September 10th

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

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Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible Reading Plan. Today is September the 10th, and our chapter for today is the Book of Acts, chapter 18, Paul at Corinth. What a tremendous city this was, and Paul wrote two letters to the believers who were at Corinth. It was an incredible time. Paul spent over 18 months of his ministry, which is a high percentage of his ministry here. Another three years at Ephesus, you take those two years together, and you've got a lot of time the Apostle Paul invested in these two major cities. Well, let's learn just a little bit about Corinth. You see, yesterday you learned about what happened as Paul made the journey from academic Athens down to Corinth, which was a cosmopolitan city of the first century. Now you need to look on your maps as to where Corinth is. It is part of an Isthmus. An Isthmus is a small strip of land that separates two great bodies of water. And in the case of the Panama Canal, it's the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. But at Corinth it was the Aegean Sea or the Cyanic Gulf, as it was called, and the Adriatic or the Ionic Sea. And the reason this was such a popular point is because there were only a few miles in between these two bodies of water. Now if somehow they could have cut a canal through, which is there is a canal there today that is completed. It starts at Kincrea, what we call Sincrea, C-E-N-C-H-R-E-A, it is called in our English versions, and Corinth on the other side. Many of you who have gone that way, you understand the beauty of this and this great canal that's there, but that canal was not always there. And you see the great sailors that came out of the Black Sea area would come down through the Bosphorus at what is Istanbul today, what was uh Constantinople after the days of Constantine, but before that it was called Byzantium. This was the main city that sat on the river, this Bosphorus that divided between the European continent, which was Greece on one side, and what is modern day Turkey on the Asian side, but just a small body of water that you can cross over. It's very swift running from north to south, from east to west, coming out of the Black Sea. It is a very swift body of water, but it runs down between this gap in the two continents. And that's all that separates is this great river that runs down, and that is in Greek mythology called the Dardanelles, just below that. And so this was a strategic place for a city there where the two continents were together. Well, as they came out of that area of Thrace and Bithynia and all of these various areas around the Black Sea, they would make their way down, going over to Rome, and they would have to come around, sail around the Peloponnesian peninsula, which was an island of Greece, that just had this little isthmus that connected the two. Of course, uh Sparta was on that Peloponnesia area, and uh then Athens was Achaea, and all of this area is a place where the ships would come around, and as they came around the tip, it's like the tip of Africa, where all this water was churning from different directions, and it was very dangerous, and it took about two weeks to do that. Whereas they could come to Corinth, and before they cut the canal, they had somewhat of a track. I've seen the track system and where it was there at Corinth, but it was like almost like a railroad track, and they would unladen the ships at Sincrea or at Corinth, whichever direction they were going, and then they would pull the ship out of the water, and they would pull it across land on a series of rollers, and they would put it back in the body of water, whether it was on the Aegean side or whether it was on the Adriatic or Ionian side. So this employed a lot of people, and there were people from all over the known world at that time that would gather at Corinth. Now you say, why are you telling us all about this? Well, I hope you'll read some about it yourself, and maybe one day go with me and let me teach you at Sincrea and Corinth, where you're looking this right in the face, and it'll make a whole lot more sense to you. But people were there from all over the Greco-Roman world, and this brought about a cosmopolitan, a world feel as though all the world had gotten there. I have taken a fast ferry, for instance, from just right outside of Corinth, over to the nation of Italy, just across the waterway there, the Ionic or Adriatic Sea, as it was called by the Romans, fast ferry overnight, where you would have people coming in from the Russian area, coming down around the Black Sea, coming through the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, coming down the Aegean, going in at the Saronic Gulf, and they would cross over there at the Isthmus, not far from Crete, they would get on the Fast Ferry. And I'm telling you, my wife and I talked about it when we were on that fast ferry, and I'm telling you, for those of you who have seen Star Wars, I'm not recommending it, I but I did see