Return to Ephesus
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Last week we saw the end of Paul’s second missionary journey as he returned once again to Jerusalem and then to the church at Antioch that had originally sent him out with Barnabas on that first journey several years earlier. But as we saw, he didn’t stay put for long. Luke tells us that he went up to Jerusalem and then down to Antioch, but then in the very next sentence, in verse 23 of chapter 18 he told us, “After spending some time there, he set out, traveling through one place after another in the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.” In that brief sentence, which seems almost as an afterthought to the closing of Paul’s second missionary journey, we see the beginning of his third journey. This morning we’ll pick up reading with chapter 19, but before we do, I want to give just a little more background.
Remember, as Paul was travelling back to Antioch he went through the city of Ephesus and entered the synagogue to teach as he always did. Now in Ephesus he got a different reception than he was used to. In Ephesus the Jews asked him to stay. They wanted to hear more of what he had to say. But Paul, whether homesick, or just wanting to get back to Jerusalem to complete the vow that we discussed last week, declined. However, he promised to come back if it was God’s will. As we begin reading chapter 19 this morning we’ll see that it obviously was God’s will because Paul returns to this city where he had left Aquila and Priscilla. Remember, after Paul had gone on home, we saw these two ministering to Apollos when he came to Ephesus and teaching him the rest of the gospel story that he was missing.
So Paul returns to the city of Ephesus. Now this city had once been a center of commerce and trade, but in New Testament times it was fading as a commercial center and most of its importance was based around the fact that this city was the center of worship for the Greek goddess Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana. The Ephesians had erected a massive temple to Diana that is considered to be on of the seven wonders of the ancient world. This temple was almost four times the size of the Parthenon at Athens. It measured 400 feet long by 200 feet wide and it took 220 years to build. It was surrounded by 127 white marble columns that were each 60 feet high. This temple was a huge attraction for those who worshipped Diana. Now one thing I should add is that Diana was the goddess of fertility so you can imagine some of the things that went on during her worship services.
Diana was the goddess of fertility so you can imagine some of the things that went on during the worship services to her.
So that’s the situation that Paul comes in to at Ephesus. He arrives to a city that is a center of pagan worship, but a city where the people are searching for something more. Now let’s pick up reading.
Acts 19:1
1 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus. He found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
“No,” they told him, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3 “Into what then were you baptized?” he asked them.
“Into John’s baptism,” they replied.
4 Paul said, “John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people that they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus.”
5 When they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began to speak in other tongues and to prophesy. 7 Now there were about twelve men in all.
So Paul returns to Ephesus, and he finds these 12 disciples. Now the Bible doesn’t tell us whose disciples they were. The word disciple means simply, “a follower or student of a teacher, leader, or philosopher.” These verses tell us that they were baptized “into John’s baptism,” meaning John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus who preached about his coming. But we don’t know whether they had actually followed John, or if they followed someone else who was a disciple of his. It’s possible that since we’re back in Ephesus, that these men had learned from Apollos. Remember last week we talked about the fact that Apollos had come to Ephesus preaching and teaching, but he was missing part of the story. Luke used the same phrase in talking about Apollos that he uses here. He said that Apollos “was speaking and teaching accurately about Jesus, although he knew only John’s baptism.” So it’s possible that Paul has run into a group of disciples of Apollos here that didn’t get the rest of the story like Apollos did when he was taken in by Aquila and Priscilla.
So Paul does the same thing with these disciples that Aquila and Priscilla had done with Apollos. He tells them the rest of the story. What we saw in Apollos, and what we see here with these disciples, are people who believe the stories of the coming Messiah. They understood that John was preaching something different than the rabbis, something different than the Pharisees and Sadduccees. John was calling people to repentance. We see this in Luke chapter 3.
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, God’s word came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
A voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight!
5 Every valley will be filled,
and every mountain and hill will be made low;
the crooked will become straight,
the rough ways smooth,
6 and everyone will see the salvation of God.
2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, God’s word came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
A voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight!
5 Every valley will be filled,
and every mountain and hill will be made low;
the crooked will become straight,
the rough ways smooth,
6 and everyone will see the salvation of God.
So John was telling people to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. He told them that Messiah’s coming was imminent. It wasn’t some far off, future event any longer. It was something that those listening to him could expect in their lifetimes. And that’s where Apollos and these 12 disciples were stuck. They were still in the waiting game. They had heard the story. They knew that the Messiah was coming… soon. But they hadn’t been told the rest of the story.
I’m a huge science fiction fan. I especially love Star Trek, in particular “The Next Generation” TV show. Now I know there are some theological issues with a lot of stuff on those shows, but I still enjoy them. I remember in college every Sunday evening after church, we would hurry back to a friend’s apartment to catch that week’s episode. That was back in the days before shows like Survivor started running multiples “seasons” in a single calendar year. Not just Star Trek, but almost all shows would premiere in late September or early October and run until late April or early May and they would typically end with a cliffhanger episode. There would be some huge tragedy, someone would go missing, or be hurt, or kidnapped, or there would be a marriage proposal or a job offer that would require moving across the country and then the episode would end with those words we all dreaded,
“To be continued…” Star Trek was notorious for these cliffhanger endings. I remember one of the big cliffhangers was Captain Picard being captured by an alien race and basically turned into a cyborg, a half human, half robot creation. But with all these shows we would get the cliffhanger at the end of the seasons and then we would wait all summer long, wondering what happened. How were they going to get out of this situation? What was the answer going to be? How was the crew going to get Captain Picard back?
