Don't Give Up
Notes
Transcript
After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.
When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” And he drove them from the tribunal. And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this.
After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow. And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus.
When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch.
As we read today, it may not exactly feel like it, but this is the end of Paul’s second missionary journey. We’re going to find Paul staying in Corinth for a year and a half, a length of time that had not been common for him to stay in one place. He’s going to meet some new and some old partners in ministry. Then he headed back east to Ephesus in Asia, one of the places he may have been kept from earlier in this journey. Then he’ll go up, implying he went to Jerusalem, and then to the north, to Antioch, his sending church.
Obviously, there’s a lot that goes on, but we’re going to focus especially on verses 6 through 10, a pivotal moment in Paul’s preaching ministry in Corinth and a vision God gave him. Before we get into our main passage, I’m going to read from 1 Corinthians 2 verses 1 through 5. Several commentators alluded to this passage as giving insight to Paul’s mindset when he came to this city. Maybe you look at Paul’s life and his letters, and you think because he was educated and ministering for a while, he must have been this all-around solid speaker, writer, preacher, public figure, but listen to him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, maybe you’ve noticed it’s a little quieter this morning. My wife and kids have been visiting Christie’s family in Michigan this week, and so it’s been quiet at home, too—almost too quiet. I don’t know if my kids picked it up on TV or what, but it seems from the time Addy and Brooks each could walk, they also started slamming their bedroom doors when they aren’t happy about something. Whether it’s time to come in from playing with friends or to help pick up or one of them feels like we’re being mean—most of you with kids have probably shared this experience. They run or stomp off to their room, in anger or with tears, and the loud bang of the door reaching its limits on its hinges and frame echoes through the house. Things on the walls shake and are no longer level. Sometimes it’s followed by a yell, “Leave me alone!”
As a parent, when it’s not going on right now, it can be easy to smile and laugh about, but in the moment, there can be tension. It’s not something that just kids do; adults can act like that sometimes, too. TV shows and movies sometimes use this event as the climax of drama. There’s been an argument between two characters, and one of them has had enough. They storm off, out of camera view, and slam the door behind them. The person left behind is standing either with a shocked look on their face or a feeling of angry satisfaction, as if they’ve won the argument. Slamming a door communicates a sense of finality and separation—“We’re through. I’m done.”
I don’t know what the door situation of the synagogue in Corinth was like. I don’t know if there was a door or what it was made of, but this is the imagery that comes to mind when I think about what happens in verses 6 and 7. Paul had enough of the Jews, enough of their rejection and slandering him, enough of their unwillingness to accept the gospel message that he was preaching. As much as he desired them to accept Jesus, he was done. “‘I am clear of my responsibility.’” It’s as if he’s saying, “I tried; I did my due diligence, but I’m out of here!” I picture him storming out, slamming the door, but then through thin walls, you hear him knock at the apartment next door or the door swings open and you hear Paul scream in frustration.
Throughout this series, we’ve heard how difficult early church ministry was. There are these rotating moments of persecution by imprisonment, beating, and stoning, the relatively unrecorded toll that being rejected and schemed against and being the focus of riot—what toll that all had on the missionaries and the church. Last week, we looked at how Christianity isn’t just the missing piece that we hope ourselves and others will have, but the Christian faith challenges the popular worldviews and belief systems of many unbelievers. Ministry and worship, evangelism and submission to the wonderful, saving truth of Jesus Christ isn’t always easy.
We begin this morning with the question: why are Christians rejected? Why don’t certain people want to listen to us? Why are they spiteful towards missionaries, evangelists, pastors, elders and deacons, and general believers? The easy answer is sin, but what does that sin look like? As we’ve gone through the months and years recorded in Acts, we’ve seen Paul and other Christians be rejected, at times violently, by idolaters, by people who chased false gods. Some of them were converted, but most would not believe or change their ways. Paul was rejected by certain authorities, either ridiculed or dismissed. Much of the focus, though, and it’s in our text, is that he was rejected by his own people, by the Jews—the lineage that came out of God’s covenant Israelite community, the lineage which Jesus was born into as was Paul. Many of them, though, did not accept Jesus as God’s Anointed One, the Messiah, the Savior; they did not believe in him.
The difficult reality is that by rejecting Jesus, by not having faith in the Son of God, the Lamb who was slain, Immanuel, the One who came to take away the sins of the world—by rejecting Jesus, there is no difference between the idolater and the unbelieving Jew. That’s not a dismissal of Jewish people or of Gentile people. No matter what label a person wants to put on themselves, if they do not have Jesus and will not come to him, they’re all in the same boat. Those were the people rejecting Paul. They rejected him because they did not believe in Jesus.
What I hope we’re seeing and hearing today and with this passage is, once more, that things aren’t so different in our world. We look at society today and we see unbelievers tending to reject what we might call Christian or biblical values—about family, about sexuality, about life from conception to death, about being made in the image of God, about teaching the Bible and the faith to others including our children. They dismiss Christians as old-fashioned or foolish, irrelevant or wanting to keep women oppressed. Maybe you’ve heard quotes that people don’t hate Jesus; it’s just that so many Christians don’t look like their Jesus and we’re hypocrites. There’s always some truth to that—we are broken sinners; Jesus was not—we are to be holy, but we’re not there yet. If we could really boil things down, though, it’s not just our actions and the actions of other Christians that people have the issue with—their issue is fundamentally with unbelief in Jesus, the unbelieving rejection of him.
