The Christian and His Comfort Zone: Paul, Suffering, and Endurance (Part 1)

Now he sails up to Pamphylia and then goes 4,000 ft. above sea level to a plateau called Galatia. He gets run out of the first town. He gets run out of the second town. You know what happened in the third town? Yes, you do. The third town was Lystra, and he was stoned to death, they thought. You know, one of the people who stood over his body that day was Barnabas, and they thought he was dead, but I think there was another one there, too. He was about 18 years old, looking down at that bloody, beat-up body. His name was Timothy. He’s from Lystra. This is not in the Bible, but it stands to reason, and I wonder what he was thinking when he looked at that beaten, emaciated, bloody, stoned body. I set him (Timothy) down to be 20 years old on the day he got converted. Okay, let’s make him 18. I don’t want to go any earlier than that, for the simple reason that Paul wouldn’t have a 14-year-old kid go with him. Because, on his second journey, he had him circumcised and went with him, which would put him around 20, but I’m not putting him older than 20 when he leaves with Paul. So that takes me back to 17, 18. If Timothy hadn’t been standing there, he would have seen him before the day was over, because poor little Paul…the man’s got no good sense. You know what he did? He got up, walked back into the city, and talked to the church. Then they bathed him, and somewhere that day, Timothy, who got saved on that first journey, looked at that man.

Now, folks, look, I’m trying to de-romanticize this. This man is beginning to look like a religious nut. You may want to make him a hero all you wish, but that church he started is now in trouble. The church he started before that was in trouble, and the church he started before that was in trouble. In this one, he got stoned within an inch of his life. The reason I brought up Timothy’s age is that I want you to know whether you make him 17 that day, 18, 19, 15, 16, it doesn’t matter. Years later, when Paul said, “Let no man despise your youth, Timothy,” he was approximately 40 years old. Oh, you have no idea how many sweet little old ladies were really upset because their son got saved and gave up the gods, and how she told her next-door neighbor this evil, wicked man came into our city and stole our…a thousand years our family has been worshiping…The Jews came right in here in that synagogue, sitting right there in that bench, and turned all those Gentiles, those God-fearers, took them right out there in that forum out there, and let them over there in this know one of these religious cults is going. Saints, the man is surrounded by controversy and the problems he creates in other people’s lives, but here’s one thing I want to say to him: his stress level is virtually nonexistent. His comfort zone is infinite. His ability to tolerate is beyond anything I have ever known in my life or ever heard about anywhere in this world except one man, and that’s Prem Pradhan. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Well, this was a good time to turn around and go home. You got a bloody back. You’re half dead. You probably got big bruises all over your body. So, he goes to the next city, Derbe, and starts another church. Brothers and sisters, you never met a man like this, and I’m going to tell you something else. You shouldn’t because these people are so rare. They come once in the millions, and if you’re part of their life, they become your greatest nightmare. All the churches started by Paul of Tarsus on that first church-planting journey paid the price of knowing who the man was. Did it ever occur to you that Barnabas never went with Paul on the second journey? Did it ever occur to you that Silas did not go with Paul on another journey? Now, I’m trying to tell you that this man is mad. He has no comfort zone. He has no stress level. And his ability to endure just keeps on coming.

Now, I’m going to tell you what he did when he got home from the first one. He sat down and said, “That’s enough of that. I’m not going to do this anymore. It’s enough.” He went by and told the saints in Jerusalem how and asked how they were doing. Then went down to Antioch and saw the brothers and sisters there. Then he took off on his second journey. Well, he started the church in Philippi. He fared much better in Philippi than anywhere else. They dragged him before the magistrates who were sitting on something called a Bema, and they beat Silas and Paul without even asking what crime they had committed. Now saints, there’s nothing in this world that will get to you and make you bitter more than injustice, and those men are beaten bloody, hauled off to a rock…a big sheer rock like this has been carved out of stone, and they are in this small prison, and there’s an earthquake. Who do you figure started that song? Silas or Paul? I say it was Paul. It’s for the simple reason that Silas didn’t go with him on the next journey. I have a notion that Silas looked over at him and said, “You’ve got to be out of your mind.”

Can you imagine what his back looked like by then? This has got to be at least his third or fourth beating. Now, you can get beaten two ways. You can get beaten with rods. That’s merciful. The other one is with something called the cat of nine tails, which has rock and glass buried up in its little, little tails. Paul’s back had to not only look horrible, but I have a notion that he screamed bloody murder when they poured salt into the stripes. How do you know he did? Because that was the only way people knew, in that day, to stop an infection. Have you ever had salt poured into an open wound? You have? It’s excruciating.

Okay, this is his second journey. So, he goes to Thessalonica, raises up a church, and then goes to Berea. I want you to get a picture of this, please. Don’t look at Paul, look at the men, the Thessalonian Jewish people who had already raised the city against Paul, and then go over to Berea and tell the Jews there what kind of a man he is in Thessalonica. I want to pause here and tell you about a movement in America from the late 1880s to the early 1900s called the Berean movement. The Bereans were more noble than others, for they searched the scripture. Well, that’s not really true. The Jews search the scripture. Those Gentiles are not going to get near a Torah or any other Scripture. So, they should have said the Jewish people in Berea were more noble than the Jewish people in other cities because they searched the Scripture, but the Gentiles did not have access. There’s no Jew in this world who would let a Gentile get near holy writ.

