Paul 3

 

Let us recall what happened to Saul after he was blinded on the road to Damascus, in his encounter with Jesus. How for three days he remained in the house of Judas on Straight Street, praying and fasting until he was visited by Ananias who had been sent by the Lord, and how Ananias had laid his hands upon him saying:

Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road has sent me so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instantly something like scales from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he got up and was baptised. Afterwards, he ate some food and regained his strength. (9:17-19)

We move the story on apace now, keeping the focus on Saul in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we want to see what happens next to this fiery Pharisee, persecutor of the early Church who through divine intervention has now become a convert, a believer in Christ; a follower of The Way. We know from last week’s discussion that Saul being the man he was, and full of the Holy Spirit, wasted no time in going to the synagogues in Damascus, preaching and witnessing that Jesus indeed, is the Son of God. We can infer again much about the ability of Saul because Luke in his account of the Acts of the Apostles wrote that:

Saul’s preaching became more and more powerful and the Jews in Damascus couldn’t refute his proofs that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. (9:22)

In the end, Saul aroused a lot of opposition in Damascus, from those Jews who would not accept this new message, this turn around, coming from Saul which was of course his preaching of the gospel of Jesus. We will recall that Saul aroused such opposition that the Jews plotted together to have him murdered. And so it was that under cover of darkness that he was helped to escape by being lowered in a basket, through an opening or a large window that were part of the city walls of Damascus.

Now in Luke’s account, that is the Acts of the Apostles we could be forgiven for thinking that Saul, having left Damascus, went straight to Jerusalem because in Acts 9:26-31 we can read:

When Saul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to meet with the believers, but they were all afraid of him. They did not believe he had truly become a believer! Then Barnabas brought him to the apostles and told them how Saul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus and how the Lord had spoken to Saul. He also told them that Saul had preached boldly in the name of Jesus in Damascus.

So Saul stayed with the apostles and went all around Jerusalem with them, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. He debated with some Greek-speaking Jews, but they tried to murder him. When the believers heard about this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus, his home town.

The church then had peace throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and it became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord. And with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers.

Thus, we get a portrait, a picture that depicts the courage of Saul, a man who although to save his own life had to escape from Damascus, now enters Jerusalem where the same kind of enemies also existed and were prepared to murder him. Indeed, as we have just heard from the text that is indeed what they tried to do. And again, it was the believers, the disciples in the early Church who ensured his safety by smuggling or escorting him out of the city of Jerusalem, taking him to the port of Caesarea and getting him on a boat to his hometown of Tarsus which was in the country we know today as Turkey. In the proceeding account taken from Acts, apart from his boldly preaching in Jerusalem in the name of Jesus and his eventual escape, we can also see that the apostle, Barnabas, was instrumental in introducing Saul to the other apostles vouching for him and giving witness to his conversion and his fearless preaching in Damascus.

However, you will remember that previously I did say that in Luke’s account, that is the Acts of the Apostles, that we could be forgiven for thinking that Saul having escaped from Damascus, (lowered in a basket from the city walls) went straight to Jerusalem. But apparently, this is not so, because according to Paul's own writing, as in his Letter to the Galatians he tells us that in fact, he did not rush up to Jerusalem straight away, but went away to Arabia and then returned to Damascus, and neither, he says, did he consult anyone. By this, I think he meant that he did not seek religious or spiritual instruction from anyone but spent three years in the Arabian desert before his return to Jerusalem. Time alone in the Arabian Desert to give him time to reflect and pray and consolidate and to prepare for all that he would have to face. Indeed, as he stated in his Letter to the Galatians, the gospel he would preach, he received from God and no one else. There was to be a three-year gap before he returned to Jerusalem, where Barnabas would vouch for him and introduce him to Peter, the leader of the twelve and to James, the brother of Jesus.

Recalling that Stephen was the first Christian martyr, stoned to death in Jerusalem (AD 34) and that it was Saul, then as a young man, who looked after the coats of the men, men whom he completely agreed with, looked after their coats while they stoned Stephen to death. From then on, the believers, members of the early Church fled and scattered to avoid persecution. One such place that the believers migrated to was Antioch in Syria. As the gospel of Jesus began to spread beyond Jerusalem, that same gospel spread beyond the confines of the Jewish faith to the Gentiles.

In connection with this, we have the story of the apostle Peter, on that rooftop in Joppa, seeing in a vision as the sky opened, seeing a large sheet let down by its four corners, seeing a sheet containing live animals and then there was God’s command, ordering him to ‘kill and eat’, even though the animals for consumption would not have been acceptable according to Jewish dietary law. This dream prefigured Cornelius the Roman centurion and his gentile household receiving the Holy Spirit at Caesarea the following day, in the presence of Peter.

And so it was that some of the believers who went to Antioch began preaching to the gentiles with great success, so much so that the Church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch:

When he arrived and saw this evidence of God’s blessing, he was filled with joy, and he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord. Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. And many people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to look for Saul. When he found him, he brought him back to Antioch. Both of them stayed there with the church for a full year, teaching large crowds of people. (It was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.) (11:22-26)

It seems that such a lot has happened since Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus and of course it had. Saul’s conversion is thought to have taken place in 31 AD, but it was some fourteen years later that we actually find Paul now at that growing and dynamic church in Antioch Syria with Barnabas, and what energy there was there!  And so, with the blessing of that church and led by the Holy Spirit, Saul and Barnabas taking with them a young man, John Mark as an assistant, Saul embarked on the first leg of his first missionary journey, to Cyprus, to preach the gospel of Jesus; the year was 48 AD.

They sailed from the port of Seleucia which was sixteen miles from Antioch, a sea journey of 130 miles. With a favourable wind it would take only a day to arrive at Cyprus. In Cyprus, there was no church as there was in Antioch. There, the believers in the gospel of Jesus were for the most part Jews and so Saul and Barnabas first preached their message, proclaiming Christ in the Synagogue at Salamis in. We can imagine that Barnabas being a native of Cyprus would have played an essential role in making those first contacts, introducing Saul and John Mark in the local synagogues and paving the way for the Christian message.

Ninety miles southwest of Salamis is Pathos, this major city was the seat of the Roman governor, Sergius Paulus. Arriving at Pathos, we are told that Saul and Barnabas were invited to appear before him. In this audience before Sergius Paulus appeared also, a Jewish sorcerer named Bar-Jesus or otherwise known as Elymas. Elymas, it seems, had gained some credibility and influence over the Roman governor, and attempted to intervene and to prevent the governor from hearing the gospel message. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul* responded by proclaiming that the ‘Lord had laid his hand of punishment’, on Elymas and that he would be ‘struck blind’. This happened instantly and when the governor, Sergius Paulus saw what had happened, he became a believer, ‘for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.’

Eighteen years in the life of the early Church:

• Stephen the first Christian Martyr (30 AD)
• The scattering of the Jerusalem Church
• Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus
• Ananias visits Saul, restore his sight and baptises him
• Saul’s escape from Damascus (in a basket)
• Saul’s time in Arabia
• Peter’s vision at Joppa and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles
• Barnabas introduces Saul to the Apostle’s Peter and James
• Saul’s escape from Jerusalem and return to Tarsus
• Saul and Barnabas at the church in Antioch
• Commencement of the First Missionary Journey (48 AD)
• In Cyprus Saul becomes Paul

I hope that this ‘helicopter tour’ may be useful to you in helping, as far as it goes, to trace Paul’s movements in relation to the development of the early Church.

*After 13:9 in Acts, Saul is thereafter referred to as the Roman equivalent: Paul

 

 Photograph: Peloponnisios, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons