All right. Well, it is good to be back with y'all this morning. I was in Abilene this last Sunday, which is why I was absent and was able to go see the saints up in Abilene, up at the Covenant OPC there in Abilene. So it's good to see all of them. But now I'm back. So we're gonna keep picking up with our early church stuff. We talked about some of the apostles last time. Today we're going to talk about just the Apostle Paul. I thought that we would talk about the Apostle Paul and then kind of start getting into some of the Church Fathers after him. But then I just did his life and had way more material than I thought I would. So we will just dive into his life. So Ali, pray for us and we'll get started. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would be with us, that you would guide our thoughts this morning, that you would put out all distractions from our mind that we might focus upon you. For Lord, we are so thankful that we have this time to come and to study your word, a time later to worship you in truth and in spirit. And I pray that we would do so wholeheartedly. We would do so with love and admiration in our hearts for you and for your dear son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in his name we pray these things. Amen. All right, well, the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul is born in Tarsus. Tarsus is a city in the Roman province of Cilicia, which is, to our knowledge, it is around, I kind of wish that I had a map here that I could turn around and show you, because we're gonna be talking about everywhere where Paul went, and he went a lot of places. But he was born in Tarsus, so if you can imagine a map of Europe, that would be in Anatolia, which is known as Turkey today. And so if you go in Turkey and you go to the southeast edge, right there near the water, you will find the city of Tarsus. Now Tarsus was the capital of the province of Cilicia, so because of that it was quite a big city. It was filled with trade, it was filled with what we would call universities or places of education, and had a lot of contact with the great educational capital of the world, Athens. There were many Greek philosophers and other thinkers rolling through that city. So it is Paul that he gets born here and of course then has a great opportunity to have a great education from day one. He was born to Hebrews, particularly Hebrews that were Pharisees that were there in the city. They were probably of the upper middle class, if we could use those distinctions in that day. And they were, we know they were landowners. Now, how do we know this? Because 70 years prior, the city of Tarsus, and more particularly the province of Cilicia, had been invaded by the Roman Empire and annexed into the empire itself. And we know that according to Roman law, that if your province was invaded, and you owned land, and you and your people were annexed, that all the land owners automatically got citizenship in the Roman Empire. And so, how do we know that Paul's parents must have been landowners? Because he says that he never had to buy or become a citizen. He was born into citizenship, meaning that he was descendants of those that were there when his province was annexed into the empire. So, he has quite a good start. Tarsus, we already talked about, so his parents were born to, they were born through, or they were part of the Pharisee sect there, and this is quite clear in that they sought an education for their son, not only a at what we might call a classical education, which he probably received when he was a young man there in Tarsus. But then they wanted to give him a religious education. And who did they turn to? But the chief academic scholar of the Pharisee sect, or really the chief academic scholar of the Jews at the time all over the empire, and that was a man by the name of Gamaliel. And we actually have some historical evidence that his family probably knew Gamaliel, and so sent Paul to go study at the feet of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. And so Paul would leave his home city of Tarsus and go down to Jerusalem for a total of eight years to learn about the faith. And there he would learn about more in-depth study into the law, more in-depth study into the scriptures. This is where it may be helpful for us to understand the three different sects of Judaism that were popular at the time. And those were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Pharisees, by far the most popular of the three, And they were the most popular because they were very popular with the middle class the Sadducees are very popular with the upper class And so that they have some clout and yet they were not nearly as popular with most of the people and so the Pharisees why were they popular well because they basically had a They looked at the law and they studied it very, very in depth and then would try to take it and use, using tradition that had come down over time, try to apply it to the modern life. And so the ways in which they applied it, a lot of times it would lend itself towards things that would make it so it would go well with you and perhaps go well with you meant being financially successful in many different ways. And so they appealed to the middle class a lot because they said, well, God would have you do this or this or this within the law, and this would bring you economic prosperity. And it kind of led to the Pharisees being popular with those that were on the rise in the middle class there. And so this is where Paul finds himself, that sect, as he is then studying the law and studying what is known then as the Oral Torah. There is the Written Torah, which of course we would acknowledge as scripture, but they would appeal to the Oral Torah, which then of course would be written down later as what is known as the Talmud. and is that body of laws and traditions that got passed down from the time of the Babylonian exile up into this point. And many things have been added, many laws have been interpreted in such ways that asked, well, it says you have to rest on the Sabbath, what does that mean? Does that mean if I lift 10 pounds that I'm not resting? Does that mean if I walk a mile, am I not resting? And they would try to define things to the utmost degree. And so that was kind of their MO. