The DEEPEST Truth Paul Ever Taught

Now I’m going to tell you the story. He went to Jerusalem, taking Silas with him, and Timothy, who had never seen Jerusalem. Timothy had his mouth wide open. He got to see Jerusalem. He got to see the temple. He got to meet the apostles, and he was looking forward to meeting someone in Antioch, which was north, whom he had heard a great deal about, whose name was Titus. Titus had a reputation because he had gone to Jerusalem several years earlier with Paul and Barnabas and had met with the Jerusalem Christians. They were both young men, and both were looking forward to meeting one another. Now, you won’t find that in the Bible, but listen to me anyway; I’m telling you the truth. Timothy comes to Antioch, along with Silas and Paul, and they report to the church at the end of their second church-planting journey. Silas goes home to Jerusalem. Paul brings his report, but Timothy does too, and Timothy just…he’s just fantastic, and he turns the church on its ear. He’s a fiery young kid, and he loves the Lord, and when the meeting is over, Titus comes knifing his way through the crowd and pushes his way toward Timothy. Timothy sees him coming, and they grab one another, hug, and cry. They’ll live a good part of their lives together.

They’re home for a short time, then they head to the city of Ephesus. Let me tell you what happens before they go. There are two or three things you may not know, and that is that the city of Jerusalem is in convulsions. They had a governor over Israel who was not good; his name was Cuspius, and a group of people had grown up who were disgusted with Roman rule and determined to throw off Roman rule. They are people from the countryside, and they are a secret organization, and they come into the city to kill Jews who cooperate with Rome. Does anybody in this room know what their names were? What name was given to them? Not the Zealots yet. They haven’t emerged yet, but that was a good try, brother. They had this little, short knife, and they would wait until the festivals, and they would walk up to one of these people cooperating with Rome, and they would slip out this knife very skillfully and stab the man, and then they would jump back and begin tearing their clothes and saying, “Who killed him? Oh, this wonderful person.” And they came to be known as the Daggerman.

There were two people whom they (the Daggermen) were concerned about. They would kill a lot of folks, and they were never getting caught either. As things evolved, there were two men they were concerned about; they were determined to kill. Now you know what one man’s name is. What’s his name? Paul. Do you know who the other one was? Simon Peter, because Peter had allowed Gentiles to, from their viewpoint, enter the Jewish religion. We look at it from a different direction. Paul of Tarsus knew that a revolution was coming in Israel. He knew there was a chance he could die at almost any time. He’s going on his third journey to plant one church, and he does something, to me, that is the greatest single stroke of genius in the history of Christianity. Now, Jan, no, you’d still be wrong, but it’s okay.

He leaves for Ephesus with Timothy and Titus, but he writes letters to some of the churches and tells the church in Derbe, “Send Gaius to Ephesus.” He writes to the church in Thessalonica and says, “Send Aristarchus and Secundus to Ephesus.” And then he says…so how many have I got so far? I’ve got five. He writes to the church in Berea, saying, “Send me Sopater,” and we will rendezvous in Ephesus. I don’t know if you understand, but I want you to understand. Michael, I want you to know this. Danielle, I want you to know this. Charles, you should know this. You two brothers should know this. He is going to make church planters out of those six men, but he only picks young men who have already grown up in church life. He picks men from literally five different cultures across three or four basic worlds and brings them together.

Titus knows what it’s like to have church life in Syria. He has lived there for years. He also knows the brothers in Jerusalem. He knows the apostles. He’s got that to give. Timothy is the second one. He can tell you all about Blastinius Drachrachma, that fellow who was the Jewish gentleman who came in and almost wrecked those four churches. It was Timothy… not elders… but Timothy who stopped that Judaizer. He was from the land of the Gauls, Galatia. He was from the land of poor people and slaves. Secundus and Aristarchus came from Thessalonica. They could tell you what it was like to be part of a church that went to seed on the second coming, and what it was like to get up on a mountain and stand there and say, “Jesus is coming any minute. I don’t need to work. The rest of you can feed me, because Jesus is coming any minute now.” “That’s Him for sure.” “No, it was just a cloud.” “While I sit down and eat, y’all watch. He’ll be here any minute now.” Sopater could tell you what it was like to grow up in a city that was a resort area and to be part of a church that was probably the only place that didn’t give Paul a great deal of trouble, although Blastinius’ friends eventually got there. Those are the people who went with Paul to a city called Ephesus. Now I want you to make this note: every one of them had already been at a church birth, and that’s important—to be at the birth of a church. Every one of them could say, “I was there from the beginning.”

