first, after our Lord himself, to openly carry the gospel to the Samaritans, thus breaking down the wall of partition that had stood between Jews and Samaritans since Assyria conquered and led away into captivity the ten tribes, and repeopled the city of Samaria with aliens, and put over the country captive priests that established a rival worship to Jerusalem (2 Kings 17:23-24), which later, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, opposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, and persisted in hostility and alien worship until the days of our Lord (John 4:9-26). The hostility that had stood that long, all through these centuries of strife, was now broken down by the preaching of Philip in that city of Samaria.

His position in the spread of the kingdom is between Stephen and Paul in understanding that in Christ there can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, bondmen, nor freemen, "but Christ is all in all"; he stands between Stephen and Paul in following worldwide lines of evangelization. Just here we are interested to know what were the themes of Philip’s preaching in Samaria.

The record says that he preached Christ unto them (Acts 8:5); and he preached unto them concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Christ. These themes indicate that Jesus died to save Samaritans, and that the kingdom of heaven was intended to include Samaritans. The record also says that demons were cast out, and malignant diseases cured as signs of this man’s preaching. Then followed a most remarkable result. When those of the city of Samaria understood that Christ had died for them, and that they were included in the scope of the kingdom of heaven, and this was attested by such remarkable signs, then they all were of one accord, giving attention to the preaching of Philip, "And there was much joy in the city" (Acts 8:8).

For a long time there had been a man in Samaria named Simon, a magician, or sorcerer, who dominated Samaria, and who claimed to have the great power of God. He had bewitched these people by his sorcery, so that they held him in regard as the messenger of God in their city. No doubt the bewitching by sorcery included all of these magical arts and tricks of legerdemain, and even pseudomiracles, in order to attest him, so that the city of Samaria, when Philip reached it, was thus full of malignant forms of diseases. It was demon-possessed, diseased and deluded by sorcery.

In this connection we notice that Acts 8:12 says that those who had been subject to Simon, when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, were baptized, both men and women. You learn from that, that faith must precede baptism, and, therefore, subjects of baptism must be people able to repent and believe and hence they are here said to be men and women. From Acts 8:13 we learn that a mere demagogue, when the crowd won’t follow him, will follow the crowd. When Simon’s flock all left him, he jumped over the fence.

There are some exceedingly fine lessons concerning Simon Magus that will come out in the next chapter; so I gather just this one here. Later we will take up this theme: "The apostles following Philip." Then we will consider Simon Magus in connection with Peter. The only lesson to which I call attention here is that when the true miracles of God come in touch with pseudomiracles, they show up the pseudomiracles. Simon saw that Philip had a power which he did not possess, and that when the crowd left him he followed the crowd, and was filled with wonder at these signs of Philip – they were so different from his, so manifestly genuine, so much more to the point, while his were so manifestly demerited in their intent – just as when Paul came to a certain island there was a sorcerer, Elymas, who dominated the island and influenced the government, but he was rebuked and smitten with blindness by Paul, and sorcery gave way before the power of the gospel. Just as in the city of Ephesus, the people who had been deluded by books of magic, when the true gospel of Jesus Christ came in conflict with it, the magic was abandoned and their books piled on the street, though very costly, and made into a bonfire, whose sparks ascended to the skies, announcing the triumph of the word of God over the delusions of Satan.

PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH – ACTS 8

The great moral lessons of this section are the following:

(1) God sometimes calls men from preaching to crowds in a city to preaching to one man in a lonely place. Just so we trace Philip. There, in that big meeting in Samaria, he receives a call to pass Jerusalem by, going down into the desert a strange direction of God. When he gets there his audience is just one man.

(2) Men sometimes get less from a heterodox and hypocritical Jerusalem than from a wayfarer in a desert place. This treasurer of the queen of Ethiopia was a proselyte, not a Jew, but a proselyte to the Jews. He had been attending the great feasts in Jerusalem, and was now returning. He found no light in Jerusalem. He had made a long trip, and out there on his way back he meets a solitary man in the desert and gets light and life and salvation from him.

(3) The third moral lesson is that the conversion of one man may revolutionize a nation. There are more results abiding today from this desert meeting of two men than from the great meeting in the city of Samaria. History tells us that this man, after his conversion, being so influential, became a preacher of the gospel in his own country, Ethiopia, which answers to Abyssinia of the present day; that the whole country was brought to Christ through this man, and in Abyssinia today there is more religion than there is in Samaria where this big meeting was, and it is a purer religion. So God understood what he was doing.

Once a pastor preached a sermon somewhat on that line on Sunday, and a man in the audience was greatly distressed at heart, and it seemed that it would be a great difficulty to get him to move away from a great position of usefulness to loneliness. He came back from hearing the sermon saying, "Maybe God wants me to lead somebody to Christ like that Ethiopian eunuch," and he may revolutionize a nation.

(4) There is much profit in an inquirer’s study of God’s Word. This was a very sincere man. He did not go to Jerusalem except for religious purpose; and driving along, back home in his chariot he was reading God’s Word. What great good comes to a man from a study of God’s Word!

(5) Where one wants to understand, and is in desperate earnestness about it, an interpreter will be found. You may rest assured that in your study of God’s Word, when you come to matters that you cannot explain, if you really want to understand them – if you are desperately in earnest about them – God is sure to bring you somebody that can explain every case of perplexity.

(6) The docile spirit will receive instruction from any competent source. This man had the teachable spirit. Here he is accosted by a stranger: "Understandest thou what thou readest?" And he said, "How can I, except some one shall guide me?" "And he besought Philip to come up and sit with him," whereupon this traveler climbed up into his chariot to expound that passage of God’s Word.

(7) The next moral lesson is that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. He was reading a prophecy, and the place where he read was this: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; And as a lamb before his shearer is dumb, So he openeth not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: His generation who shall declare? For his life is taken from the earth.

(8) The next lesson is that from any text in the Bible the shortest road leads to Jesus Christ. Philip took that very scripture which was puzzling this man, and showed him that the shortest road from that scripture would bring him to the very same Jesus Christ that he was reading about in that scripture. He is the lamb, the sheep, which openeth not his mouth. This was Jesus, as thus fixed by the Spirit of interpretation, and shows the deep significance of that famous fifty third chapter of Isaiah.