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were an interesting group of people. They were kind of, if we really wanted to boil it down, they were almost what we might call Jewish deists. They didn't believe that the soul was eternal. They did not believe there was an afterlife. They believed that when you died, you died, and that was it. And they didn't believe, of course, by implication, they did not believe in the resurrection. And it's because of this, they really weren't all that popular with the middle and the lower classes. It's not very hopeful to go to people, especially people as you go down the chain, people that may or not be suffering in this matter of their life or another. and tell them that this is it, this is all you'll get, there is nothing to look forward to, but that's what they were saying, and so they were therefore much more popular with those whose life was going well this side of eternity. And so, but they had, because of their clout with the upper classes, they had some seats in what is known as the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was the religious council and the religious authority in Jerusalem. And what it said was basically religious law for any Jew all throughout the empire, or technically all throughout anywhere, though most of the Jewish dispersion at this point can be found in the Roman Empire due to its Well, it's ability to protect its people and to make its people prosper. Because that's one thing that we kind of fail to realize. Rome did not invade a lot of times through violence. They invaded through the offering of protection and prospering the people that they came to by building them apoducts, building them roads. Most provinces in the Roman Empire welcomed the Romans when they came into town. including Palestine. Palestine was not violently overtaken, though we read about many uprisings that Rome had to put down later. They did not initially resist. And then, of course, there's the Essenes. The Essenes didn't have any seats in the Sanhedrin, but they were nonetheless a popular group. And they were popular for the reason that they were the mystics. They were the ones that would go out into the desert, and they would practice asceticism, and they would talk about main mystical experiences they had as they tried to know Yahweh and who he was. And these mystical practices, which if you kind of study, start studying them, starts to look more like magic and sorcery a lot of times, has evolved into some practices in the modern Jewish religion as well. in the Kabbalah, in some sections of Hasidic Judaism, and so all three of these sects did have some kind of influence on modern Judaism. The Sadducees perhaps least of all, though of course some of their liberalizing tendencies we see in some Jews, but the Sadducees basically never ventured very far out of Jerusalem and therefore didn't have much influence after the attack in 70 AD. But the Pharisees had by and large the most influence because of their practice of building synagogues and they went throughout the empire building synagogues and so Basically, anywhere where you saw a synagogue in the Roman Empire outside of Jerusalem, it was filled with only Pharisees. And so that is why, of course, when you come to the synagogue in Tarsus and you meet Paul's family, they would have been Pharisees themselves. So Paul, this is where Paul comes in Jerusalem, and he is there for eight years. After his education, he would go back to Tarsus and would basically be one of the leaders in the synagogue in Tarsus for about a year or two. But then only about only after that year or two he would get some messengers coming into town telling him Congratulations, you have been voted on to the Sanhedrin. You should come down to Jerusalem And take your seat there as you are and so Paul, of course very excited to begin his new career in the year 34 AD goes down to Jerusalem to take his seat on the Sanhedrin Yet the state of Jerusalem was much different when he came down. Things had changed in the two years he had been away and there was another set that had come up in the city of Jerusalem and they were calling themselves the way. The way was challenging many of the notions that were coming out of the Sanhedrin, coming from the Sadducees and the Pharisees. What was their claim? Why were they so upset with the Sanhedrin? Well, they were upset because the Sadducees weren't taking the claims of the scripture seriously. And the Pharisees, though claiming to take the claims of the scripture seriously, were distorting it and twisting it due to their oral Torah. The Way claimed that the scriptures prophesied a Messiah, which all, of course, good Jews did agree with. But they claimed that the person of Jesus, a man from Nazareth, was the one that was prophesied in the Old Testament scriptures. And they were preaching this quite vehemently in the streets of Jerusalem as Paul is coming into town and taking his place in the Sanhedrin. Of course, what does this mean for Paul? Well, this means that the council that he has just been elected to is being discredited by the way and They are basically telling him that everything that he has worked up to this point is for nothing, as he has studied a distortion, he has studied a perversion of the scriptures, and they are claiming that no, they know what