Acts chapter 18, and I want to
read from verse 12. Acts chapter 18 and verse 12. And when Galileo was the deputy
of Achai, the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul. and brought him to the judgment
seat, saying, This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to
the law. And when Paul was now about to
open his mouth, Galio said unto the Jews, If it were a matter
of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that
I should bear with you. But if it be a question of words
and names and of your law, look ye to it, for I will be no judge
of such matters.' And he drave them from the judgment seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes,
the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment
seat. And Galio cared for none of those
things. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this short reading from his word. Last week, we learned that the
Lord Jesus Christ came to the Apostle Paul in a vision at a
time when it seemed as though there was about to be a riot
in Corinth. And Paul, as had been a pattern
in other cities in Macedonia, probably was of the view that
now's the time to get out of town. Now is the time not to
be here because he would not want to bring the gospel into
disrepute. He would not want to be a threat
to those believers who, in their new faith, had recently come
to a knowledge of the truth. And there were others in the
town also. For example, those that he had
been staying with, Priscilla and Aquila, who had made their
home in Corinth, who would have been jeopardised had this riot
taken on the force of a full-scale insurrection. And so Paul probably
was of the mind that now was a good time to leave the city
for the sake of peace. But the Lord said something different. The Lord said, no, Paul, this
time you stay. This time we are going to go
through this trouble and we will come out the other end. No one
will harm you. No one will touch you, and I
am going to use you to save many people in this city, for I have
much people in Corinth." And so the Apostle Paul was told
that he was to stay, and indeed stay he did, and we discover
that he stayed for at least 18 months and probably considerably
longer than that. It's likely that he was there
the best part of two full years. So the Lord had come in this
vision to Paul and given him a word of comfort and a word
of courage. He could see the trouble brewing
but he was told not to depart. Paul was instructed to stay for
the reasons that we've thought about. And I suspect that the
vision that Paul had probably came to him very shortly before
this riot, or what the writer Luke calls an insurrection, took
place, maybe even the night before. But the Lord had promised that
Paul would not be harmed. Paul took the Lord at his word,
and the Lord's promise was fulfilled. Paul was not hurt. You know, the Lord promises to
save his people. He promises to defend his people. He promises to be a shield to
his people. And that doesn't mean to say
that nothing ever happens that causes us anxiety. Indeed, we will discover in our
Christian life that there's lots that we have to worry about,
but we always know that the Lord is shielding his people and nothing
will happen to us until and except it is God's good purpose to do
so for a greater end than we perhaps might understand. And
that was the case here in Corinth. I, as I was reading these words,
had a little thought about another occasion when something similar
transpired to what we've read about here in Acts chapter 18. And I want to read you some paragraphs
from another story, this time by a man called John Bunyan,
when it was an example that he was given about having to walk
between two adversaries. Paul had to steer a course between
the rioting Jews who wanted to hurt him and indeed kill him,
and the authorities in the town, Galileo here spoken of, and the
leadership of Corinth. And here we find John Bunyan
speaking about an incident in the life of Christian in Pilgrim's
Progress. And Christian is heading to a
palace. It's called the Palace Beautiful. And there he hopes that he might
get some comfort from the weariness of his journey. He might be able
to find some accommodation and some rest. This is what John
Bunyan says. So I saw in my dream that he
made haste and went forward, that if possible he might get
lodging there at the Palace Beautiful. Now before he had gone far, he
entered into a very narrow passage, which was about a furlong off
from the Porter's Lodge, and looking very narrowly before
him as he went, He espied two lions in the way. Now, thought
he, I see the dangers that mistrust and timorous were driven back
by. The lions were chained, but he
saw not the chains. Then he was afraid and thought
also himself to go back after them, for he thought nothing
but death was before him. But the porter at the lodge,
whose name is Watchful, perceiving that Christian made a halt as
if he would go back, cried unto him, saying, Is your strength
so small? Fear not the lions, for they
are chained and are placed there for a trial of faith where it
is. and for discovery of those that
have none, keep in the midst of the path and no heart shall
come unto you. Then I saw that he went on, trembling
for fear of the lions, but taking good heed to the directions of
the porter, he heard them roar. but they did him no harm. You see these lines were chained
at the side of this narrow path and there was just enough space
for a man to walk between. The porter called for faith and
trust and Pilgrim walked through safely. Though he was afraid,
Yet his adversaries did not harm him. And I think there's a lovely
parallel there in that story to what we read here concerning
Paul. Galil was not Paul's friend.