(9) When one is converted he seeks to obey. The eunuch says, "What doth hinder me to be baptized?" In other words, he says, "You preached Christ to me; I have taken him. Why not let me obey Christ right now? Why wait till I get back home?"

Here the question arises, Why could not the Jews at Jerusalem expound Isaiah 53?

This eunuch was up there, where were priests, rabbis, and all the Jewish people of Judea. Why could not they tell him what the prophet meant? The answer is that the Jews believed only those prophecies to be messianic that spake of the conquests of the Messiah, and as making the Jews the nation of the world. They refused to attribute to him the humiliating passages – those that told of his suffering and of his death. Some Jews even said that there had to be two Messiahs – one the great leading Messiah that was to be the great king of the dews, this conqueror of the world – and the other a Messiah of suffering.

This passage has a bearing on the act, subject, and administrator of baptism. The passage says that they got down from the chariot and that they both went down into the water, and that Philip baptized him, and that they came up out of the water. That certainly has a very decisive bearing on the "act" of baptism, as to what it is. In the preceding verse, when the eunuch said, "What binders me from being baptized?" Philip replied, "If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest." That means that it is not lawful unless one believes with all his heart. But it is very doubtful indeed whether verse 37 is a part of the text; it is certainly not in the oldest manuscripts. It was doubtless first written on the margin by some copyist and afterward got into the text.

Alexander Carson said that it was impossible for man or Satan to keep this witness from saying that immersion is baptism. Then he said that a fool once followed a wagon all the way from Glasgow to Edinburg to see if the hind wheel would ever catch up with the fore wheel. "That fool," he said, "had an errand in all that long journey, though a fool’s errand, but whoever will take both the baptizer and the baptized down into the water for the purpose of sprinkling him has not even a fool’s errand."

Old Dr. Fisher, with whom I had a debate in Waco, and also at Davilla in Milam County, in commenting on this passage, said, "If Philip preached an immersion sermon he had a sprinkling text," and quoted from Isaiah 53: "He shall sprinkle many nations." I replied by saying that the word "sprinkle" in that scripture, meant astonish, or startle, and proved it by the scholarship of the world, and that the word in Greek was thaumazo: "So shall he astonish many nations," and that it was evident by the very word astonish, which also is implied from the context: "Like as many were astonished at thee [his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men], so shall he startle [or astonish] many nations." That was my reply to him.

It may here be asked, Was the baptism of the eunuch authoritative as to the administrator? If so, why cannot a deacon baptize now? This deacon, Philip, was the evangelist at this time, and not a deacon. He had become a preacher. I have known deacons to become preachers, and I have known, in some cases, a good deacon to be spoiled to make a mighty poor preacher, but it was not so in this case.

Philip went ahead and prepared the way under God, for the apostles. We have already seen that after he baptized the eunuch he was found at Azotus, and then it is said that he preached in all the cities up the coast to Caesarea, among which were Lydda and Joppa, which Peter afterward visited and found a congregation already there, just as he had followed Philip into Samaria. He never thought to go to Samaria himself to preach, but when he heard that Philip had reached there, he and John went over to look into it. So he followed Philip to Lydda, Joppa, and Caesarea; and we see from Acts 21 that Paul, returning from a foreign missionary tour, stops at Tyre, finding a congregation, and at Ptolemais, also finding a congregation, and at Caesarea, where he found another congregation. Paul also stopped at the house of Philip, the evangelist. It is astonishing how that after the persecution of Saul of Tarsus, the pressure generally took hold of the people. They went everywhere preaching the word. They carried the gospel to Samaria, to Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea, Ptolemais, Tyre, Phoenicia) and Antioch. They are the ones that changed the tone of the preaching from Jews only, to Gentiles as well, and the apostles could hardly keep up following. They were getting there after these men had broadened the lines, lengthened the cords, and strengthened the stakes.

In Acts 8:26-29 it is said that the angel and the Spirit spoke to Philip, and, in Acts 8:39, the Spirit caught away Philip. Now, how did the angel and the Spirit thus deal with Philip? Doubtless the angel of the Lord spake to Philip in a vision; doubtless the Spirit of the Lord spake to Philip by an inside impression, and doubtless the Spirit of God moved on Philip powerfully to go to a new place.

QUESTIONS

1. Was the Philip of this section the Philip of Acts 6:5, the deacon, or the apostle Philip? What the proof?

2. Why submit this circumstantial proof of identity?

3. Group in order the scriptures concerning Philip.

4. From these scriptures was he probably a Hebrew Jew or a Hellenist Jew?

5. What do we know of his family?

6. Locate on the map the Azotus of Acts 8:40, and trace a line to Caesarea.

7. Are Lydda (Acts 9:32) and Joppa (Acts 9:36) on this line?

8. Then whose work probably led to Christ the disciples whom Peter found at these two cities?

9. In Acts 10:37 Peter declares that Cornelius, the centurion at Caesarea, already knew the word published about our Lord. Is it probable that through Philip’s preaching at Caesarea he had obtained some of the knowledge which prepared him to receive Peter?

10. Trace a line on map from Tyre through Ptolemais to Caesarea.

11. Connect Acts 2:17-18, Joel’s prophecy that on the handmaidens shall the Spirit of God be poured out, with Acts 21:9, "Philip had four daughters who prophesied," and Mark 16:17-18, and connect "These signs shall follow them that believe" with Acts 2:43, which tells that the apostles did many signs and wonders, with Acts 8:7 where Philip works miracles, and then state the relation of Philip and his family to the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

12. With these facts and probabilities before us, what is a summary of the scriptural history of the life and labors of Philip?

13. What the remarkable things in these labors?

14. What then is his position in the spread of the kingdom?

15. What were the themes of Philip’s preaching in Samaria?

16. What do these themes indicate?

17. How was this preaching attested?

18. What was the remarkable result?

19. Who at this time dominated Samaria, and how, and what is meant by sorcery?

20. What lesson do we gather from Acts 8:12 on the relation between faith and baptism, and consequently on the subjects of baptism?

21. What lesson do we gather from Acts 8:13 which says, that when the crowd left him, Simon also believed and was baptized, and followed Philip, wondering at the miracles that he wrought?