the scriptures are saying, and this is not okay with Paul. Now, of course, I'm calling him Paul because that's what we know him as. But of course, at this point, he would have gone by his Hebraic name, which is Saul. Later, and we'll talk about this when it happens, he will change his name to the Greek version to Paul. But I use Paul because that's what we know him as. Um, so as soon as he is elected, he begins to use his youth and his zeal to inspire those in the Sanhedrin to try to do something about the way. Um, and so they begin to ask what, uh, what they ought to do. The Sanhedrin has already tried to do something. They have already brought Peter and James before them and tried to tell them to stop and put them or beat them and put them in prison But this is all to no avail When they beat them, they just went right back to preaching and when they imprisoned them They were miraculously set free. So there was it seems nothing a Sanhedrin can do there are even members on the Sanhedrin Council who are saying let this play out perhaps there's something to what they're saying and But Paul comes in and he says, no, we have to fight for our survival. The people are listening to them. We have to do something about this. And so Paul begins to lead the Sanhedrin against the way, trying to double down on persecution and try to discourage this preaching that is now claiming thousands and thousands for the way. And in an unprecedented turn of events, do we have to take everything the scripture says into account about the Gospels and then act, because there is some context that it gives us about Jesus's death that then gives us some context for looking at Stephen's death, because Stephen is of course the first person to be killed in the way, and Paul is at the head of trying to get that accomplished. But this is quite unprecedented because we know, if we go back to Jesus, that the Sanhedrin, though it had power and authority did not have the power and authority to kill someone. Even though Rome was happy to allow local authority, Rome was supreme. She was on top of any province that she ruled over, meaning that only she had the power to life and death. The Sanhedrin, though, at the behest of Paul, basically says, no, we're not going to the Roman governor this time like we did with Jesus. And Paul and other members of the Sanhedrin usher Stephen outside of Jerusalem after he gives a fiery sermon for why Jesus Christ is the Messiah that is prophesied, and they stone him without so much as what we might call a trial. And as the stoning stops and Stephen is dead, members of the Sanhedrin put their cloaks on the ground in front of Paul as if to say, you are our leader. You are the one who is destined to take the Sanhedrin and Judaism to greatness, almost mimicking are right what we saw not long ago with the people putting their cloaks on the ground for Jesus as he came into Jerusalem. And I'm sure they're very conscious of what this means culturally, but then the fact that this only happened not long ago with Jesus of Nazareth. Paul then makes it his personal project to go after the way to squash this set that would challenge his authority, challenge the authority of the Sanhedrin. And many of the people of the way in Jerusalem are deathly scared that Paul and others will come after them. But Paul realizes that the way is spreading, that the biggest problem here is that the way basically got popular on the day of Pentecost. And what happens on the day of Pentecost? Well, there are Jews from all over the dispersion. Jerusalem so if they're the one of the biggest conversion ceremonies essentially in his mind would have been that day of Pentecost when Peter gave this fiery sermon well that means that all the people that converted that are not from Jerusalem are now going out and going away to Antioch and to places and Turkey and places in Italy and Greece and And if there are Jews there, they might also be susceptible to this, so we have to put a stop to this. So he goes to the Sanhedrin, and he says, let me go to the nearest big city that I can go to, and that is the capital of the Roman province of Syria, Antioch. allow me to go to Antioch and tell the Jews there that the way is heresy, the way is wrong, and no Jew is to participate in it. So he sets off for Antioch. The halfway point between Antioch and Damascus. And he is going toward Damascus and will give a similar edict to the people of Damascus, stop there for a while, perhaps imprison some Christians there, or people of the way, they were not called Christians yet. and then be on his way to the city of Antioch. Of course, we know the story. Halfway to Damascus, he is struck blind by a heavenly light, a light that his companions see, but they do not hear the words that come out of that light. And of course, the words are, Paul, or Saul, why are you persecuting me? And of course, Saul says, Thinking, of course, this is Yahweh's, as I am not persecuting you. And then, of course, it is revealed that it is indeed Jesus Christ that is the one speaking, and that he tells Paul that he will suffer for the sake of Jesus' name. The one whom he is now trying to persecute, or it is the followers of whom he is trying to persecute now, he is going to suffer on their behalf. And so Paul, once the light dissipates, Paul is completely blind and his companions lead him the rest of the way to Damascus. In Damascus, he meets with a member of the way known as Ananias. And if we're keeping a track and in our minds of a map here, if you look at, you see Jerusalem near the center of Israel, Damascus is gonna be up toward the northeast of Jerusalem. And there, Ananias basically nurses him back to health, teaches him about the way, And then baptizes Paul upon his profession. And then Paul, it says something like scales fell away from Paul's