Then you had shows that took it a little farther and ended the series on cliffhangers. Anyone remember the show JAG? That one ended on a huge cliffhanger. The two central stars of the show Harm and Mac, were both military lawyers, he in the Navy, she in the Marines. They had started dating and in the final episode they got engaged but only one of them was going to stay in the military. They couldn’t decide who it would be so decided to leave it up to the flip of a coin. They flip it and the scene freezes with the coin in mid-air and that’s how the show ended. Now you have NCIS which is a spin-off series from JAG that teases every once in a while with info about Harm and Mac and the outcome of that coin flip. But they never quite get to the reveal.
That’s where these disciples are living. They are stuck in that summer between seasons. They are stuck waiting for the outcome of the cliffhanger. They’re waiting for the reveal. But Paul comes in and says, “Guys, that’s already been revealed. The Messiah that you’ve been waiting for has already come and his name is Jesus Christ.” So he told them how Christ had come to Earth. He told them about the miracles he performed, the message he shared, the life he lived. He told them how he had died on the cross to take our place, to take the punishment for our sins. And then he told them how Christ had risen from the grave, conquering death so that we any who believe can live for eternity with him in paradise. As the great Paul Harvey would have said, Paul told them, “the rest of the story.” And when these disciples heard that story they believed, and they were baptized and they experienced what the writer of one of the commentaries I read described as “a mini-Pentecost with tongues and prophecy.”
And when these disciples heard that story they believed, and they were baptized and
Now, before I move on to the next passage I want to point out something. Yes, we see these men prophesying and speaking in tongues when they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, but if you read through the entire counsel of the New Testament you’ll see that this was actually not a common experience. Some churches focus on this passage and the Pentecost passage and try to say that everyone who receives the gift of the Holy Spirit will speak in tongues, but that’s just not necessarily true. God can certainly give this gift in connection with the Spirit, but He doesn’t have to, and He doesn’t always.
OK, enough about that. If anyone has specific questions I’d be happy to talk to you about it after the service, but for now let’s continue reading in verse 8.
8 Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly over a period of three months, arguing and persuading them about the kingdom of God. 9 But when some became hardened and would not believe, slandering the Way in front of the crowd, he withdrew from them, taking the disciples, and conducted discussions every day in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.
So after this exchange with the 12 disciples in the previous verses Paul goes back into the synagogue as he always does and begins teaching. And just like we saw when he was in Ephesus before, there is a different reception here. He spends three months preaching and teaching, arguing and debating about the true nature of the kingdom of God. Eventually, there is opposition, but even so, it’s nothing like what Paul has experienced before. Here there is a group that Luke tells us “became hardened and would not believe.” He says they began, “slandering the Way in front of the crowd.” Basically what we see here is a bunch of hecklers. Paul is trying to teach those who are willing to hear, but this group that is hardened won’t keep quiet. They spend their time poking fun at Christianity and at those who would believe this fairy tale nonsense. Sound familiar? So rather than put up with this constant heckling, Paul just leaves. At least he leaves the synagogue. But he doesn’t leave town. Paul simply withdrew from the synagogue and moved over to the lecture hall of Tyrannus.
Now Luke doesn’t tell us much about this hall. How did Paul pay the rent to use it? Maybe it was vacant and he could use it free of charge. Or maybe it was like the porticos in the Temple in Jerusalem that we talked about, where teachers could gather together with their students to discuss the scriptures, or whatever else they wanted to talk about. We don’t know whether Paul continued working as a tentmaker here in Ephesus. Remember, Aquila and Priscilla are here in the city and he had worked with them in Corinth so I don’t think it would be wrong to assume that he continued in the trade and that allowed him to rent the hall. But however he paid for it, or didn’t, he continued teaching and preaching the gospel of Christ there in the city of Ephesus. In this city that was so well known as the center of worship for the fertility goddess Diana, Paul taught and preached about the King of Kings, the savior of the world. For two years he did this until Luke tells us, “all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.”
Now I know someone is going to look at this and say, “Really? All the residents? Every last person who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord from Paul?” And I would answer, “No.” The phrase that Luke uses here in Greek is “πάντας τοὺς κατοικοῦντας τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀκοῦσαι τὸν λόγον τοῦ κυρίου.” Now I doubt many of you know what I just said, but it’s the Greek translation of part of that last verse, “so that all the resident of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” But the key word in the Greek is ἀκοῦσαι. The root of this word does have the meaning, “hear,” but it also carries the meaning, “be able to hear.” So what Luke is saying here is not that every person who lived in Asia at the time literally heard the word of the Lord. I think the meaning of the passage is more along the lines of “every resident of Asia had the opportunity to hear the word of the Lord.” What Luke is doing here is showing how the evangelism of the city of Ephesus spread much wider than the city itself. During the time that Paul was in Ephesus the missionary team that had come around him founded churches in Colosse, Laodicea, and Hierapolis. During this time Paul wrote two letters to the church at Corinth, one that was lost and one that came down to us as the book of 1 Corinthians.
And that’s something we should all keep in mind. We may never know how far our efforts at spreading the gospel may go. I’ve told the story in here before about the Sunday School school teacher who led a young man to Christ in the stock room of a shoe store. That young man became a preacher, and he led another young man to Christ who also became a preacher, who led another young man to Christ who became an evangelist, who led a revival at which a young man named Billy Graham came to know Christ. That Sunday School teacher never knew, this side of heaven, just what impact he had on the kingdom. But rest assured, there are thousands upon thousands who are celebrating with him in heaven today, because of his faithfulness to share the gospel that day in that stockroom. I pray that we would all be just as faithful.
Holmes, M. W. (2011–2013). The Greek
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