22. What are the great moral lessons of this section?

23. Why could not the Jews at Jerusalem expound Isaiah 53?

24. What is bearing of this passage on the act & subject of baptism?

25. What said Alexander Carson of this passage?

26. What about that verse Acts 8:37: "If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest?"

27. What said a Methodist preacher about this?

28. Was the baptism of the eunuch authoritative as to the administrator? If so, why cannot a deacon baptize now?

29. Show how Philip went ahead and prepared the way under God for the apostles?

30. Explain how the angel and the Spirit spoke to Philip (Acts 8:26; Acts 8:29), and how the Spirit caught away Philip (Acts 8:39).

XXIX

PAUL IN THE HANDS OF HIS ENEMIES AT JERUSALEM

AND HIS SPEECH ON THE STAIRWAY

Acts 21:37-23:30.

The scripture for this chapter is Acts 22-23, and the general theme for the rest of the book of Acts is, "Paul in the hands of his enemies and under the protecting care of his Lord." The distinct forces to be considered) each from its viewpoint, in their interplay on the results at Jerusalem, are as follows: (1) The believing Jews or Christians at Jerusalem; (2) the unbelieving Jews at Jerusalem, coming in from the dispersion to the feasts; (3) Lysias, the representative of the Roman military government in Jerusalem; (4) Paul’s kinsman; (5) Paul himself; (6) Paul’s Lord.

The Jewish Christians at Jerusalem forced upon Paul the observance of a custom that he didn’t consider binding, but he was willing for expediency’s sake to observe it, and thus put him in the Temple where he would be in full view of the millions of Jews gathered in Jerusalem. After putting him in that position and seeing that it was the cause of an assault upon his life by the unbelieving Jews, and of his arrest by the Romans, there is no record then or later of their coming in to testify in Paul’s behalf or bringing any influence whatever to bear to enable him to escape from the difficulty. Action moved so fast in the assault on him, and in the arrest and his being sent away from Jerusalem, that you might excuse their silence there, but when they knew he was taken to Caesarea, although some time elapsed before his trial there, and the enemies had ample notice and time to get there to testify against him, they sent no representatives.

The impression made on my mind is that they acted in an ungrateful, "scaly" sort of way. As he had come there to bring them a big collection that had taken him four years to gather together, and for their benefit, and as they had specifically endorsed his work among the Gentiles, and as they knew he was in that Temple at their instance, and also knew that the charge was false that he had introduced a Gentile into the sacred precincts, it is to me an amazing thing that they did nothing to help him.

As was shown in the former chapter, the whole unbelieving Jewish population, whether at Jerusalem or in the lands of the dispersion, was a seething, boiling pot, and feeling that the last thing that they had to hold to was this Temple and Moses, they were jealous to madness of anything that reflected upon the sanctity of that Temple or upon the customs of Moses. Of all men living they hated Paul most, because they regarded him as an apostate from the Jewish faith. They recognized him in the Temple, and couldn’t have touched him except upon one ground, and that was, that he had introduced into the sacred precincts a Gentile. The Romans did not allow the Jews generally to have jurisdiction over life and death, but out of deference to their intense jealousy to guard the sacred precincts of the Temple from intrusion, the Romans did allow them to kill any man found in those sacred precincts that was not a Jew.

That enables you to understand why they brought the accusation against him that he had introduced a Gentile into the sacred precincts. If they could do that they could kill him right there under the eyes of the Roman guard, and escape Roman prosecution. Their hate was uniform in its persistence, and multiform in its method. They manifested their intense rancor, not only by the manner in which the high priest commanded him to be smitten in the mouth when he appeared before the Sanhedrin, but because a number of avowed assassins, forty in number, came and apprised them of what they wanted to do, viz.: to kill Paul, and asked the Sanhedrin to enter into the plot this far, that it would urge that Paul be brought before the Sanhedrin again as if to gain further information. When they agreed to that they became guilty of the whole diabolical conspiracy.

Let us consider the case of Lysias, the chiliarch, who had charge of the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem. The procurator, Felix, was at Caesarea, and hence Lysias, the chiliarch, had command of all the Roman forces in Jerusalem, and was responsible on this point, that he should keep down all tumult. So that he was in the full discharge of his duty when he witnessed a tumult right under the Tower of Antonio and sent his soldiers to disperse that crowd, and found out what was the matter. He was in the full discharge of his duty when he saw all of them holding the one whom the Jews were trying to kill, for he supposed that it must be that Egyptian who had been the cause of such a slaughter of the Jews. He was following the Roman custom when, not being able to understand what the grievance was from what the crowd was shouting all around him, he ordered Paul to be examined by torture. It was a very cruel proceeding, but the Roman law allowed him to practice it always; that is, they stretched a man out with thongs, and put him to the torture to make him tell what was the cause of the assault against him. Lysias wanted to know what it was, and he couldn’t gather from what the Jews said; so he wanted to force the person accused to state the cause. "What devilment have you been into that makes the people want to kill you?" But when Paul avowed his Roman citizenship, Lysias followed the law in instantly countermanding the order to put him to the torture. And Lysias followed the Roman custom of inquiring into a case before he judged of the case, in having Paul brought before the Sanhedrin in order that in that open court he might ascertain what the gist of the matter was. And he recognized at a glance what it was. Then when a vow was made to kill Paul, he showed himself to be able in tactics and in administrative capacity to put Paul beyond the power of assassination, by sending him to his chief, the procurator at Caesarea. No man can read the action of Lysias in this whole matter without receiving a very favorable impression of this Roman officer.

But Paul had some kinsfolk there, and as there were forty men who had conspired to assassinate Paul, and as they carried their plot to the whole Sanhedrin (such a secret as that couldn’t be kept), so Paul’s kinsfolk found out about it, and the nephew came with a warning. It isn’t said that he was a Christian. That is probable, yet it is strange that James and the elders couldn’t find out anything and couldn’t offer any service, but this boy did find out, and took a very active and noble part.