eyes. He could truly see God for who he actually was. And Paul joins this set that he has sworn his life against. Paul stays in Damascus just for a time and out of his great zeal he goes straight to the synagogue where he was going to give this edict about the way and instead begins to preach about the way and preach about Jesus Christ as the Son of the Living God, the foretold one of the Old Testament scriptures. But the Jews there are quite angered and they try to kill him. And it's this point that we're seeing the unhinged nature of the Jewish religion at this point. At the time of Jesus, they went through the proper channels to try to get him killed. At this point, they don't see any point in going through the proper channels and are willing to kill Paul, Peter, and others without consulting. This will lead, of course, to their downfall. And so Paul escapes from Damascus using a basket, we would assume a very large basket, as they lowered him down the city walls in the middle of the night so he could run. We don't know actually where he goes after this. We know he probably goes to, according to one of his letters, it seems, that he went out into the deserts of Arabia. And he probably studied there for a long time, probably went with others where he could study. Because of course, you have to kind of imagine, he's now seeing the scriptures through different eyes. He is seeing all of these prophecies as they're pointing toward Christ. And a law as it is not distorted in the ways that his his teacher and mentor had taught him it was and so for two years he is He is or three years. Excuse me. He is out in the deserts of Arabia. And then those three years later he appears back in Jerusalem upon arriving in Jerusalem Peter and the other leaders of the way question the safety of Paul because they know he has come back in the town it's been three years and he was the one that the Sanhedrin had put all their cards in and assumed was going to be the leader against the way and now he's come back claiming the way so things would not go well for him so they sent him exactly where he was going before they send him up to Antioch and And indeed, the fears that Paul had three years ago were true. People had left from Pentecost and spread the good news of the way. And there was indeed a good group of Christians up in Antioch for Paul to join up with as he goes up there. there Paul will be there for three years again as he stays with the church there in Antioch as he studies and he learns and as he will actually become one of the pastors or preachers there in the church there in Antioch. And during these three years Peter down in Jerusalem will have a dream that will set afire a new idea in the way, and that idea is that the gospel must go to the Gentiles. And Peter begins to talk about this, things begin to spread, and the church in Antioch begins to, of course, have this idea as well. We need to get the gospel to the Gentiles. And so, they want to organize a mission trip. And who better to take on this mission trip than Paul himself? And this is the first place that we and I'll stop using the term the way now because this is now where The way is now going to be called Christianity and so these are Christians and they are not they are called that by the people of the town of Antioch and as kind of a pejorative Christian comes from a Latinized phrase meaning little Christ And they are so they're just basically using it to say these people kind of look at themselves as being like this one man Jesus of Nazareth But they adopt the term wholeheartedly and Paul is meets up with a man by the name of Barnabas in Antioch, and they plan a mission trip to the Gentiles. The elders, the leaders there in the Church of Antioch lay on their hands to Paul and Barnabas as if to say, we are ordaining you and we ordain you to this mission trip. We send you out. And so Paul goes and they take a young scribe by the name of John Mark with them as well. They go down to the nearest port town of Seleucia. So if you can imagine Antioch, you kind of know where Syria is. We're going north of Israel. There is the country of Syria. Antioch is basically right in the middle of that. And then if you just go all the way down to the Mediterranean Sea, you'll find Seleucia, a small port town. They hop a boat and they begin their journey. They first stop off in Cyprus. Cyprus is a large island not far off the coast of Syria. And there they find great success in the form of the Roman proctor. They're able to seek an audience with the proctor there in Cyprus, and he believes their good news, and he converts to Christianity. And just as we will see as a pattern going forward in the ancient church, Once leaders begin to convert, they begin to take those that follow them with them. And so this is why we see in the early and medieval missionary practice is to first try to seek an audience with leaders of different kinds, whether they be religious or political leaders. And so because of this, now they have protection in Cyprus, now they're not going to be killed in Cyprus at all, and they begin to preach there for quite a long time. After their stay in Cyprus, they will sail to Pergia. So now if you can imagine, Cyprus is, I guess it's this way for you. Cyprus is an island up in the Mediterranean, and if you go directly north, you will go into Turkey. You will go into what is known as Asia Minor as well. Turkey has many names. And he will go there to begin to preach to the Gentiles there. He will stop in Pergia, in South Turkey, near the coast. And this is where things get a little rough. No one's trying to kill them yet. No one's trying to do great violence to them, but they're meeting some opposition and John Mark flees. John Mark leaves the scene and goes all the way back to Palestine. at this point, and we don't