SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/1/2018
11:09 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Paul in
Transition PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
18:18-23
Message of the
verses: “18 Paul, having remained
many days longer, took leave of the brethren and put out to sea for Syria, and
with him were Priscilla and Aquila. In Cenchrea he had his hair cut, for he was
keeping a vow. 19 They came to Ephesus, and he left them there. Now he himself
entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. 20 When they asked him to
stay for a longer time, he did not consent, 21 but taking leave of them and
saying, "I will return to you again if God wills," he set sail from
Ephesus. 22 When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church,
and went down to Antioch. 23 And having spent some time there, he left and
passed successively through the Galatian region and Phrygia, strengthening all
the disciples.”
As we begin to look at verse eighteen we see a number of
things. First we see that Paul was able
to stay in Corinth for a while because of Gallio’s favorable ruling found in
Acts 18:14-15. Next We see that Paul
felt the need to leave Corinth and travel to Palestine, and in doing this he
took both Priscilla and Aquila with him.
This shows us that Paul felt that there were enough leaders in the
Corinthian church for him to take this couple with him. They had become very close to Paul through
both spiritual ways along with both of them in the same business.
Cenchrea was the eastern port of Corinth where they could
catch a ship going east. We then read
that Paul had his hair cut because he was keeping a vow. Paul would later write about vows in his
letters to one of the churches. We
mentioned that the church was in a transition period, which is the theme of all
the verses we will be looking at and this vow that Paul made shows us that Paul
was still doing thing according to the Old Covenant. John MacArthur writes “His actions seems
puzzling at first glance, since he was well aware that the Old Covenant and all
its rituals had passed away. Yet he had
been reared according to the strictest standards of the Jewish faith. In Galatians 1:13-14 Paul wrote:
‘13 For you have heard of my former manner of
life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and
tried to destroy it; 14 and I was
advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen,
being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.’
“To the Philippians he
described himself as
‘5 circumcised the eighth
day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as
to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the
righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.’”
Paul realized that after God called him to be a Christian
that all of the self-effort of working out his own salvation was wrong, and yet
Paul had been raised Jewish, a Pharisees as we have seen in the above verses,
and so he certainly had a love for the Jewish Old Covenant. Now we have been looking at the difficult
times that Paul had in Corinth in our previous SD’s as Paul had to leave Berea
and go to Athens where according to how the Lord had allowed him to begin
churches and gain converts things in Athens were not going that well, and then
in Corinth the people were trying to get him kicked out, but God promised him
then that he would be there for a while and no one would bother him, and so we
read he was there for 18 months. With
that all said John MacArthur writes “And when he wanted to show his deep thanks
for God’s marvelous encouragement during the difficult times in Corinth he
naturally though of a typically Jewish way of doing so.”
We will stop here and in our next SD we will look at what
this vow was about. It seems a good
place to end here.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Because he asks amiss” (James
4:3).
Today’s Bible
question: “What Old Testament prophet
made three prophecies about Jesus’ betrayal?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/1/2018 11:35 AM
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