Topographical - w/Pastor Jenn Swift

Hi everyone. Thanks. I was on sabbatical for those of you who are like, where'd you come from?

Where'd you, where'd you, we don't know, we don't know you. You're dead to us.

I was on sabbatical the last six weeks and I am grateful for a church that lets us do that.

Let's our leadership take some time to have like a drawn out rest.

Sabbatical is related to the word Sabbath and I'm really thankful for that time off.

So yeah, I won't get into that a whole lot today but yeah, anyway, thank you for that.

We are getting close to wrapping up our topographical series.

I'm doing today and next week on the series and I actually haven't, I have all lined up the messages of the last few weeks

so I really wanted to hear them and have not done that yet.

Not like you guys were holding me to it but I feel like I need to confess it. I don't know. What is that?

Guys, sorry for something you're not indicting me for.

But we're going to continue on our summer road trip as I like to think of it in the next two weeks

and today we are spending time on, adjacent with the letters of Paul and narrowing in on his journeys.

So some of the work that I do in my life is I get to travel far to do it and last summer I was in Greece

and I organized conferences for families and kids, specifically for kids.

And so it took me to Greece and I usually try to build in a few extra days when I am someplace

and I wanted to do some visiting of some places in Greece because it's old and I really love old things.

So, like so much. And I know that when people go on vacation they think about like beaches or relaxing

and I will chase down Roman roads and ancient cities as much as I can.

Give me a 2000 plus year old arched colonnade or a mosaic floor or a Greek amphitheater

or a bronze age city of Agamemnon and Clytemastra.

That's the stuff that gets me really excited and friends that have traveled with me can attest to this.

This is what I want to do with my time off. But I am at least upfront about it.

We're going to see old stuff.

One of the places I really wanted to get while I was in Greece was the city of Corinth.

Yes, I do realize that there are actually beaches in Greece that people write about in the travel blogs.

I did not go to those beaches other than the one at the retreat center that we were at.

But have you seen the pedimental sculptures of the Parthenon, you guys?

That's the stuff I want to see.

So when I got to the Corinth, I had the place largely to myself, which may not be surprising to anybody,

but I can't believe I beat the crowds.

I walked around for a few hours and while I was there, I did, I tried to imagine,

Paul, I love to go to these places and try to imagine what life would have been like.

I think that's part of the fun is the reconstructing of these places in my head.

I stood in the marketplace and I tried to imagine Paul meeting Priscilla and Aquila for the first time

and what the early days versus the late days of his, he spent 18 months there.

And I wonder if that was unexpected as the time just drew on, but he was there for a year and a half.

And what were the first days like compared to the last days and how he got to know the city and the people in it,

what were the roads that he got used to walking down and the bakeries that he stopped at regularly

and the shop people that he spent the most time with?

I wanted to imagine that stuff.

And after a few hours, I got in my car and I pulled up 1 Corinthians on my phone

and I sat there thinking about how within my gaze was this city that was thousands of years old.

It was centuries upon centuries of years old and the buildings, they're no longer there,

but here I am in my car, a vehicle not even conceived of, you know, when these original, when the letters were written.

I'm sitting in my car reading these words in the 21st century on a phone, you know,

like the intersection of all these pieces was so fascinating to me.

But these words that were written to those people are reaching me in the 21st century.

That is, it felt like an actual miracle and I thanked God for it.

I thanked God for the life I had because of people in this town that no longer exists.

So let's just take a minute to quiet our hearts for the word that God has for us

and to consider the things that God has done over time in history and the places that he's done it

to get the gospel message to us here today.

God, thank you so much for moving heaven and earth, for your message, for your gospel, for your good news,

for the truth of Jesus and the life of Christ to reach humanity in spite of itself.

Throughout all the centuries, it is unbelievable that we get to have your word

and your spirit alive in us here today and we are really grateful for it.

So continue to enliven your spirit in us, continue to build our hearts bigger in you and in your shape, God.

Inform us more into your likeness that we can help build the church forward

and send your gospel forward just like the people of the first century church did as well.

We pray this in your name, amen.

Kathy, go ahead and put up first the first slide.

Paul, who we first meet early on in the book of Acts as a really terrible person,

overseeing the stoning of Stephen and being pleased with the work against the early church,

was one of the destructive people against the early church,

was one of the people that was trying to dismantle this early movement.

He had a dynamic and dramatic conversion and after that,

he became one of the most prevalent and foremost carriers of the gospel forward

and builders and exorters of the church as it was growing in the first century.

So this is a tough picture to really get a grasp on, but it shows you the range of Paul's journeys.

So on the far right is sort of the starting point along that coastline.

On the far end of the far east of the Mediterranean Sea, that's what you're looking at there.

You see that far right side is where Israel is, Syria.

Then just sort of to the left of it is where modern day Turkey is.

Go about to the middle, it's modern day Greece, and then far to the left is modern day Italy.

And you can see all these dotted arrow lines that show the travels of Paul.

Between the later 40s up until the late 50s of the first century,

Paul is thought to have made four major journeys with the objective of connecting with the believers

that have spread out from Jerusalem after things got difficult for the Christians there, partially because of him.