So far as Paul is concerned, he is entirely innocent. He had done nothing to justify an assault upon him in the Temple. It was an outrageous thing against the Temple for any violent man to come into it and lay hold upon a man who was carrying out the Temple regulations. And when he was rescued by the Romans, we see that he didn’t lose his self-possession. The crowd came so near killing him that the soldiers had to pick him up and rush with him in their arms to get up that stairway out of danger, but before his feet hit the ground he wanted to say something. He wasn’t going to allow his life to be disposed of, and the cause to be put in jeopardy, without doing all he could. So he says to Lysias, "May I speak to you?" addressing him in Greek. "Why, do you speak Greek?" says Lysias, "Is supposed you to be that Egyptian." "No," says Paul, "I am a Jew, a citizen of Tarsus, no mean city." "Well," answers Lysias, "What do you want?" "Why, I want to speak to that mob there." Lysias is very anxious to find out all the facts he can, and he permits it. So Paul stands there on the stairway and delivers that inimitable address that we will consider later, and as Paul spoke in Hebrew, Lysias couldn’t get any light on the subject, and when he proposes to bring Paul before the court to torture him, Paul still has his wits about him and says, "I am a Roman. You can’t torture me." Then when Paul is brought before the council, he boldly affirms in his first sentence that from his youth up he had lived conscientiously, no matter which side he was on; that he thought he was doing God’s service when he did it.

When the high priest commanded him to be smitten in the mouth, Paul’s anger flashed out: "God will smite thee, thou whited wall! You attempt to try me by the law, and contrary to the law command me to be smitten in the mouth?" But when somebody said, "You are reviling the high priest," quick as a flash he turned, saying, "Brethren, I knew not that he was the high priest. I remember the law says that there should be reverence toward rulers." He possessed quick self-control, and then when he saw there was no chance to get a verdict before that crowd, with his will as quick as lightning, recognizing Pharisees and Sadducees there, he adopted the old Latin proverb, "Divide your enemies in order to conquer them," and instantly avows that he is under charge on account of his belief in the resurrection of the dead.

The Pharisees, of course, sided with Paul on that, and the Sadducees against him, and they turned to fighting each other, and Paul escaped. It shows the most nimble wit in hazard. And then when his nephew brings him the information about the plot you see how his wisdom is running all the while. He says, "You go show these facts to Lysias." Throughout the whole proceeding he commends himself to us in not getting scared, and in not losing his head; in seizing every opportunity for self-defense and for setting forth the cause. That is Paul’s part.

The tact of Paul’s speech on the stairway is almost infinite:

1. In that he spoke it in Hebrew. If anything in the world would appeal to that crowd it was to hear their own mother tongue. When such a great multitude of the Jews had lost the power to speak Hebrew, or even to read it, it was an instant appeal to them that this man would speak to them in the mother tongue.

2. While everything he said had been said before, yet it is the way in which he makes what he says meet that case. He applies it to this point: First, "I was once Just such a zealot as you are about your law. Your high priest knows it. You all know that I went to any length to put down Christianity. But, brethren, I met the Lord. The light in which I met him was so bright it blinded me. By the power of God I am a changed man. There has been an internal experience to justify my change from one crowd to another crowd, and the recognition of my change was by as devout a Jew as you are – one Ananias – and the Lord met him and sent him to authenticate what had been done. And to show that my heart is toward you as it ever has been, when I was in Jerusalem at the time of the conference here in the church I went to the Temple, and there the same Lord that converted me and that impressed Ananias to baptize me, told me to go to the Gentiles. You have nothing against me beyond my going to the Gentiles, and yet I have gone in obedience to your Messiah – gone after an experience of conversion to prove to me that my former zeal against the church was wrong, and authenticated by a Jew just as zealous as you are." It was impossible for an orator to state a case with any greater simplicity and with any more tactfulness. But when he said "Gentiles," why that was like waving a red flag before a mad bull. Then they went to howling at once.

Here we have the expression, "Wash away thy sins." We have already considered that in Acts 2:38, but I will restate it now, since here Paul is commanded to wash away his sins. Since he is commanded to wash away his sins in baptism, that proves that it wasn’t real cleansing from sin, but a figurative one, because God alone can remit sin, and there is no virtue in baptism to take it away. Therefore, what is meant is that Paul himself, not God, could symbolically wash away his sins in baptism. Baptism could symbolize the cleansing from sin, though it couldn’t actually remove it.

Lysias ordered Paul’s examination by torture in order to find out what the grievance of the Jews was against this man, and Paul escaped it, as I have already shown, by claiming to be a Roman citizen; and that leads to the next expedient of Lysias. As a Roman he is bound to find out in some way what the grievance is, so the next expedient is to order the Sanhedrin to come together, and he said, "You are not to mob this man. He is my prisoner, and I want to know what is against him," and the expedient was very successful from his point of view. It demonstrated to him that there were no charges against Paul that could come under the jurisdiction of a Roman. So he won out on this expedient. He saw that they didn’t agree themselves, and that it was only a matter upon which Pharisees and Sadducees differed – a matter of their own law – and he never had any doubt about the case any more.

Paul’s saying, "I wist not that he was the high priest," is hard to explain. I will give what some commentators have said, viz.:

First, that Ananias had usurped the office of high priest during a vacancy, and therefore was not recognized by Paul. There is no evidence that that office was vacant.

Second, that Paul, having been long absent, was really unacquainted with the person of the high priest. That cuts no figure, because Paul would recognize the man that was wearing the full official dress of the priest, as the priest.

Third, that the words are ironical: "I couldn’t be supposed to know that you, a man that would command me to be smitten in the mouth as you did, was high priest."

Fourth, that Paul on account of his nearsightedness, his imperfect sight, couldn’t discern that dress. That is Farrar’s explanation, and it is a very plausible one, too.

Fifth, that "I wist not, brethren," means, "I didn’t give it a thought; I just spoke fast, and when he commanded me to be smitten in the mouth I spoke without giving a thought to the fact that the one who said it was high priest." That is not very plausible.

Of all these explanations the most plausible one to me is Farrar’s. A near-sighted man may come right into a room and unless he comes right up close to a person he will not recognize him.

[I most heartily agree here with Canon Farrar and Dr. Carroll on their explanation of Paul’s failure to recognize the high priest. It is almost tragical that there is so little allowance made for the man who has an infirmity of vision. I have suffered for nearly thirty years with what I suppose to be the same eye trouble that so harassed and afflicted Paul. Many times I do not recognize my best friends, even when they are but a few feet away. It has been one of the greatest of all my crosses, and I am sure that in this incident Paul did not have sufficient vision with which to recognize the high priest, and that this is a full explanation of the matter. – Editor.]

Before this, Paul had set forth the Christian’s duty toward rulers in Romans 13:1-7: "Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shall have praise from the same; for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. Wherefore, ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For, for this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers of God’s service attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor."

