Acts 18:1-11 - Part A

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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Over the last many years, Albuquerque has had its own slogans, not always that impressive, in my opinion. The previous slogan of the city of Albuquerque used to be, Albuquerque, it's a trip.

Now, that could mean a lot of different things, and in my old vernacular, that was not a good thing. And then the recent change to the city's slogan of Albuquerque is, Albuquerque, change your perspective. And that's the slogan of the city. Now, I don't know if Rome or if Athens or if Corinth had slogans. I'm going to suggest a slogan that Corinth did have, and I'll share with you what that is in a little bit.

But before Paul was at Corinth, he was at the city of Athens. And I suppose if the city of Athens would have had its own slogan, it would be simply, man is great. Because they believed and they taught the perfect man, the perfect specimen of humanity. They idealized that and even worshiped that. In fact, there was a philosopher centuries before the New Testament who coined a phrase in Athens that man is the measure of all things. His name was Protagoras. He believed in the ideal, humanity, and believed that all things must be measured by mankind.

Man is great. Man is the measure of all things. Paul comes on the scene in Athens and his slogan, not is man is great, but God is great. And it's a message they had never heard before because they had so many gods and goddesses.

They didn't know which one to worship at any given time. In fact, Paul made note of the fact that they were a very religious bunch. He said, I perceive in all things you are very religious. I even found an altar with the inscription, agnostotheo, to the unknown god. Him I proclaim to you. And he began to tell the Athenians how great God is. That God is the creator of all, that God is the sustainer of all, that he is the ruler of all, and that one day he will be the judge of all. That sort of sums up Paul's message to Athens. He says, the one by whom God is appointed for judgment to take place is a man named Jesus Christ. So he introduces the man to Athens, the perfect god-man. And he says, the proof that this was the man is that he was risen from the dead.

He died, but he got up again. That was foreign to the Athenians. They didn't like the idea of a resurrection. Most of them denied the idea of a body having much value at all.

The idea was to escape from your body at one point. But Paul reminds them that God will judge the living and the dead through this one man. Then Paul moves from Athens to now in chapter 18, the city of Corinth. This is the provincial capital of a region in ancient times known as Achaea.

Achaea. Now Achaea today does have boundaries, a little bit different configuration, but it's one of the modern provinces of even modern Greece. But in that time, it was different than Greece.

It was next to it. But it is on a peninsula. And it is called the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

So you see a picture of it. So can you see Athens? Can you look at the map and find the little red dot that said Athens? And then if you move to the left, you see a little circle, which represents a little neck of land. And then this almost looks like an island, though it is connected by that neck of land. And that is a peninsula, essentially, a large peninsula. Part of that is Achaea. And the chief capital city of that region is Corinth.

Now I'm going to throw another word at you, because this is a very important point. It is the word of that peninsula. That is the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

Say that five times fast. The Peloponnesian Peninsula, or the Peloponnesus, that is that large landmass that is ancient Achaea. It says Greece in the picture, because today it is modern-day Greece. You can see that if you were a sailor, it would be difficult to sail from one side to the other. And if you look at that circle, and then you look at the square that represents a larger cutout of that circle, you see that red line going across it? That's the neck of land that connects Greece with Achaea, or the Peloponnesian Peninsula. And that little neck of land represented by the red line is three and a half miles across.

Three and a half miles. So go back 2,000 years, you're on a boat, you're on the left side of that big peninsula, and you stop right there. And you want to get to the other side, because on the other side of that is going to be the area of Corinth and Centria, and then you can go up to Athens. It's not far at all.

You can see Athens from Corinth. So to sail around that landmass, that's 200 miles. And in the ancient vessels of those days, that's dangerous navigation. Your boat could sink.

If there's a storm, if it's the wrong time of the year, it's dangerous. It's sort of like sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. And so sailors didn't want to do that.

So you had one of two choices. A, sail around it 200 miles, or go over land. You say, what do you mean, go over land? Well, what they did in those days is they would lift the ship out of the ocean, put it on rollers, empty it of its cargo, transport the cargo on top of slaves or animals, and put that boat on rollers and roll it over land three and a half miles.

You could do one of two things. Sail around it 200 miles, or save yourself 297 or 6.5 miles and just take it across. So most of them opted to do that. Now, right in between those two points is the city of Corinth. It was large. In fact, it was larger than Athens. In fact, it was, get this, 20 times the population of Athens. So Athens might have been this great intellectual center, and it was, this great philosophical center, and it was. But Corinth was like on the main route, north and south and east and west. And so Corinth commanded a large population, 20 times the size of Athens, or a population during New Testament times of about 200 plus and 200,000 residents.

It was quite large. One of the things we're noticing about Paul as he travels from place to place is his preaching style, his approach. It's not the same way.