hear from him for quite a long time. This will end up becoming a breaking point, though, later for Paul. And so they continue to move up the coast, and go up, well, they move into inland, and they actually go into the city north of Pergia which is basically almost right dead center of Turkey and that city is also called Antioch though for clarification sake it is called Antioch at Pisidia, Antioch at Pisidia not nearly as large as the Antioch in Syria but and this is quite common you'll see this if you go over to Europe you'll see this all the time lots of cities called such-and-such at here such-and-such on this like a Newcastle is called Newcastle on Rhine right it's just called that leg there's because there's multiple new castles so it's a this is very common in European cities And this is where Paul kind of gets his name. Well, he'd already changed his name to Paul in Cyprus, but now he gets to Antioch at Pisidia, and this is where he kind of becomes known as Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, because it is here that he goes into the synagogue, begins to preach, and the Jews try to yell him out of the synagogue. And he's so frustrated that he says, well, I will not preach to you. I will preach to the Gentiles. And so he goes out of the synagogue and begins to preach in the public square and begins to get many who have never even heard of Judaism before into the fold of Christianity. The missionaries then go from there to a place called Iconium, a place, if we're keeping track, which now we're in the center, so if you go a little bit east, you'll find Iconium. There they meet some opposition, and they meet violent opposition. They are forced to flee the city. They go to Lystra, and actually get met with open arms initially, because once they get to Lystra, they heal a crippled man. And the people think that Paul is Hermes, or Mercury, the god of messengers and people on the road, and that Barnabas is Zeus, or Jupiter, the father god, the one who is the head of the Olympian pantheon. But while this seems good for their names, they, of course, they dispel any myth here, and they say, no, of course, we are not Hermes, we are not Zeus. But the Jews don't hear that message, though the Greeks may have. The Jews say, these are good Jews, they are blasphemous, they're claiming to be gods, and then they begin to organize a mob. and go after Paul and Barnabas and are actually successful in getting Paul and they take him outside and they stone him. But they do not kill him as the Lord protects him and so Paul and Barnabas are able to escape. They go then a little bit further east and they go towards Derby and they find some success there. And then they finally go south, back near Pergia. They've kind of made a circle at this point. And they go to a small port town named Atalia. Not Italia, it starts with an A, A-T-T-A-L-I-A, Atalia. And here they finish their journey, and they get on a boat, and they go home to Antioch. But in Antioch, trouble is brewing. When they get back into the city, they realize another sect of Christianity is cropping up, and that sect is Judaizers. The Judaizers claim that In order to be a Christian, one must follow the ceremonial law to the T. They must completely follow the ceremonial law, and what is the big tension point there that the Gentiles don't want to follow? Well, what one might expect, circumcision. But these Judaizers are saying, no, you must be circumcised to be a Christian. Paul and Barnabas are quite disturbed at this and they say, no, you do not have to be circumcised to be a Christian. And the Judaizers and Paul and Barnabas get into a debate. And so Paul says, let's bring this before the apostles. Let's bring this before Peter, James, and the rest of the folks down in Jerusalem. So, the Judaizers say, okay, so they get in a big caravan, they all go down to Jerusalem to basically put this debate before the church there. And this is, this brings us to 50 AD. to the first ecumenical council of the Christian church as the church in Jerusalem calls upon not only the elders and the apostles there in Jerusalem, but upon elders all over the Roman Empire where churches are forming. And they have a council to decide, are the Judaizers right or are they not? And they, of course, thankfully, decide that they are not. The Judaizers are wrong, that Gentiles do not indeed need to be circumcised or to fulfill any other parts of the ceremonial law to be Christians. They need to follow the moral law, not the ceremonial. So Paul, with this victory in hand, goes back to Antioch and the message is sent out to the churches, even now to the churches that he had planted in his first missionary journey in Turkey. Paul and Barnabas are getting ready for a second journey. But they have a debate amongst themselves. And what is that debate? Well, John Mark, who had fled Pergia and went back to Palestine, he's back in town in Antioch. And he's ready for round two as well. But Paul is concerned because he couldn't even handle round one. And so he does not want to bring John Mark along with him. But Barnabas does. He's quite insistent that they forgive John Mark for this transgression and that they bring him on the road. This debate becomes so heated that it basically births two mission trips. And Barnabas will go on a mission trip on his own with John Lark. And Paul will find new companions to go with him as he goes back into Turkey this way by way of land. And he brings with him now two young men by the name of Silas and Timothy. They hit all the cities that they hit before. and now by land it is taking a little bit longer. They're going to go up north to a province called Bithynia, which is kind of on the northern coast of Turkey as it's going up towards Russia. But they end up in a place called Troas for a time. Now Troas is