In our passage today, Paul is about to conclude his second missionary journey. This journey has taken him roughly 3 years to complete and during this time, he has traveled about 2,500 miles – which by comparison, is roughly the distance between here and Florida! So this has been quite a journey for Paul and his companions.
But their journey is not yet complete. As of verse 11 in Acts chapter 18 where we left off last week, Paul still has about 1/3 of the journey to complete. And so today, Luke is going to zip us through that final leg of the journey – using only five verses to summarize it all! (I guess not much interesting happened on the way home.)
But as I said, we’re not there yet. At the moment, Paul is still in Corinth – having been assured by God in a vision that no one was going to attack & harm him here as they had in other cities. And so Paul stayed in Corinth for about a year and a half – preaching the Word of God and building up the church.
However, even though God has promised Paul that he would be safe, that didn’t guarantee that he would be free from opposition. And as we begin our passage today – opposition is exactly what we see. Starting at verse 12.
12 But when Gallio became governor of Achaia, some Jews rose up together against Paul and brought him before the governor for judgment. 13 They accused Paul of “persuading people to worship God in ways that are contrary to our law.” Acts 18:12-13
As we’ve seen many times before (in fact, in most of the cities where Paul has visited) it’s not long before the Jews are plotting together to either kill or silence Paul. These Jews had refused to believe Paul’s message – and they were not happy that other Jews had believed. And so as these verses tell us, they rose up together against Paul; and brought him before the new governor of Achaia.
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