The explanation of the three classes of Paul’s military escort is that the Roman legion was divided. The main dependence of the Roman legion was what is called the heavy-armed soldiers. They carried the shields and that deadly short sword. They carried also an immensely long lance. When they drove that lance into the ground and drew on their short swords, they turned the battle. Right ahead of them was a line of spearmen, that before they got in touch with the enemy could throw their javelins, and fall back behind the heavy part. The third part was the light troops – cavalry. Every legion had those three classes of soldiers, so when Lysias sent a guard of 200 soldiers, tremendously heavily armed troops, 200 spearmen, light armed troops, and 70 cavalrymen, that made a body that could adapt itself to any kind of an enemy – that would attack them on the way – and it was exceedingly formidable, for Lysias recognized the power of the malice of the Jews.

A very favorable impression is made on the mind by this account. The world never saw such military discipline as the Romans had. Whenever they camped for just one night they would do work enough to build a town. They would dig a ditch and throw up a wall around their camp. They knew exactly where to put the baggage wagons. Every cavalryman knew where his place was. Every spearman knew where his place was. It was a citadel of fortifications, if they just camped one night, and over all Europe, where the Romans marched, could be seen their camps at night. Frederick the Great came near having a military discipline equal to the Romans. As to the administration of justice, we are compelled to bow before it. Take this man Lysias, or Gallic, or any other case that came up, and how careful they are! They would say, "It is not our custom to try a man until we hear him. We will hear both sides of it. We want to know the facts, and if what he is accused of doesn’t come under the Roman jurisdiction, we dismiss the case." And the only time when there is a "slip-up" in Roman justice is where the man appointed to power, like Pilate or like that slave, Felix, to whom we will come later, has itching palms or fears, then justice goes awry. The Roman code, together with the code of Moses, is the foundation of the law that rules the civilized world today. The Romans had good roads. They had good discipline. They had fine administration of justice. A "slip-up" would come only in some special cases, as I have mentioned.

There are three styles in this section – the inimitable historical prose style of Luke, the epistolary style of Lysias, and the oratorical style of Paul in making a speech. When I read it over I can feel the touch of each one of them as I come to it.

When a school boy I read the twenty-seven novels of Walter Scott, and I had read quite a number of his historical books before I came to his epistolatory ones, and I was perfectly delighted when I came to Gauntlet, a story in the form of letters written from one to another. Scott enhanced the literary excellence of his stories by changing the style.

Lysias’ letter is a genuine letter. Paul’s speech is a great speech. Luke is a true historian. There is nothing stilted. There is one touch of human nature in the letter of Lysias. He knows how to write: "Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor, Felix, greeting: This man was seized of the Jews, and was about to be slain of them, when I came upon them with the soldiers, and rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman. And desiring to know the cause whereof they accused him, I brought him down unto their council: whom I found to be accused about questions of their law, but to have nothing laid to his charge worthy of death or of bonds. And when it was shown to me that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to thee forthwith, charging his accusers also, to speak against him before thee."

So the one touch of human nature in that letter is this: "This man was taken of the Jews and would have been killed of them: Then I came with an army and rescued him." Now, he didn’t know that Paul was a Roman when he first interfered. He found that out afterward, but as he stated it, it certainly put him in a more favorable light to make Felix think that he understood it that way – that be was endeavoring to take care of the Roman people. Every man is the hero of the story he tells.

I knew a man to run into our camps on the frontier once, gasping for breath and his tongue out, telling about the Indians only two miles off, and how they had crowded him, bow he had saved his horses, and how he had come across to give information to the camp (it was all made up to scare us) and John Meriwether says, "I was a fool to believe you at first, but I was wise in believing you afterwards, because there was such a natural twang in the way you made yourself the hero, that I thought you were telling the truth."

QUESTIONS

1. What the scripture for this chapter, and the general theme for all the remainder of Acts?

2. What distinct forces must be considered, each from its viewpoint, in their interplay on the results at Jerusalem?

3. State the case from the viewpoint of the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem, and your judgment of their performance.

4. What is the case of the unbelieving Jews there?

5. What is the case of Lysias, the chiliarch, who had charge of the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem?

6. What is the case of Paul’s kinsman?

7. What is the case of Paul himself?

8. Analyze Paul’s speech on the stairway, and give the substance of this speech in paraphrase.

9. What the explanation and force of "wash away thy sins"?

10. Why did Lysias order Paul’s examination by torture, and how did he escape?

11. What is the next expedient of Lysias, and what the result?

12. What is the explanation of Paul’s saying, “I wist not that he was the high priest"? What the remarks on this incident of the editor of this INTERPRETATION?

13. Where before had Paul set forth the Christian’s duty toward rulers and what is the substance of his statement?

14. How do you explain the three classes of Paul’s military escort?

15. What impression is made on the mind by this account of Roman military discipline and administration of justice?

16 When was there injustice practiced under the Roman law, and what illustrations cited?

17 What is the literary excellence of this section?

18. What is one touch of human nature in the letter of Lysias? Illustrate.

Verse 39

XV

PAUL’S EARLY LIFE BEFORE HE ENTERS THE NEW TESTAMENT STORY

Acts 21:39; Acts 22:3; Acts 23:6; Acts 23:34; Acts 26:4-5; 2 Corinthians 11:22; Romans 11:1; Galatians 1:13-14; Philippians 3:4-6; 1 Timothy 1:12-13; 2 Timothy 1:3.

This discussion does not make much headway in the text book, but it covers an immense amount of territory in its facts and significance. This section is found in Goodwin’s Harmony of the Life of Paul, pages 15-17, and the theme is Paul’s history up to the time that he enters the New Testament story. Saul, now called Paul, a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the sect of the Pharisees, yet a freeborn Roman citizen, by occupation a tentmaker, by office a rabbi, and a member of the Sanhedrin, was born in the city of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, about the time of our Lord’s birth. Tarsus was situated on the narrow coast line of the eastern part of the Mediterranean, just under the great Taurus range of mountains, and on the beautiful river Cydnus, which has a cataract just before it reaches the city, and a fall, beautiful then and beautiful now, coming down into that fertile plain where the city goes into a fine harbor, which opens the city to the commerce of the world through the Mediterranean Sea. It was on the great Roman thoroughfare, which was one of the best roads in the world. There were two of these mountain ranges, one of them right up above the city through the Taurus range into the coast of Asia Minor, the other following the coast line, which leads into Syria. This is the way that the mountains came down close to the sea, making a certain point very precipitous, and there was a typical beach between those mountains and the sea. That road into Syria was called the Oriental way. Over the Roman thoroughfare passed the land traffic, travel and marching armies for centuries. It was in that pass that Alexander fought his first great battle against the Persians, and thus obtained an entrance into the East. It was through that pass that, marching westward, and before Alexander’s time, Xerxes the Great, the husband of Esther (mentioned in the Bible), marched his 5,000,000 men to invade Greece. I could mention perhaps fifty decisive battles in ancient history that were set and were successful conquests by preoccupation of that pass. That shows the strategical position of this city – that it commanded the passes of the Taurus into Asia Minor, and the pass into Syria, and through its fine harbor came in touch with the commerce of the world on the Mediterranean Sea.

