1Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, 2where he met Aquila, a Jewish man from Pontus. Not long before this, Aquila had come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Emperor Claudius had ordered the Jewish people to leave Rome. [a] Paul went to see Aquila and Priscilla 3and found out that they were tent makers. Paul was a tent maker too. So he stayed with them, and they worked together. 4Every Sabbath, Paul went to the Jewish meeting place. He spoke to Jews and Gentiles [b] and tried to win them over. 5But after Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, he spent all his time preaching to the Jews about Jesus the Messiah. 6Finally, they turned against him and insulted him. So he shook the dust from his clothes [c] and told them, "Whatever happens to you will be your own fault! I am not to blame. From now on I am going to preach to the Gentiles." 7Paul then moved into the house of a man named Titius Justus, who worshiped God and lived next door to the Jewish meeting place. 8Crispus was the leader of the meeting place. He and everyone in his family put their faith in the Lord. Many others in Corinth also heard the message, and all the people who had faith in the Lord were baptized.
9One night, Paul had a vision, and in it the Lord said, "Don't be afraid to keep on preaching. Don't stop! 10I am with you, and you won't be harmed. Many people in this city belong to me." 11Paul stayed on in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching God's message to the people.
12While Gallio was governor of Achaia, some of the Jewish leaders got together and grabbed Paul. They brought him into court 13and said, "This man is trying to make our people worship God in a way that is against our Law!"
14Even before Paul could speak, Gallio said, "If you were charging this man with a crime or some other wrong, I would have to listen to you. 15But since this concerns only words, names, and your own law, you will have to take care of it. I refuse to judge such matters." 16Then he sent them out of the court. 17The crowd grabbed Sosthenes, the Jewish leader, and beat him up in front of the court. But none of this mattered to Gallio.
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink".
"But!" we protest..."The horse isn't smart enough to know he needs to drink. We must be diligent and tenacious. We must make the horse drink".
Not so fast...we just witnessed Paul abandoning the Jews and basically saying "this one is on you...I've done my part". Wow! This seems callous...letting them be doomed to eternal condemnation. We don't know why Paul was led to take this position but I suspect his thinking involved the urgent nature of the Gospel and the vast reaches of the harvest. We have limited resources to reach nearly unlimited people. Time is if the essence.
It doesn't mean we don't care. It means we care just as much for the next person in line. And...you and I never know when time will run out. It reminds me of the old TV game where a family ran around a grocery store with a grocery cart and could keep everything they could get in the cart within a minute. The race, obviously, involved finding valuable items...but that had to be balanced with the need for haste.
We are all in the business of "filling our eternal cart with lost souls". The huge advantage we have over the TV game is that we know that every soul has equal value. We can start clearing the shelves as fast as possible. The problem is...the clock has already started.
Live boldly out there today...
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