By no means, Galil would have been quite happy to do Paul as
much trouble and as much harm as his office would allow him
if he felt that Paul was in any way troublesome to the city.
He cared nothing for the gospel or the Lord Jesus Christ. And
the Jews rioting, the Jews insurrection, and insurrection is a violent
uprising. The Jews, they were out to get
Paul if they possibly could. They were angry that so many
Jews and Greeks, that was the Gentiles who had trusted in the
Jewish faith, had left the synagogue and converted to the gospel that
Paul was preaching. And just like those lions in
Bunyan's story, both sides would have happily torn Paul to pieces. but both were chained, and both
were only able to make a noise, and they were not able to touch
the apostle. None was able to harm Paul. God had so ordained it, and the
word of the Lord Jesus Christ and the vision to his apostle,
that no one would touch thee, came true on this occasion. This should give us all encouragement
in our service and in our witness, in the trials that we face in
this life and the challenges that we are called to go through. These are chained enemies that
we have. These enemies that we see around
about us that causes anxiety, they can go only so far and do
only so much. And we might feel their stinking
breath against our face, but they cannot touch us and their
teeth will not enter in. There is a little prophecy in
Psalm 105, verse 15, which says, The Word of God speaks to this
world and it says this, don't you touch my people. Touch not mine anointed. Do the
prophets no harm. It's lovely when we take the
gospel, Mitch, perhaps you'll agree, and we are able to take
it into circumstances and situations where who knows what reaction
we are potentially going to be confronted with, and yet to do
so in the boldness of the knowledge that Christ stands with us. And
he says, I have much people in this city. Verse 17, just to
close our thoughts here, is the end of the narrative this morning. And it says, then all the Greeks,
now that's not the Greeks that were converted in the synagogue
to the Jewish faith and then became converts to Paul's message. This is the Greeks that lived
in the city of Corinth, which was a Greek city. So these are
not believers in any way. but they realized that the Jews
had started this insurrection and they realized that Galileo
had thrown them out of court and so they were empowered, if you like. They
thought, this is a good opportunity for us just to put these Jews
into their place. And they went and they got the
leader of the synagogue, who was probably the leader of the
insurrection as well, a man called Sosthenes, the chief ruler of
the synagogue. And they dragged him back to
the judgment seat before Galileo, and they beat him up there. That's
what you call tough justice. That's what you call popular
justice. And we're told Galio cared for
none of those things. So Sosthenes, the leader of the
insurrection, got a little bit of his own medicine. And that's
what happens when the wicked raise their hands against the
Lord's people. But you know what P.S. means,
don't you? because there's a little postscript to this story. If
I'm right in thinking that this man Sosthenes, the leader of
the insurrection and the leader of the synagogue, is the same
person, if you turn over in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 1, you'll
see something very interesting there. Remember where Paul is?
He's in Corinth. And after he left Corinth, he
wrote a letter back to the Corinthians explaining his doctrine and his
theology and bringing personal information to the people. Look
at the opening verse of 1 Corinthians 1. Paul, called to be an apostle
of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes, our brother. Isn't that lovely? I think Sosthenes,
after he got his beating, also got converted. And I think that
the leader of the insurrection of the Jews could not withstand,
and maybe he was more like Saul of Tarsus than Paul, the apostle,
would like to remember. because Saul of Tarsus had harmed
Stephen, the deacon, and then he had been converted. And it
would appear as if Sosthenes was following in the same pattern. So thank you very much for listening
to these thoughts. May the Lord bless them to our
hearts.