Paul says that it was "no mean city," in size or in population. It was notable, (1) for its manufacture, that of weaving, particularly goat’s hair, for on that Taurus range lived goats with very long hair, and this was woven into ropes, tents, and things of that kind; (2) because it was the capital of the province of Cilicia; (3) because, under Rome, it was a free city, i.e., it had the management of its own internal affairs, which constituted a city a free city, like the free city of Bremer in the early history of Germany. Other cities would be under the feudal lords, but there were a number of cities free, and these elected their own burghers, and governed their own municipal matters – a tremendous advantage.

Tarsus received from the Roman Emperor the privilege of being a free city. Keep these facts well in mind, especially and particularly as regards the land and sea commerce. (4) Because it possessed one of the three great world-famous universities. There were just three of them at that time: One at Tarsus; one at Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile; and one at Athens. It was not like some other cities, remarkable for its great buildings, its public games and its works of art. You could see more fine buildings in Athens or in Ephesus or in Corinth than you had any right to look for in Tarsus. It celebrated no such games as were celebrated in the May festivals at Ephesus, and in the great Greek amphitheater in that city, or in such games as the Isthmian, celebrated in Corinth. It was not remarkable for any of these. Its popular religion was a low and mixed order of Oriental paganism. There is this difference between the Oriental and Occidental heathen – the former in the East, and the latter at Rome, and the West. Ephesus had an Oriental religion, though it was a Greek city. Tarsus, too, was a Greek city, but was partly Phoenician and partly Syrian. There were more arts and intellectuality in western paganism than in the Oriental, which was low, bestial, sensual, in every way brutal, shameful, immodest, and outrageous. The Phoenicians, who had a great deal to do with establishing the city of Tarsus, had that brutal, low form of paganism. That infamous emperor, Sargon, celebrated in the Bible, the Oriental king of the original Nineveh, was worshiped in that city. There never lived a man that devoted himself more than he to luxury in its fine dress, gorgeous festivals, its gluttony, its drunkenness, its beastiality. Paul was born in that city, and he could look out any day and see the heathen that he has so well described in chapter 1 of the letter to the Romans.

Citizenship in a free city under Rome did not make one a Roman citizen, as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony. To be born in a free city did not make one a Roman citizen. It conferred upon its members, its own citizens, the right to manage their own municipal affairs. To be born in Philippi would make one a Roman citizen, because Philippi was a colony. The name of its citizens were still retained on the muster roll in the city of Rome. They had all the privileges of Roman citizenship. Their officers were Roman officers. They had processions, with the magistrates, and the lictors and with the bundles of rods. But there was nothing like that in Tarsus. The question came up in Paul’s lifetime, when the commander of a legion heard Paul claiming that be was a Roman citizen. This commander says that with a great sum of money he did purchase his citizenship in Rome. Paul says, "But I was freeborn." If freeborn, how then could he have obtained it? In one of two ways: Before Christ was born, Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and took it. He was one of the first great triumvirate, with Julius Caesar and Marcus L. Crassus. Pompey’s field of labor was in the East, Caesar’s was in the West, and he (Pompey) took Jerusalem and led into slavery many Jews of the best families. When these slaves were brought to Rome, if they showed culture, social position, educational advantages, they were promoted to a high rank or office, among slaves; and if they particularly pleased their owners they were manumitted, either during the lifetime of their owner, or by will after his death. In this way many noble captives from all parts of the world were carried as slaves to Rome. They were first set free and then had conferred upon them the rights of Roman citizenship. It could have been that Cassius, who with Brutus, after the killing of Julius Caesar, combined against Mark Anthony, and Octavius (Augustus), who became the emperor and was reigning when Christ was born, captured this city of Tarsus and led many of its citizens into Rome as slaves. Paul’s grandfather, therefore, or his father, might have been led away captive to Rome, and through his high social position and culture may have been manumitted, and then received as a citizen. Necessarily it occurred before this boy’s time, because when he was born, he was born a Roman citizen. It could be transmitted, but he had not acquired it.

There is a difference between the terms – Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellenist, and a "Hebrew of the Hebrews." All these are used by Paul and Luke in Acts. We get our word, "Hebrew" from Heber, an ancestor of Abraham. Literature shows that the descendants of Heber were Hebrews, and in the Old Testament Abraham is called "the Hebrew." That was not the meaning of the word in New Testament times. We come to the New Testament meaning in Acts 6, which speaks of the ordination of deacons, and uses the word "Hebrew" in distinction from "Hellenist." They both, of course, mean Jews. While a Hebrew in the New Testament usually lived in Palestine, but not necessarily, he was one who still spoke or was able to read the original Hebrew language and who practiced the strict Hebrew cult. A "Hellenist" was a Jew who had either been led into exile, or who, for the sake of trade, had gone into other nations, and settled among those people and had become liberalized, lost the use of the Hebrew tongue entirely, and neither spoke nor wrote the Hebrew language, but who spoke and wrote mainly in Greek. "Hellenist" is simply another term for "Greek." Whether used in the New Testament Greek or the Hellenistic Greek, it means Jews living among Greek people, and who had acquired the language, and in the many respects had followed more liberal Greek customs. Then a Hebrew living in Palestine would not allow himself to be liberalized.

Paul lived out of Judea. He, his father, and indeed his grandfather, adhered strictly to all the distinguishing characteristics of the Hebrews. The "Israelite" and the "Jew" mean anybody descended from Jacob. "Israelite" commenced lower down in the descent. "Hebrew" gets its name from the ancestor of Abraham, but an Israelite was a descendant of Jacob. The distinction of "Jew" came a little later to those descendants of Jacob living in Judea. The "Hebrew of the Hebrews" means a Jew-who went to the greatest possible extreme in following the Hebrew language, cult, habits, training, and religion. He was an extremist among them.