it. That boat looked like people look at the Cantina scene in Star Wars. I'm telling you, it looked like otherworldly people speaking every kind of language imaginable, and they were all there on that ferry. Well, all that's the way it was at Corinth all the time. This is the way it was at Kincrea all the time, because people were there from all over the Greco-Roman world and they settled there. And it was a place that had dedicated, Corinth had dedicated itself to the goddess of fertility, Aphrodite. That's what the Greeks called her. The Romans called her Diana. Aphrodite was the god of sensuality and sex and fertility, and so there was a lot of sexual immorality that was associated with Corinth, and so much so that during the Byzantine period, the late Byzantine period, which would in this case be around the 500s, to be a sexual pervert and to uh be completely consumed with sexual immorality, you were called a Corinthian. And to Corinthianize someone was to cause them to be basically a sexual reprobate. This is how this was, and they love skin there. They love the athletics. Matter of fact, the Ismanian games that were held there on that isthmus and near that isthmus, they were held every four years, and they were held the opposite four years between the Olympics. In other words, if the Olympics would be in, let's say, 2002, they would be held again in 2006. Well, the Ismanian Games would be held in 2004 and 2008. So there were games in between the Olympic Games, just two years after the Olympics and two years before the next, they would be held there. And so this is why in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 you have the Apostle Paul using the language of the athlete, that he disciplined his body, he buffeted his body in our English Bibles, the King James and so forth, but he disciplined his body so that he might win an incorruptible crown, one that does not fade away. This is where you have the language of the Bama. The language of the Bema was the language of the Ismanian Games and the Olympic Games, not where the athletes stood on a raised platform. That's what a Bama is. Many of you called a BEMA, B-E-M-A. The Bima or the Bema was the raised platform, and it wasn't the athletes in the ancient times that stood on the Bema, it was the judge. And uh the athletes would stand before him, they would walk up under him, so to speak, and they would tilt their head toward him if they had won a prize, and he would put a laurel reef that had been woven, or an oak leaf cluster on his head, or her head, whatever the case was, and they would put it on his head, but it would fade away. Yes, it was valuable, yes, there was praise associated with it. This is the imagery that the Apostle Paul used in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. He said, We are striving for a crown, we're walking a disciplined life. I mean, if the athletes can do it, surely to God we can by his grace walk in obedience to the Lord. If they discipline and do all they do and go through the rigors of m keeping themselves clean and pure and all of those kinds of things and healthy, surely we can do that in the name of Jesus, because they do it so that they can stand before the judge and he can put on their head a green leafy crown that in just a few days will be brown and will uh disintegrate. He said, That's a corruptible crown, but we do what we do for an incorruptible, one that will never perish and never fade away. This is why in 2 Corinthians chapter ten the apostle Paul said, For we will all stand before the judgment seat, the word is Bama, B E M A, that we all may receive the rewards for what we have done in our bodies, whether it was good or philosop or worthless, not evil, but whether it was valuable or whether it was worthless. When we stand before Christ, we're not going to stand before the judge of the all of the earth as an enemy. We're going as a son, as a participant, and it is not a judgment for salvation, but rather one for service that we have performed after we have been saved, walking in obedience to our Father. And so this is what Jesus is going to do. We'll talk about the judgment seat as we go through the books of the scriptures, the New Testament scriptures, but right now I want you to understand that this is the place where all of that language came about. And so Paul departed from Athens, and verse 1 of chapter 18 says he went to Corinth, and he found a certain Jew, Aquila, born in Pontus. You can look that up on your map and see where that is. He had strayed a good ways from home, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome. In other words, he threw all the Jews out of Rome. He was the ruler. And he came to them. That is, Paul came to Aquila and Priscilla. So because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for by occupation they were tent makers, and he reasoned, that's the word again, the base word for logic. He reasoned with them in the synagogue every Shabbat and persuaded both Jews and Greeks. In other words, he took the word of God, not the philosophies of the world, but the word of God, and he showed