Paul Reject the Jews and Focuses on the Gentiles - Acts 18

18 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.

After what?  After Paul had been in Athens a while and had these discussions with the philosophers regarding Jesus.  By all descriptions, Corinth was a sin city.  It was the location of the temple dedicated to Aphrodite (Venus) where there were a thousand vestal virgins.  But these where really prostitutes and sex was the religion honoring Aphrodite.  There were two large theatres there for entertainment.  It was a popular place in the Roman Empire.

Lest we look down upon the Corinthians at their worship to Aphrodite, it would be an easy argument to prove that sex is a leading religion in not just America but the developed world.  One study that interviewed freshmen college students found that 100% of them had viewed pornography.  All of the people interviewed had seen pornography by age 18.  This is startling.  Consider a few more alarming statistics:

1. Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, & Twitter combined each month. 
2. 35% of all internet downloads are porn-related.  That is over 1/3 of all activity on the internet! 
3. In 2018 alone, more than 5,517,000,000 hours of porn were consumed on the world’s largest porn site.  This means, at any hour of any day during 2018, 629,794 were watching porn (on average). 
4. The world’s largest free porn site also received over 33,500,000,000 site visits during 2018 alone.  This means, for every second of every day in 2018, 1,062 people visited a porn site (on average).  Over 1,000 people, every second!

In a recent conversation with a middle school guidance counselor, she was very candid about the alarming discussions she has with students almost daily.  The girls, in particular, learn about sex from watching porn.  The absence of parental discussions and taught morality with accountability is crippling the world.  A significant portion of the world worships sex and we as a sinful people are no better than the Corinthians.

There was a lot of Greek military history in this area.  This is where the Greco-Persian wars ended.  In the 2^nd invasion by King Xerxes, the Persian navy is defeated nearby.  Following that, the Persians retreat and and suffer a great defeat the following year.

 ² There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³ and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. ⁴ Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

Paul is working to provide for himself while he teaches and preaches.  He is still separated from Silas and Timothy since the Jews in Thessalonica run him out of town to Berea and then away from there also (ch 17).  He has found some refugee Jews who were escaping from Rome.  Even so, Paul spends every Sabbath teaching (“reasoning”) with the Jews and Greeks about Jesus. 

⁵ When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. ⁶ But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

⁷ Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. ⁸ Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.

Paul dedicated himself to preach exclusively to the Jews once Silas and Timothy arrive, yet the Jews reject the message.  Paul’s patience runs out with the Jews and he is frustrated to the point of making a vow to only speak to the Gentiles from that point forward in Corinth.  While we may think it is unreasonable for him to get angry with these people and remove himself from teaching them further, God did this as well and Isaiah records how the message will be given to the Gentiles because his people reject it.  Jesus reinforces this as He tells the parable of how the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding feast and the honored guests all have refuse to attend (Matthew 22), so they ask everyone, no matter who they are or what they have done, to come.  Paul has finally realized that extending this gospel message to the Gentiles as a priority is important.

⁹ One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. ¹⁰ For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” ¹¹ So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

God assures Paul that no one will harm him.  When Paul is at his “wits end” with the Jews, the Lord steps in and reassures him with a promise of protection.  The Lord met him where he needed to be met when he needed assurance.  God has “many people” in this city and he needs Paul to preach and teach them about Jesus.  Paul will enter a new dimension of ministry that has less primary focus on reaching Jews than Gentiles.