Some people would suppose from Paul’s occupation – tentmaking (he worked at that occupation, making tents with Aquila and Priscilla) – that from this unskilled labor his family were low in the social position, and poor. The inference is wholly untenable. In the first place, every Jew had to have a trade, even though he were a millionaire, and Paul’s old teacher, Gamaliel, used this language: "Any kind of learning without a useful trade leads to sin." Paul took up this trade because he lived at Tarsus. There anybody could go out and learn the trade of weaving ropes and check-cloth made out of the long hair of Mount Taurus goats. The trade would not simply satisfy the Jewish requirement, but a man could make his living by it. We see Paul a little later making his living just that way. Well for Paul that he knew something besides books.

I am more and more inclined to follow an industrial idea in systems of education. We have our schools and universities where the boys and girls learn a great deal about books, and the girl goes home and does not know how to make bread. She does not know how to rear a brood of chickens; she does not know how a house is to be kept clean, nor how to keep windows clean. The floors in the corners and in places under the beds and sofas are unswept. Boys come home that cannot make a hoe handle. They have no mechanical sense, no trade. They can neither make a pair of shoes nor a hat nor a pair of socks, nor anything they wear. And thus graduates of universities stand with their fingers in their mouths in the great byways of the world – practically beggars – not knowing how to do anything.

The Jews guarded against that. Let Paul fall on his feet anywhere, and withdraw from him every outside source of financial support, and he would say, "With these hands did I minister to my necessities." He could go out and get a piece of work. He knew how to do it. All this is bearing on the social and financial position of Paul’s family. Everything indicates the high social position of his family, and that it occupied a high financial position. They did not take the children of the lowest abode and give them such an ecclesiastical training as Paul had. They did not educate them for the position of rabbi, nor let them take a degree in the highest theological seminary in the world. Paul’s family, then, was a good one.

Paul’s religious and educational advantages were on two distinct lines: Purely ecclesiastical or religious, and I can tell just exactly what it was. A little Hebrew boy five years old had to learn the Ten Commandments, and the hallelujah psalms. When six, he advanced to other things which could be specified particularly. His education commenced in the home and went on until he entered the synagogue, which trained him in all the rudiments of biblical education. When he was twelve or thirteen years old he was called "a son of the commandments." Just like the occasion suggests when Jesus was twelve years old he had them take him to Jerusalem, and he was allowed to go into the Temple and to be with the great doctors there.

When Paul was twelve or thirteen his influential father sent him to the great theological seminary. There were two of these seminaries. One had a greater influence than the other in the city of Jerusalem. Therefore, he says, "I was brought up in this city. I was born in Tarsus, but brought up in the city of Jerusalem, at the feet of Gamaliel." He was a very noble character. The opposite seminary differed from this one. It was the Shammai Seminary, differing from the other on this point: The Shammai Seminary was very narrow; did not allow its pupils to know anything about literature whatsoever except religious literature. But the aged Gamaliel said to Paul and to all his other students, "There are certain classical lines along which you may study and learn." This is the kind which Paul attended, the school of Gamaliel, graduating there and becoming a doctor of divinity, or a rabbi. He studied profoundly. This religious part of his education he got in the original Hebrew. When he and Jesus met at the time of his conversion, they spoke in the Hebrew tongue to each other. "There came a voice which said in the Hebrew [the old Hebrew tongue], Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" And he answered in the Hebrew. Then, of course, he spoke and wrote in the Aramaic, which was the common dialect in Judea, and different from the Hebrew, since the Hebrew had gone altogether out of use in the ordinary speech, and almost in the ordinary reading.

The New Testament abounds in evidence of Paul’s general educational advantages. The city of Tarsus possessed one of the three great universities of the world. Did Paul take a course in that? There is no evidence that he did, and no probability that he did. For the universities in that day did not mean as much as they do today in a certain line, though I am sorry to say that the great universities of the present day are dropping back and adopting the old utterly worthless studies of the universities of that day; that is, speculative philosophy about the origin of things, and they do not know anything more when they get through than when they began. Also the Epicurean philosophy, which we now call "Darwinism," making a speculative study of biology, botany, geology, etc., trying to prove that everything came from a primordial germ, and that man not only developed from a monkey, but from a jellyfish, and that the jellyfish developed from some vegetable, and that the vegetable is a development of some inorganic and lifeless matter.

There never was at any time in the world one particle of truth in the whole business. None of it can ever be a science. It does not belong to the realm of science.

Saul never had a moment’s time to spend in a heathen university, listening to their sophistries, and to these philosophical speculations, or vagaries. If he were living now he would be made president of some university. We learn from the Syrians that one of these universities, the one in Tarsus, had a professor who once stole something, and was put in "limbo." Their university professors were also intensely jealous. They had all sorts of squabbles, one part in a row with another part; so that after all there was not much to be learned in the universities of those times, and after a while there will not be much in ours, if we go on as we are now going. I am not referring to any university, particularly, but I am referring to any and all, where philosophical speculations are made thee basis of botany, zoology, natural history of any kind, geology, or any kindred thing. Paul struck it in the city of Athens, its birthplace, and smote it hip and thigh.

I do not suppose at all that Paul was a student in the university of Tarsus, but that while he was at Jerusalem, and under the teaching of Gamaliel, he did study such classics as would be permitted to a Jewish mind. Hence we find in his letters expressions like this: "One of themselves, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars," and when at Athena he says, "Certain, even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." How could he become acquainted with those classical allusions if he had never studied such things? That chiliarch, who commanded a thousand men – a legion – said to Paul, "Do you speak Greek?" He had heard him speaking Greek. Of course he spoke Greek, and wrote Greek, All of his letters were written in Greek. He had learned that Greek language somewhere. He had not learned it in that university at Tarsus, but in the Seminary at Jerusalem. Take his letters and see his profound acquaintance with the Greek games of every kind. Some of them he may have attended, but he certainly knew all about them as though he had witnessed them. He may have seen only an occasional game. So he must have learned it from the literature, for he discusses every phase of it, especially the foot-racing, the combats in the arena between the gladiators, and the wrestling with the lions in the arena. His letters are full of allusions that indicate his acquaintance with the Greek literature. At Alexandria there was one of the other universities, a much greater one in its Greek literature than the university of Tarsus. Alexandria was founded by a Greek, Alexander the Great. One of the Ptolemies had a great library, the greatest library in the world, which was destroyed by the Saracens. But notice also how Paul puts his finger right upon the very center and heart of every heathen philosophy, like that of Epicureanism – our Darwinism; that he debated in Athens; and note the Stoics whom he met while there, and the Platonians, or the Peripatetics. You will find that that one little speech of his, which he delivered in the city of Athens, contains an allusion which showed that he was thoroughly and profoundly acquainted with every run and sweep of the philosophic thought of the day, and anybody not thus acquainted could not have delivered that address. This is to show the general culture of his mind.