that Jesus was the Messiah without any hesitation whatsoever. They were tent makers like Paul. Now Paul came from the foothills of the Taurus Mountains in Cilicia. Now Cilicia was known for its particular type of wool that was used to create the wonderful tents that the Roman soldiers used and that others used, but they were a very high-quality wool tent that would keep people warm when it needed to keep them warm, cool when they needed to be cooled. It would keep them dry. And so the Roman army, no doubt, did a lot of business. We have ancient records that show that they did business with the merchants of Tarsus. I believe Paul's father was one of those. I believe that's why he had both a Jewish name, Saul, and a Roman name, Paul. I don't believe he got it from Sergius Paulus in Cyprus. I believe he had two names. He would have been a part of Rome. He was a Roman citizen. This is what Paul himself said. He was born a Roman. Why? Because his father was a citizen. Why was his father a citizen? Probably because of his great work in cooperation with Rome and the Roman army and selling them as a merchant. The great goods that they produced, he was a tent maker. He not only fabricated them, but he built them, erected them, and he sold them and developed them for the Romans more than likely. And I believe this is why he would have had the funds and the money to send his son Saul, probably fourteen to sixteen years old, maybe even earlier, to Yerushelaim to study under the great rabbi Gamaliel, the elder, who had been the prized student and protege of the great rabbi Hallel. And so one rabbi would take one student, he'd have many, but he had taken one that would become his protege, and he would pour his life into him. This is why I believe that just like Hallel poured his life into Gamaliel, I believe that Gamaliel poured his life into Saul and would have been the successor, Saul that is, would have been the successor of Gamaliel, but something happened to him that changed his course of direction forever as he neared Damascus with letters from the high priest to bring back prisoners, Christians, followers of Jesus the Messiah of Nazareth. And while he was on his way, the one that had been persecuting his followers, therefore persecuting him, met him on the road and said, Saul, I'm going to change your life right here, and indeed he did. And so this is why I believe that the great Gamaliel had no one to succeed him. And as I have talked with rabbis in this era of the last century of the nineteen hundreds, and have read, many of the greatest rabbis believed that he was the last, that is Gamaliel the elder, was the last sort of his kind. Now why did that stop? I believe it was because the Lord Jesus arrested Saul of Tarsus and took him into his servitude, and Paul willingly did that because his favorite name for himself was Duloi, Dulas. He was part of the Duloi of the bond servants, the bond slaves, those who willingly served. And so this is the background where the apostle Paul found himself at Corinth. Now I'll talk more about Corinth and what happened there, but I've already mentioned it last podcast yesterday, and we'll talk about it again because this was a real turning point at Corinth. Paul spent a lot of time there. God taught him many lessons there in a very secular society, one that the Apostle Paul had never been in. He faced the academics at Athens, but he learned there that no argument, no debate will ever change a life. Only Jesus can do that after the gospel message. The good news has been preached. What is the good news? The message of the gospel is that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scripture. He was buried, he rose again according to the Scripture, and was seen alive. That's 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 1 down through about verse 10. You need to read it. You need to get it in your heart. That's the clearest annunciation, the clearest pronunciation, the clearest proclamation and explanation of the gospel in the New Testament, in my opinion, in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 10. And you need to understand what it is. It has to do with dealing with a sin problem. And any religion, any denomination, anyone who comes to your door, whether they're two by two or in a gang or just a single person, they cannot deal with a sin problem without talking about something else. Then they are not carriers of the gospel of Jesus. This is what Paul learned. Sooner or later you've got to get to the sin problem and deal with it. That's what he learned at Corinth. Not just to talk about Jesus, not just to talk about his good works and his miracles, but all of that had a purpose to show that he was indeed the Messiah, and that he was able, by living a perfect life, to die as a substitute for man's sin as the spotless Lamb of God. And God so accepted his work that according to the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans in chapter 1 and verse 4, he was declared to be the Son of God by power when God raised him from the dead. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.