It's not always hand on shoulder, look in the eye. Do you know Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life? He doesn't have a canned approach. He tailors his witness to his audience. In jailor, he preached Jesus as the personal savior of the individual, saying believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your family. When he gets to Thessalonica, he preaches Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of Jewish scripture. He is the Jewish Messiah. He's in the synagogue at Thessalonica. And there are Jews gathered and there are non-Jews, but those who are interested in God. And he preached reasoning from the scriptures that this Jesus is the very Christ. When he gets to Athens, completely different approach.

He begins generically with God and works his way down to man, saying God is creator, sustainer, ruler and judge. Now in each place that Paul stops, he's getting wearier and wearier. I just want you to keep that in mind. I'll reference that again, but that's an important thing to note. By this point, in his second missionary journey, he's becoming discouraged.

I mean, think about it. He has tried to go from Galatia to Bithynia and to Asia and in those two places, it tells us the Holy Spirit did what? Stopped him, didn't let him go.

Said no, closed the door. So he's kind of like not knowing where to go. First time that ever happened, he's at Troas. He gets a vision of a man from Macedonia. Saying, come over and help us. He goes to help them. There's not a man there. There's not even a synagogue there.

There's just a few women at the riverside. So he goes, all right, here goes. And he starts talking to them. And one of them named Lydia responds and gives her heart to Christ. She opens her heart. It's a love that phrase. Opens her heart to the things spoken by Paul.

So that's one. Things go from bad to worse. They're arrested.

They beat him up. They throw him in the inner dungeon of a Philippian prison. In the darkest hour of the night, he starts singing praises to God. An earthquake happens. The chains fall off Paul and Silas.

The doors swing open. The Philippian jailer's about to kill himself. He says, don't kill yourself. The guy says, what must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved in your household. He gets saved and his household. They believe they're baptized. Now there's two and three. That's his wife and a few children. So there's a few believers now.

But in each place, he's tailor making his witness. So that's all leading up here to Corinth. We'll be right back. Now let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. So they put the boats on rollers and they rolled them over land.

Let's go back to that picture. Now, you would think, right, that the easiest thing to do was to just dig it out and build a canal. I say easiest thing to do, but really it's solid rock. So digging solid rock canal for ships to go through was quite a feat. Julius Caesar had that idea. He was the first guy to come up with it. Hey, let's build a canal.

Let's connect them so you don't have to bring your boats over. Well, the guy that started the project in 67 AD was Caesar Nero. He started it. He actually took what Julius Caesar said and said, I'll do that. He was sort of a megalomaniac.

He thought he could do anything. So he started it. It didn't get finished until 1893.

It did get finished and now you'll see a picture of it. That's an aerial view and you can see the canal that connects the mainland of Greece with the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Say that out loud.

I just wanted to hear you say it. So there is the Corinthian Canal and I've stood there many times on that south end and I've looked at it, looked down, you can see that all the way out to the sea. So that was the connection. Now a little bit more about Corinth. Corinth had a reputation for a number of things.

Some good things, some not so good. First of all, they had a reputation for their bronze works. Did you know that there were two doors in the temple at Jerusalem that formed a gate 75 feet tall known as the beautiful gate?

Does that ring a bell? In the book of Acts there was a man who was laid at the gate beautiful every day. Now the reason it was called the beautiful gate, you know why? Because it was beautiful.

Very good. Yeah, it was made out of Corinthian bronze, 75 feet tall. It was also known as the Nicanor Gate and so it came from Corinth. It was known for its bronze works. Corinth was also known for its architecture. To this day people talk about Corinthian architecture, Corinthian columns, Corinthian pillars, a certain style of architecture with the name Corinth. So even to this day, Corinth still has a reputation. Third, Corinth was known for its sports.

There was a set of games every year called the Ithsmian Games that was second only to the Olympics that took place just outside of Athens. Oh, that's a word I wanted to bring up. Ithsmis. Do you remember that word in school? Do you teachers ever teach you what an Ithsmis is?

It's the hardest word to say. But an Ithsmis is that, what we showed you in the map. The Peloponnesian Peninsula or really Ithsmis.

It's that little neck of land that connects that big land mass to the mainland. So because it was in Corinth on the Ithsmis, they were called the Ithmian Games. Tough words. The biggest thing that Corinth was known for above brass and architecture and sports was its immorality. When you wanted to tell somebody that he was a debauched individual, you would call him a Corinthian. A Corinthian many was from Corinth, but if you said, you know what, John acts like a Corinthian.

That's saying, you know, John is really loose in his morals. If you were to say that woman acts like a Corinthian, you meant she was a prostitute, a harlot. In fact, the term corinthia ad zesti, the Greek word to Corinthianize, means to be morally debased. In the Greek plays, you know, the Greeks had comedies and tragedies, they dressed up.