When we look at the sayings of Jesus, one that often pops out is in John 6:37. A crowd asked Jesus for a miraculous sign, that if they saw they would believe in him, and they mention how God had given the Israelites manna—bread from heaven—when they were in the wilderness. In the midst of his message, teaching them that he is the bread of life, Jesus said, “‘All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.’” Jesus wouldn’t drive people away, but that didn’t mean he held back the truth or softened his message to make it easier for people to take.
In verses 53 and 54, Jesus told the same people “‘….Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’” That was hard for the people to understand; they grumbled. They didn’t get it. Jesus went on to say, “‘…The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe…This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.’ From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”
It's important that we understand this, that we accept it. The message we offer, the message that even came straight from the mouth of Jesus, speaking heavenly or spiritual or eternal things, isn’t always or often received. The message and with it, the messenger, is rejected. The reason is because without God’s help, the sinner cannot understand unto faith. It may be our goal as Christians, as the church, as God’s witnesses to speak the truth about Jesus to people, especially those who haven’t heard it, but if they aren’t listening to God, won’t bow down to him, and continue to hate him, then rejection, ridicule, humiliation, and even persecution can be expected.
That brings us to our next point: what do we do--what do we do when we are rejected? You see at least the start of the answer in our message’s title: Do not give up. Paul was called by God to be a missionary. Back in Acts 9 verses 15 and 16, God spoke to Ananias, the man who restored Paul’s sight after his conversion, “…‘Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.’” God had chosen a laborer who would face struggle while preaching.
He did that steadfastly. It wasn’t that Paul tried telling them about Jesus one time, they got mad or ignored him, and so he took off. No, “Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.” After a few weeks or months maybe, he “devoted himself exclusively to preaching.” After that ongoing ministry that he quit with them and transitioned to ministering primarily to the Gentiles in Corinth. God’s call to him continued, “‘Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent.’”
In other words, don’t give up. Even if the ministry we feel we’ve been called to doesn’t work, it doesn’t find good soil and the bearing of fruit with one group, does not mean we discontinue all ministry. God’s call in Scripture isn’t to try once or try for a little while, that’s all I expect. No, God calls us to perseverance in answering his call in our lives. We are to persevere in the mission or commission that he’s given us.
We heard in 1 Corinthians 2 how Paul felt as he came to Corinth. It’s in his second letter to them, that he wrote the contrasting experience, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” To continue in the midst of the hardships that he experienced day in and day out, from multiple opponents, in pretty much every place he went, often being faraway from his home and the epicenter of the church—he had learned that all he went through was not for his glory, enjoyment, excitement, or pleasure—rather it was for the glory of God. He would endure all of this because spreading the gospel was worth it, the opportunity of more people believing in Jesus and being saved was worth it, God and his call on his life was worth it.
The call to persevere continues down to us as servants of God today. Again, it may mean changes in how or who ministry is done to, but it’s keeping the preaching of the gospel as the most important thing wherever God is calling us. If we find an area that bears fruit, that sees God’s hand transforming hearts and minds and lives, we keep at that. If we find new soil, new people to reach out to, whether on our own or as a congregation, we should seek if God is calling us to them.
That brings us to our final point. We’ve been hearing the call to be obedient and to persevere with whatever opportunity is before us, but we must also seek God’s will, which is necessary for who we minister to. In verse 10, God offered an incredible reassurance to Paul. Maybe everything still seemed bleak and like he was getting beat up, yet God said to him, “‘…I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.’” God had a plan; there was a way things were going to go in Corinth.
The ministry that Paul was involved in and all of us are involved in exists in a tension—a good tension—of what we read in texts like Matthew 9:37 and 38 and Acts 18:21. In Matthew 9, as Jesus was going around ministering and healing, he told his disciples, “‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’” Think about what Paul did in Corinth—he was sent by God, as a harvest worker, yet he slammed the door, at least metaphorically, on the Jews. A harvest was not being yielded there. Yet rather than give up, God has him keep at it for the harvest to come from the Gentiles.
The Lord was telling Paul to trust him. Ministry may not be easy, but there are still people God is going to deliver. Neither Paul nor you or I should forsake the Lord’s plan because the going gets tough, because no one seems to listen, no one in a short period of time is converting. If you prayerfully discern God’s will telling you to stay somewhere, even when it doesn’t completely make sense to you, persevere because God may still need you for the harvest.
Yet God’s will unfolds according to God’s plan, which may be different from place to place. If Paul should stay in Corinth for 18 months, then he should stay everywhere that long, right? Or he should stay anywhere that invites him? Looking to verses 20 and 21, “…He declined [the Ephesians’ request to stay]…He promised, ‘I will come back if it is God’s will.’” God’s will isn’t just at work amid healing sickness. He’s not only making choices over who gets affected by a certain storm on a certain day. He’s not just operating his will as far as how many days he has ordained for each of our lives. He wills where the good news of the gospel will be shared and when and for how long and by who.
By no means is it easy or even possible to fully discern God’s will. What makes sense to us—take the gospel to as many places and people as you can as soon as you can for as long as you can—seems like it should be what God wants. Yet, as we’ve seen throughout the early church, God had a plan. His will dictated how things went. We can’t block God out of the process of taking his gospel into our community or the world—his will must be done. Don’t give up on God. Don’t give up on the call he’s given to you. Listen and persevere, take delight in him. Amen.