What happens in Berea? There is a plot against Paul, and God bless these brand-new Christians. Just got saved. Love those people. They, a group of them, brothers and sisters, took him out of town, took him over to a ship or a boat, and helped him get all the way to Athens. They were brand new Christians. That boat pulled out with Paul on it. I can’t help but wonder if one of them was glad to get rid of that man. He is not only being treated this way; very few people in the world are, and they have to be driven by something; most people never see anyone so driven in all their lives.

Now, Paul arrives in Athens, and he finds nothing but peace there. They poke fun at him. They call him a seed-picker. Now, a seed-picker is somebody who has just got into Athens, and he’s going around to the different kinds of philosophical schools picking up something here and there and then sounding like he’s a philosopher. An ignorant man going around just getting something else, and something else, and something else, and that’s who Paul was, and this is how the world looked upon Paul, by philosophers. Nobody beat Paul in Athens. They are above such needs. Philosophers do not get their hands dirty. They “philosophize,” and if something were to happen that looked like they might have to do this, they would make sure they either disappeared or philosophized some more about whatever the danger was. I’m going to prove that in a minute.

Now, Paul goes down to Corinth, and he has 18 months of peace, and then people in the city get mad at him, and poor old Sosthenes gets beaten in the presence of Gallio, who I believe was the first cousin to the emperor at that time; and he (Sosthenes) got just a really good beating. Now folks, he’s no Paul Tarsus. Paul Tarsus gets beaten, you know, annually. How would you like to be Sosthenes? I was dusting benches off at the synagogue, and they knew that Paul was a Jew, and they knew where the synagogue was, and they came in here and grabbed me and dragged me through the street, and then beat me in front of an entire amphitheater. Probably mostly by the fact that they were both Jews. Saints, it does not pay to run around with Paul Tarsus.

Okay, that’s Corinth. Now then, things are getting pretty bad. It is almost exactly at this time, a little earlier than this, that a group of people in Galilee, peasants, form a secret society, and they earn the name daggermen because they’re getting fed up with all of the emperors who’ve been thrashing Israel. So, here’s what they do. They have a little short dagger they keep under their toga, and then during a festival, they’ll go up to either some Roman or more likely some devout Jew who’s doing business with the Romans, walk up to him, and stab him, and then walk away and scream, “Somebody stabbed that man.” They earned the title of daggermen, Sicarii, but the only people they are murdering are Jews who are doing business with Romans, or Romans. And the next person they’re after is Simon Peter because Simon Peter has defied the laws of Moses. But pretty soon after a passage of a few years, they realize that there’s a man out in the field who’s desecrating the laws of Moses worse than anyone, and his name is Paul of Tarsus.

Paul begins to get wind that he may one day be on the prayer list of the Sicarii. The Sicarii will decide on a name. They do it a lot. They do it by vote, and whoever gets the next highest votes is the one they’re going to kill next. What they do is then they pray for the man’s soul. I’m telling you the truth. So, Paul comes home from Corinth, but he doesn’t go directly home. He sits down with Priscilla and Aquila, and I’m wondering why Priscilla and Aquila are running around with this man. He talks to them in the church, and Paul says, “Aquila, you’re a Roman. Priscilla, you’re a Roman. Priscilla says, “I was born in Rome. I grew up in Rome. I belong to the royalty of Rome.” Paul says, “Priscilla, would you be willing to sell your home in Corinth and move to Ephesus? It’s going to be a while before I get there, but I want you to start attending the synagogue.” So, they agree. They sail over to Asia Minor and go to Ephesus. She buys a home. He speaks in the synagogue and is very, very well received; nobody has ever heard of him. News doesn’t travel real fast in that world unless you eventually become Paul of Tarsus, and then it begins to get blistering fast. He leaves there with Priscilla and Aquilla. He goes to Jerusalem again, goes home, and then begins gathering some men. You know the story, and he comes to Ephesus with the six men. One of them was Aristarchus, who was beaten up, and another one was Gaius from Derbe. There’s Timothy, and there’s Titus, and Secundus. He’s got six, and he begins training them.

Now, I’ve already read what happened after being there for 2.5 years. The silversmiths grab Aristarchus and Gaius and drag them into the amphitheater. Now, when they say “drag,” I think we’d better take them literally. These were very unhappy people who were trying to hurt Paul. I’m telling you folks, the man to speak kindly of him: Paul of Tarsus was deranged. This man has got something not hooked up and right in him. He wants to go face the entire crowd of 24,000 people in the amphitheater, yelling, “Great is the goddess, Diana,” and they literally hold him back and keep him from it. You know, the only thing that man could think of was 24,000 Gentiles; I could preach the Gospel. Forget my beaten back. Forget the screaming hate raging, and forget poor old Aristarchus and Gaius. I’ve got to get in there and preach the Gospel.