a small city that is on the border or the coast of Turkey looking out over the Aegean Sea, which the Aegean Sea separates Turkey from Greece. And as Paul is resting there, he gets a dream and he sees a Macedonian standing on the shores there, basically calling out for him, who's standing on the shores of Turkey, to come over and get the good news to the people there in Macedonia and Greece. And so Paul says, that's what we must do. Silas and Timothy agree. So they get in a boat and they go toward Macedonia. and Achaia, as it was called. Greece, of course, is a modern term. And they land in Neapolis and then head north. So, of course, if you can see Turkey on the northern coast, there is Chivas. If you go right across, there is Neapolis. And if you go north just about 20 miles, you'll come to the city of Philippi. And they enter into Philippi. And there they find a young slave girl who is prophesying and she's quite popular in town and makes a lot of money for her masters because she prophesies and some of those prophecies come true. Paul sees that the reason why she's prophesying is because she is demon possessed. And so Paul dispels the demon from her. and her masters are quite angered. They take this to the city council. The city council arrests them. In prison, they are actually able to preach the gospel to many there, including the jailer who is there in a miraculous event in which an earthquake would have set them free, and the jailer is about to commit suicide because he knows that death is the penalty for what he has done if they are all gone. but they are not gone and so they then preach the good news to him. They then are able to come to his household to preach the good news to his household and to baptize his household and they are able to leave town. They make their way down to Thessaloniki where they start a riot from their preaching, which is becoming a theme, and they are forced to flee Thessaloniki in the night. From there they go to Berea. Berea treats them much more warmly than other cities have, as the Jews that are there seem to have a particular interest in direct interpretation of the scripture, not interpretation through distorted oral Torah. And so they consult with the scripture very closely to examine what Paul is saying about this Christ, this Jesus from Nazareth. And they determine that what he says is correct. And many of them convert to Christianity. from Berea, Paul heads south. He goes from, so if we can see, Philippi is up in the north, and that's in Macedon, or Macedonia, and then if you're going into Achaia, into what we would call Greece, you're getting into the Thessaloniki, which is on the border, or on the coast, and then we get into Berea, which is inland, and then if we go south again, we'll get to Athens. And that is where Paul finds himself next. The intellectual capital of the Roman Empire. And this is where he gives his famous Mars Hill speech to philosophers. Mars Hill is still there, you can see it. It is overlooking the Acropolis, which is the city center of Athens. where the Parthenon stands, and this is just a place that philosophers would go, and they would just do what philosophers do, which is just talk for hours and hours and hours. And so Paul does that, but tells them about Christianity, even using some of their own language for them to understand what he's getting at. And some of them laugh him out of town, but some of them are interested in what he has to say. And he wins many converts in Athens as well. Then he will go to Corinth, which is a major port town that basically connects east to west in the Roman Empire, as it is at a point which basically two islands come together. So it's a port with a sea on either side of it. Um, and he, uh, is able to basically kind of start setting up missionary trips of his own, uh, as he goes, uh, or no, I'm getting ahead of myself. No, I jumped out. That happens later. And from Corinth, after setting up the church there in Corinth, he heads back over to Asia Minor, because now he's in the south, so he'll then hit basically where Turkey squares off at the corner, there's a small port town, a very large port town called Ephesus. which is home to the famous Temple of Artemis, one of the seven great wonders of the world. And he will set up a, he will be there for a while as he preaches, and then from there he will sail back to Jerusalem. I will pause there. We are at 45 minutes. We still have a third trip and a last days as he goes back to Rome and gets himself killed. Are there any questions at this point? Since they thought Barnabas was Jupiter, does that mean he was an older fellow? Perhaps. I mean, I can't imagine that if, but I mean, Paul is no, no spring chicken at this point as well. I mean, he's in his thirties or even forties at this point. Is Barnett's what? Okay. When was, by getting ahead of myself when it was all ordained, established, recognized, if ever possible? That would be after he went to the Jerusalem Seminary, of course. Yeah, exactly. I mean, wasn't there a 14 years? I'm trying to remember on his monologue when he talked about his journey and then he waited Was it 14 years before he went up to Jerusalem? I thought you said three, but three? Yeah, so it's essentially, I mean, I think it all kind of boils down to about seven, in between his conversion and him becoming, like preaching, starting to preach in Antioch. OK. Because he's, yeah. So, because he, yeah, he takes the time. And we could speculate as to what he was doing at that time, but. At what point did he exercise the office? Well, so, he's, well, I mean, a little bit he's at this point, he's been called an apostle to the Gentiles. That term has already been a label that has been put to him. He won't, we don't know when he starts claiming that for himself, because we haven't got to the point