Now I want you to watch Paul of Tarsus enter the city of Ephesus. He’s got six young brothers in tow, and they’re from five different areas of the world, and he’s going to let them see another “beginning.” They come, with different languages and different cultures, into a place where none of them have ever been. And he has also sent Priscilla and Aquila there to open a tent-making business.

You want to go to Ephesus with me? Would you come and go to Ephesus with me? Okay. They just get outside of town and find 12 strange-looking men there. Paul talks to them. Six young men with 12 big eyes are watching because they want to see how Paul does it. Paul says…I haven’t said that yet… he says, “Who are you?” They say, “Well, we’re John the ‘Baptistites.’” And he said, “Well, have you received the Holy Spirit?” “No.” He preaches the gospel to them and puts his hand on them; they all receive the Holy Spirit, and if you’re Pentecostal, they all spoke in tongues, and if you believe that tongues are of the devil, then they didn’t speak in tongues.

Paul looks at his six young men and says, “See how easy it is?” And one of the young men in that group had a name. Does anybody know what his name is? Boy, Gene, I hope you remember this. I hope I’m right. Does anybody know his name? His name is Epaenetus, the first convert in Asia. Hold on to that name. Would you do that? I haven’t stopped to tell you a lot about these other towns. Believe it or not, I’m trying to hurry, but now I’m going to tell you about the city of Ephesus. The city of Ephesus has 200,000 people in it. It’s the fourth to the largest city in the Western world.

The synagogue is located on the north side of town. When you come in by ship, the city is about five miles in, but it has a large harbor, and by the way, even then, they were having a big problem with silt covering up the river. Today, if you were to visit Ephesus, you’d find that it’s five miles inland, and the river no longer exists; it’s been covered with silt. It (Ephesus) had monuments and major temples dedicated to about seven or eight gods or goddesses, but they all paled in comparison to the great temple outside town, which was called the Temple to Diana, if you’re a Roman. What about if you’re a Greek? Then it’s Artemis. It’s 220 feet long. It was 160 feet wide. Inside it, covered with curtains, was a burned piece of wood that supposedly had fallen from heaven, and it was Diana herself, or at least the idol Diana. No, for them it was Diana. She was completely covered. You could never see her.

There were three kinds, three different orders of priests who night and day watched over the temple: some here, some here, and some inside. Now, there were two reasons they guarded it: one of them was just to guard it because of what it was, but the other one was, and you owe me a thousand dollars for telling you this, it was the third-largest bank in the world. People came, brought their gold and silver, deposited it there, and got a little sheet of paper proving it was there. By the way, that little sheet of paper evolved into something; you know what it’s called today? It’s called money. It’s not, but that’s what it evolved into: a little proof that they had their gold and silver in there. That was the third-largest bank in the world. You know what the biggest bank in the world was? Where was the biggest bank in the world? Oh yes, now can you tell me what the second-largest bank in the world was? Jerusalem, the temple in Jerusalem. This was the third biggest, and it was a great place because it was easy to get a mortgage and build. You had to pay back, just like we do today.

Paul went to the synagogue, and he had a brainstorm when he was in Corinth. When they threw him out of the church in Corinth, the temple in Corinth, he just moved next door to the home of somebody named Justus. Well, he looked next door when he got thrown out of the synagogue in Ephesus, and he saw a for-rent sign. Actually, it was not. It was a school, probably for young boys and girls, that was open from about daylight till 11 a.m., and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. all the shops closed, and people took a siesta. Thank you very much. And Paul rented the building out from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the church met in the home of Priscilla and Aquila, and it got bigger and bigger. It grew bigger and bigger because of Paul’s signs and wonders… unless you don’t believe in signs and wonders, then it was because he was a great preacher of the Bible. Paul taught those six young men from 11 to 4 every day.

Now y’all listen to me really carefully, will you? Before daybreak…before daybreak every day…Paul went to the marketplace, sat down with Aquila, and, with a weaver’s beam, made what you and I would today call canvas, then shaped it into tents, and he worked there until 11 a.m. Then he went to the school of Tyrannus, and he met with his six young men, and he supported all six of those men with his own hands and took no money from anybody…from anybody…by the way. And in case you haven’t figured this out, I am giving you my model. I dug most of it out of the New Testament; the rest I got from history, and I put it in chronological order, and I couldn’t find Christianity today.