Take the mountain torrent of his passion in the rapid letter to the Galatians. Take the keen logic, the irresistibility of its reasoning, which appears in the letter to the Romans, or take that sweetest language that ever came from the lips or pen of mortal man, that eulogy on love in 1 Corinthians 13. Then take the letter to Philemon, which all the world has considered a masterpiece in epistolary correspondence. It implies that he was scholarly. Look at these varieties of Saul’s education. He was a man whose range of information swept the world. He was the one scholar in the whole number of the apostles – the great scholar – and I do not see how any man can read the different varieties of style or delicacy of touch, the analysis of his logic or reasoning, which appear in Paul’s letters, and doubt that he had a broad, a deep, a high, and a grand general education.

As to Paul’s family the New Testament tells us in Acts 23:16 that he had a married sister living in Jerusalem, and that that sister had a son, Paul’s nephew, who intervened very heroically to help Paul in a certain crisis of his life. And in Romans 16:7-11 are some other things that give light as to his family: "Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners . . . who also have been in Christ before me." Here are a man and a woman, Andronicus and Junias, Paul’s kinsfolk, well known to the apostles in Jerusalem, for he says, "Who are of note among the apostles." They were influential people, and they had become Christians before Paul was a Christian. Take Romans 16:11: "Salute Herodion my kinsman," and Romans 16:21: "Timothy, my fellow worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen." So here we have found six individuals who are kinspeople to Paul, and who were all members of the church at Rome. We know that much of his family, anyhow.

The things which distinguished a Pharisee from a Sadducee were of several kinds: (1) The latter were materialists, whom we would call atheists. They believed in no spirit; that there was nothing but matter; that when a man died it was the last of him. (2) There were Epicureans: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," they said. (3) Also in their political views they differed from the Pharisees. The Pharisees were patriotic, and wanted the freedom of their nation. The Sadducees were inclined to the Roman government, and wanted to keep up the servitude to the Romans. (4) The Pharisees also cared more about a ritualistic religion. They were Puritans – stern, and knew no compromise, adhering strictly to the letter of the law, in every respect. If they tithed, they would go into the garden and tithe the cummin and the anise. The phrase, "Pharisee of the Pharisees," means one who would whittle all that down to a very fine point, or an extremist on that subject. He said (Galatians 1:14), "I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." They were just Pharisees – he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He went all the lengths that they would go, and he topped them. It meant something like this: "I am a son of Abraham; I am freeborn; I have never sinned; I need no vicarious expiation for me; I need no Holy Spirit; I was never in that bunch; you need not talk or present regeneration to me; I am just as white as snow." It followed that they were not drunkards, they were not immoral; they were chaste, and did not have any of the brutal vices.

Paul had perhaps never met Jesus. They were about the same age. Paul went to Jerusalem when he was thirteen years old, and stayed there until he graduated in the same city. Some contend from certain expressions, as, "I have known Christ after the flesh; henceforth I will know him . . . no more," that he had known Jesus in the flesh. It will be remembered that in the public ministry of Christ he was very seldom in Jerusalem. He stayed there a very short time when he did go. His ministry was mainly in Galilee. Even in that last mighty work of his in Jerusalem – there is a big account of it – but it just lasted a week. And Saul may have been absent at Tarsus during that time. I think when he saw Jesus the fact that he did not recognize him is proof enough, for if he had known him in the flesh he would have recognized him. But he said, "Who art thou?" when he saw him after he arose from the dead.

Paul, before conversion, was intensely conscientious in whatever he did – free from all low vice, drunkenness and luxurious gluttony and sensuality of every kind. He was a very chaste man, a very honest man, a very sincere man, a very truthful man, and all this before conversion. I take it for granted that he was a married man. An orthodox Jew would not have passed the age of twenty unmarried. He could not be a member of the Sanhedrin without marrying; and in that famous passage in Corinthians he seems to intimate clearly that he was a married man. Speaking to virgins (that means unmarried men and women and includes both of them that had never married) he says so and so; and to widows and widowers, "I wish they would remain such as I am." It seems to me that the language very clearly shows that at that time he was a widower. Luther says that no man could write about the married state like Paul writes if he was an old bachelor. I think Luther is right; his judgment is very sound. Paul did not marry again; he remained a widower, and in the stress of the times advised other widowers and widows to remain in that state; but if they wanted to marry again to go ahead and do so; that it was no sin; but the stress of the times made it unwise; and he boldly took the position that he had a right to lead about a wife as much as Peter had, and Peter had a wife.

QUESTIONS

1. What the theme of this section?

2. What Saul’s name, nation, tribe, sect, citizenship, occupation, office, birthplace, and date of birth?

3. Give an account of Tarsus as to its political, strategical, commercial, manufacturing, educational advantages, and its popular religion.

4. Did citizenship in a free city under Rome make one a Roman citizen as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony?

5. How, then, could one obtain it?

6. Distinguish the difference between these terms: Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellinist, and a "Hebrew of the Hebrews."

7. What the social and financial position of Paul’s family, particularly in view of his occupation?

8. What Paul’s religious and educational advantages?

9. What New Testament evidences are there of Paul’s general educational advantages?

10. What do we know about Paul’s family as seen in the New Testament?

11. Was Paul a rabbi? If so, where did he probably exercise his functions as a rabbi?

12. What is the meaning of the phrase, "Pharisee of the Pharisees?"

13. Did Paul ever meet Jesus before his death? If not, how account for it in view of the interest and publicity of the last week of our Lord’s life?

14. What was Paul’s character before conversion?

15. Was he a married man, and what the proof?