where he starts writing letters. Once he starts writing letters, he will use that term. And so, but we just can't know if that's, if he'd kind of taken that to himself yet or how, but we know people are calling him that. So, ostensibly, the church recognized that in him already and probably did as soon as they sent him out from Antioch. His conversion story was a bit out of the ordinary. And so they probably had something to. He also had an extraordinary situation. Yeah. He had direct revelation. Right. So I think that was already going to be. I would say that tends to put him at the front of the line, maybe. It did. We're going to talk about that when he did not go into Galatians, when he did not go up. And then when he started out, we're having to review Peter later. So yeah, he's going to write about that in Galatians, and he'll write about that later. Yeah, he gives a little bit of a timeline there. And I think that story has already happened by this point. I think Peter being, Peter kind of giving into the Judaizers, I think probably happened before 50 AD, before the Jerusalem Council. I may be wrong on that. I'll go back and read it. OK, yeah. He's noting that what fell from his eyes was like scales. Isn't that kind of symbolic that he was blinded to his old life and then God woke him up to his new life. Oh yeah, for sure. There's a lot of symbolism that God is using there, as he blinds Paul, and then as the scales fall off, as he, yeah, I mean there's a, obviously even in baptism there is that rebirth, there is the coming out of the water, and the understanding that Paul is dead to his old life, but then also, yeah, this blindness, the blindness that he had in his old life, thinking that he was worshiping Yahweh and doing all this for Yahweh, and yet, indeed, he was not. He was actually going against God's plan, and so then, yeah. Yeah. view that pervades all of, I would say American evangelicalism, Australia and other places, that somehow Paul, like Christ, on all of these Jews, because the Jews were trying to follow the law of the God in the Old Testament. We're not talking about Sermon on the Cross here. He used the term, which I like, by the way, where he said that he was correcting them in their use of the distorted oral traditions of the Torah. Right, so there's two components here, right? Judaizers claim that what they're doing is getting people to follow the law. What they're really doing is getting people to follow the ceremonial law, which we understand. And then, yes, so there's, because of the Pharisaic ideas and practices, are that there is an oral Torah and that we must follow that oral Torah. This is what Christ, all throughout his ministry, was attacking. Because when Christ is operative as a man on earth, he's not saying, don't follow the ceremonial law, right? We're not Past the resurrection, the ceremonial law is supposed to still be at work. It's something Jews submit themselves to. They are to still go do sacrifices, be circumcised, etc. So Jesus isn't saying don't do any of that. In fact, he did all of that. And so, what he was saying to the Pharisees is that you take and put your own law. By saying you're following this oral Torah, you put your own law in for the law of God, and by this you actually disobey the law of God itself. And he gives very many examples of that, the prime example being the law that basically they had kind of come up with saying that if you gave yourself fully to religious instruction and teaching and all this stuff, that you could neglect particular familial duties that you had. So if you were doing this and you had an aging parent, you could say, well, I'm giving all my money to the temple and I'm spending it all on this religious instruction. And so I'm sorry, mom and dad, I can't take care of the house. Y'all will have to be homeless because I can't. I'm going to. I mean, and so it became very. And so he said, Christ said, you doing this, are you telling people that this is OK? is just going right against the fifth commandment. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. And so he was saying, yeah, by this oral Torah that you are following, you are abrogating the law of God. And it's wrong. Ancient theologians would say that oral Torah ought to become the Talmud. Right. Yes. And I mentioned that at the front of my class. Yeah. The oral Torah and the Talmud are. I think the, Doug, this is right. My understanding of the Pharisees was they took all the requirements of the law that applied to the highest level of the priest, to the highest priest, and they would to impose it upon every layman. The second thing they did was this, that they would come up with their own methods of what this really means, and you have to do it, which is addressed, of course, in the New Testament in many ways, such as, hey, there's a principle, but there's a method. Don't make your method. uh... right Yeah, it's funny how as I was reading about the different sects of Judaism, I immediately at least thought of many Christian sects that follow similar tendencies, just trying to apply that to the New Testament, right? So having oral tradition, of course, is what Roman Catholicism has been claiming for a very, very long time. Yes, so yeah, and I so I mentioned that the oral Torah comes out of the Babylonian exile Right It's a very expensive requirement but people have almost gone crazy with the excessive washing of their hands and all that sort of stuff. But the lesson, the very bottom lesson to be learned here is when we drift from the written word, when we abandon the written word, we end up in various versions of the Torah. And like you said, in America, we have all kinds of our own conventions of the Torah. And so, you know what, I'd like to pick up on that. I was talking about this with Will the other day. kind