They had all sorts of productions for a number of things. When somebody played a Corinthian, they always acted drunk. It was so bad that the city slogan, not developed by the city, but it was developed by writers after that, said this, not every fellow can afford a trip to Corinth. That was a direct reference to a specific activity that took place in this city called prostitution. It was known for it. What made it worse is it was religious prostitution.

Now you see the screen behind me, you see the hill in the background, sort of cut off. That is a hill, the very famous landmark, called the Acropolis or the Acro-Corinth. And on top of that hill was at one time and still today the ruins of the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love. And that temple housed a thousand priestesses, prostitutes, harlots. And every night they would come down from their temple, make their way down into Corinth, imply their trade, and because it was on the main crossroads, and there were so many visitors, it was the place to pick up women. You pick up a priestess from the temple of Aphrodite. That's how they got their revenue, largely for the city that is on the screen behind me. So I'm giving you that because it's going to help you when you read the book of 1 Corinthians.

In fact, maybe this will help. As I read to you 1 Corinthians chapter 6, a very familiar passage, in verse 9 he says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? I was writing to the Corinthians, the Corinthian Christians, the believers in the city of Corinth, the city that you see in the screen. Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, those who have sexual relations before marriage, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, those that have sexual relations with somebody else other than their spouse after marriage, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Now watch this. And such were some of you. He's writing to people who used to do all those things.

This is what you guys used to be like, he writes to them. Such were some of you. But, here's the good news, you were washed. That's salvation. You were cleansed. You were sanctified, set apart by God. You were justified, accounted as righteous before God because of His Son, in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. So he is writing to a group filled with people in a church who came from that culture.

That's what they used to live like. That's the city of Corinth. Now with that as a background, we get to verse one, finally.

After these things, Paul departed from Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus. Pontus is a little area by the Caspian and Black Sea, who had recently come from Italy with his wife, Priscilla. Cute couple. Cute names. Hi, I'm Aquila. Hi, I'm Priscilla. Oh, how cool. Your names rhyme.

You guys are just awesome. And it says they came, they're in Corinth, they have left Italy and here's why. Because Claudius, that's the emperor, had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome and he came to them.

That is, Paul came to Corinth and in particular, Aquila and his wife, Priscilla. So, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, just moved right in with them, and worked for by occupation, they were tent makers. Skenopoioi, that's the Greek word.

Or skenopoios, the singular. Now what that means, it's translated tent maker, but skenopoioi literally means leather workers. When you say Paul was a tent maker, yeah, but literally he was a leather worker.

And tents were made of leather, but sometimes they were made of the hair of animals, the wool of sheep or goats. Now that was Paul's trade. Why was that Paul's trade? Well, he was Jewish. And every father who was Jewish taught his Jewish sons to have a trade, especially if they were rabbis. If they were rabbis, you would teach your son he needed a trade because there will be times in your life, young rabbi, when you'll need to work for yourself, not in ministry, but just secular work.

You need a trade so you can go from place to place and teach and have freedom to minister, but you have your own job. There was a saying among the Jews about fathers saying, fathers who did not teach their sons to work, taught their sons to steal. Work was regarded very highly. The work ethic was regarded very highly. And if you know anything about Paul in regard to his writings on work, he also had a high work ethic.

In fact, he said, if there's somebody among you who doesn't work, don't let them eat. He himself was a hard worker, and while he was ministering in the gospel, some of the times where he went, he was not supported by churches, he was a scoinapooi, a tent maker, a leather worker. Now, do you remember what city Paul came from? Tarsus.

Thank you. You can just yell it out if you know the answer. And Tarsus was in a province. Anybody know the name of the province? Harder question.

Pastors, come on. Cilicia. It was Tarsus of the area of Cilicia.

Cilicia was famous for a product called, listen, silicium, which was the black hair of black goats with which was harvested to make tents. So Paul, being a tent maker, worked with leather and with animal fur, animal hair to make tents. Now, I bring this up because I think Paul employs this thinking when he writes to Timothy, and he says that we ought to be rightly dividing the word of truth. Do you remember that phrase? Rightly dividing, study, destroy yourself, approve? Rightly dividing the word of truth? The word rightly dividing means to cut a straight line, and it was a word used in tent making. It meant that you cut a straight line in a panel of leather or a patchwork of cloth to make panels to make tents.

Cutting a straight line. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Jeremiah Johnston's powerful book, Unleashing Peace, to guide you into the peace that passes all understanding. To request your copy, call 800-922-1888.

That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to download the Connect with Skip Heitzig app, where you can access messages and more content right at your fingertips. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.