Dan: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to trainingforliferedeemed. I'm your host, Dan, and I'm here with my father, David Jackson, to talk to you about Acts chapters 19 through to 21. Looking at the last episode that we're talking about in part three of our study series on Acts. We left you last week they were in Ephesus. Paul was in there, he was stirring up trouble. Getting people frustrated with him. There was a big riot We're coming back to Ephesus to have a bit closer look, I think at the riots that are here Dad, and we'll see what we can learn from it.

David: 0:56

Yeah. Well, this riot is a great thing. If the office, the office is this Roman official, and he's looking at, at the question of the legality and who's causing all the trouble in the Roman empire, Is it the Christians or is it the people who are opposing the Christians? So the riot in emphasis while it's huge, it sets a legal precedent. At least in the mind of somebody like Theophilus, because the people doing the rioting are not the Christians, the Christians are in there trying to pacify the riot. They're trying to be reasonable and rational. Whereas everybody else has being irrational and raging and causing all sorts of trouble. So the clerk of the city is the guy who comes that riot down by affirming Roman law. And the Christians are seen to be affirming Roman law. So Christians are law abiding citizens. We don't bring the gospel in by rioting. We don't bring it in by street demonstrations and taking up arms and joining militias and all that sort of thing. We work with the government in place. We do it peacefully. We bring Shalom wherever we go. It's the other people that were bringing everything else. So we've set that precedent. This is why Paul Paul spends so much time in Ephesus. He's got a base from which to teach.

Dan: 2:23

Yeah, I was going to say chapter 20, actually, Paul's about to leave, but it talks about how he first calls his disciples. Like he's got students that he's training while he's there. And after encouraging his students, that's when he says goodbye and heads off for Macedonia and moves on, is this kind of something that he does everywhere. He's going to set up these disciples as well?

David: 2:43

I think up to this point, it's worth having a visit, I think, to a Jewish synagogue and the Jewish community. I'd actually like to go and visit a Yeshiva. So Yeshiva, if you, if you want to watch, watch something like a TV series Shtisel, which is a Jewish , television series produced in Israel, looking at the life of ultra Orthodox Jews. So their kids don't go to high school. They don't go to secular schools. They go to a Yeshiva and in the Yeshiva, the rabbis are the teachers and the rabbis teach people Torah, Mishnah and Talmud. And I think that's all it's on the curriculum. You know, doing other subjects is regarded as not kosher. I don't understand it completely, but these guys are utterly dedicated that their children are going to study the Bible and their commentaries on the Bible. f ull t ime. If you're a Muslim, you send the kids to a Madrasa, which is very much the same thing. It's based on the word Midrash, which means to search the scriptures. So your full education is just the Bible. I tell the story when we were poverty-stricken theological students , over the summer, I wasn't allowed to work. Didn't have a visa to work in Canada or the United States. Pat's a Canadian citizen. She got a job as a cook at a Zionist Jewish children's camp for three months of the summer in 1976. And so we go into this Zionist children's camp where everything's up in Hebrew, on the signs they're trying to teach the kids to get them ready to warm, immigrate to Israel, right? And the guys that are the counsellors have just come back. They've they're veterans of the 73 war and they're 19 year old and they're built like you're fresh out of the gym , bulked up, looking fellows. And they're impressing these kids with Israeli culture. And I'm a boy, I'm a Gentile. And I'm just a hanger on, you know , so we , we get talking and lo and behold, these Israelis are playing Scrabble in Hebrew. So I get into a Hebrew Scrabble game and they're all amazed that a Gentile would play Hebrew Scrabble . I'm amazed that I can even do a lot to help at the time. Let's say you're still a Bible college. There was the interesting question. One of the counsellors said to me, you have , you have other books in your Bible. Y ep. What language are they in Greek? Wow. So your Kids have got to learn Greek and Hebrew. And I said, well, actually our kids learn their Bible in that translated into their heart language. And the look on his face was amazing. And he just, he looked stunned and he said , you're not serious then. I went, wow. So one of the things we'd pick up is this is a Jewish community. He's a rabbi. And these are full-time students. He's running a Bible college. So when we hear that word disciple, we're not just thinking about like you and me turning up to a Bible study on Friday. These people are full time and Paul's walked in. He's taken over yeshiva as a rabbi and all that . yeshiva students who believe in Jesus have switched over to take his classes. The other rabbis are jealous. And so he's moved down the road and opened his own Yeshiva . And this is, this is what it's all about. You bring the gospel to bear on a culture by teaching. And these people are really serious about learning. And I think that's a culture we might've lost.

Dan: 6:27

Well, Paul then says farewell to the Ephesians elders and stuff, and he heads off basically getting ready to head back to Jerusalem. Why is it significant that he's going to head back there and

David: 6:41

We're coming, we're coming in for the final battle. Aren't we, he's going to go back to Jerusalem and then he's going to get arrested and get sent to Rome. But what's really interesting is on the way, instead of going straight to Jerusalem, he goes back to Macedonia to see what's going on. And in the meantime, there's all kinds of trouble in the church in Corinth. So he's writing letters to Corinth to the church at currently sending Timothy back to look after the Corinthian church and clean up the mess. He's writing a letter to the church in Rome. He didn't manage to get to Rome. He got side-tracked. So he writes a letter to them while he's in Macedonia. And it's all set. We're going to say goodbye to these elders in Ephesus. We're going to warn them because false teachers are going to come. They're going to have to handle this without him. And that's pretty scary. And later on, we're going to see letters being sent to Ephesus, to clean up the mess. But now we're heading for Jerusalem and everybody knows, as soon as he gets there, he's going to get arrested. And everybody's going to try and talk him out of going. And Paul says, Nope, that's where God's sending me. I'm going there. Yeah. And

Dan: 7:49

That's kind of going to essentially be a one way ticket. Well , I think he comes back to Jerusalem after he goes to Rome. Hence why I'm saying it's a one way ticket to Rome. Not that it's where he played his last visit to Rome. Well, that brings us to the end of episode 29. If you would like to go deeper with this episode, please come over to trainingforliferedeemed .com/ 29. You can grab the study notes there and dive in deeper and reflect with using the questions. Look at the photos that dad's gotten stuck in there from his trips over to Turkey and Israel and everywhere else that he's been. If you enjoyed the episode, please let make sure you leave us a review and ensure that you subscribe to the series so that you can come back on Monday and listen to our next episode, which is episode 30. When we head into our last part of Acts And we get ready by the end of next week, we'll be finished Acts and moving on to Timothy.