of came to the conclusion that the tradition, tradition is good, tradition is the means by which we can teach to our children and they can grow up in a home in which they know the scriptures, they know what the word of God says. But as soon as we let that tool, that good and right tool God has given us to transmit teaching down through the generations, and we start letting something else get inside it, then it still does exactly what it's intended to do, but now it's doing that with. Other things and as what tradition does is it's when your kids are growing up as if you're doing it rightly They will take what you but you had to spend years and years learning they take for granted, right? They just get it because they they just learned it as you were teaching them when they're very very young and So that can be good if those things that they know are good and they are from the scriptures. But if you start adding things in, even if just by your own biases and you don't even notice it at the beginning and you may not intend this, then they can get it and they'll take it for granted. So it becomes such a part of them that they have to unlearn it later. if it is against the scriptures. And I think that's exactly what we see with the oral Torah, with the Roman Catholic tradition, with traditions in any branch, right? There are things that become so part of it that if someone's grown up Baptist, if someone's grown up Methodist, if someone's grown up this or that, and you say, no, this is wrong, You can try to get them to go to this scripture, that scripture, that scripture, but they have to now unlearn what is such a part of the tradition that stands at the back of them as people and where they come from and all of this. And so you can imagine how that grinds the gears of Jews, right? Of Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes. As someone comes and says, look it here's the scripture look what I'm saying to you and yet this has come down and down and down and down and down and so much to a point that of course then of course the the oral nature to it becomes crystallized as an official teaching right the pharisees are are not only giving into their tradition the tradition that got added they're actually naming it and saying you have to You're bad for not fault, right? And that's what then of course then they write that down once you just adds to another Because they recognize they love it so much that they want it to not go away So they're willing to write it down just like the scriptures were and call it essentially scriptures. So yeah I really the wonder to the miraculous work of God at home. Because he was so steeped in the condition. Right. He, among all, should have been. Yeah. And yet the Lord's work in him to see all the minute details and angles of how, where all the problem areas were and the disconnects and the attempts to you know, press in or twist truth. He was able to see those things and to then preach and teach in a very, uh, pointed and specific and, uh, in a way, of course, the spirit of working in improvement. But, uh, you know, I mean, In his flesh, he could have had a lot more response because of his upbringing and the condition that he was so zealous for before the scales fell. It's amazing that even Peter was more susceptible to the Judaizing tendency than he was. Peter, this fisherman from Nazareth, who, I'm not saying he didn't learn Hebrew and have some tendencies there, but he wasn't this Pharisee who had spent years and years and years learning about, like steeped in all of this tradition. you would think that it'd be Paul was the first one to line up and say, oh, yeah, this Judy Isaac stuff looks right because it looks so much like where he came from. But he was the one that opposed it the most vehemently. And that is a work of God. Prayer for us to remove the scales from our eyes, because we all have them. David said, open my eyes and I might behold wonderful things in your tradition. Oh, I mean, in your law. I thought it was open master. Yeah, open the eyes. Yeah, Paul said he was a keeper of Hebrews. That's right. To combat this false teaching. Yep. Yep, exactly. And so he comes in, and anyone trying to argue against him, he goes, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, And that's how God works a lot of times. And we see this even today, right? We see, who are the best missionaries to Muslims? Ex-Muslims. Who are the best missionaries to fill in the blank? And it's people that got converted out of that, and by the grace of God, are Christians. And so when people come at them and say, what about this? What about this? They're like, dude, I spent 10 years studying these things. You don't think you can bring an argument to me? Right. Exactly. Yep. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Exactly. They consider all these things. And so God uses them mightily. Mm hmm. Exactly, because they've been there. Yep. Yes, so that is Yes, so that's the second journey, when they're going up to Bithynia, which is the northern strip of Turkey, in the west, not in the east. East is Galatia, west is Bithynia. And they go up there, and it says the Holy Spirit prevented them, so they go down to Troas. And they stay in Troas for like six months, and then while they're there, he gets the dream at the Macedonian. Very key moment, because that's when we cross the Aegean into the West. I mean, right, and then if you really want to divide what will become the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, this kind of cultural division already is there. So he's there out in the East. Well, he ordained Thomas to go to India. So don't worry, God was covering all bases. All righty. All right. Sam, would you like to pray for us? Thank you for allowing us to come together today this morning to listen to the Thank you.