He wanted to also see others come to hear and know about Jesus.

So when it was time to go, Paul chose Silas and left and was commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord.

He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches there.

Going on to Acts 16, Paul and his companions traveled through the region of Phrygia and Galatia,

still in Turkey, still kind of close, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia,

which is kind of north like, if you can imagine where Istanbul is in that area.

When they came to the border of Messia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.

That's interesting, isn't it?

So they passed by Messia and went down to Troas.

During the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him,

come over to Macedonia and help us.

After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia,

concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Kathy, go back one slide to the first one.

That'll be context for us. Thank you.

So you can see where those places are. Messia, Asia, Bithynia is all mapped out there, Troas.

So it doesn't sound like Macedonia was a part of the original plan,

the original plan being let's go back to the churches we've already visited and see how they're doing.

As I said, I think for Paul, a native of Tarsus, Cilicia and Galatia would have made some sense.

But I think that this vision needed to happen to prompt them to take it further.

It wasn't in their original idea.

So moving from Asia into Macedonia and Greece, I think, well,

so I imagine it a little bit like in Lord of the Rings.

You know, if you've seen the movie, it's Sam in the movie who says it, not in the book.

So this is really making me a nerd.

In the book, they say.

But Sam gets to a point, I think it's like they get to this gate and he's like, I've never been this far before.

This is the farthest I've ever been in the Shire.

And they're about to go so much farther than they've ever gone before.

And I wonder if Paul or any of his companions ever had that feeling or thought when moving forward on these journeys,

the realization that the call of God, that God was taking them further than they might have thought to go on their own,

to places different than what they knew, to cultures and people groups that they didn't even consider

as being a part of the message of the gospel to reach, which checks out.

I find that this is how God works with all of us frequently, actually, isn't it?

And so but for obedience to the call and the love of the gospel, they wouldn't have gone.

So they find themselves because of this vision, moving off into territory outside of their first journey.

The vision gets them to Macedonia and then Paul moves forward onto Athens and Corinth.

So for context, by car, the drive from Athens to Corinth is about an hour.

And Kathy, you can put on that other map three.

So if you're looking at this map, you can see on the right side where it says to Athens.

So it's about an hour that way.

Who studied Greece in school?

I mean, that should be just about any of us, right?

Like it's early civilization type of stuff that we study.

So you might remember the phrase city states.

We would have known Athens and Sparta.

Those were the ones that come to mind.

But truthfully, Corinth should be in there with it.

It was just as important, just as formidable.

Corinth as a city was strategically placed.

Corinth had access to two ports.

So you can see where Corinth is the red dot.

Look above.

There's a square.

And if you look to the right where it says Sankreae, both of those spots were ports.

And they were just within a few miles.

Sankreae was about 15 miles.

Lacheon was like two.

But they had access to them.

They ruled those ports.

In fact, they had created even a unique kind of road that would allow boats to portage from one port to the other

so that they could avoid going around the south of the Peloponnese,

which was notorious for having brutal waters.

This saved ships time, money, potential danger, and increased their ability to monetize everything.

It brought all kinds of people to Corinth in extraordinary numbers.

It was also the city right on the edge of the Isthmus.

So you can see Isthmus of Corinth, that thin strip of land that connects the Peloponnese to central Greece.

And they were the gatekeepers for all kinds of people passing through.

Most notably, they were the gatekeepers for a militant people to the southwest of them known as the Spartans,

who pretty regularly like to wage war on Athens.

Like they had a yearly schedule.

I'm not kidding.

Every year, Athens could plan on Sparta showing up and being like,

we're here to wage war again.

It's May.

So anyway, they had to pass through Corinth and the region of Corinth and the city-state of Corinth to get there.

And so Corinth's placement gave them great power.

It would be no surprise that eventually when a little group in the west started growing into an empire known as the Roman Empire,

their attention might fall to this area.

So Corinth was a city of about 90,000 native residents.

But then you imagine all the people visiting on a regular basis,

and you were in the multiple hundreds of thousands at its height.

Slide four.

This is what it is, you know, a reimagination of what it could have looked like.

It had a lot of influence and power, and Rome was pretty uncomfortable about that.

So Corinth stood at the center of what was known as the Achaean League,

and it was a pretty tight federation of towns.

When Rome couldn't break through it, they decided to break it, as Rome does.

And when Rome decided to move against Corinth, it didn't merely defeat it.

They raised it to the ground, which we've seen them do with Jerusalem and other defiant cities.

But they certainly did it to send a message.

The Achaean League not only altered the geopolitical landscape to the Mediterranean,

but it also marked a significant turning point in Greco-Roman relations.

So Corinth, once the vibrant heart of the region, it lay in ruins.

Kathy, go to the next slide, and the land was divided among the settlers.

So this is what Corinth looks like now, but when Rome raised it to the ground,

it might as well have been the same thing.

Despite Rome's efforts to redirect things, they realized in the end about a hundred years later

that Corinth was far too important to them.

And so Julius Caesar was like, hey, we're going to rebuild you,

and you're now going to be the capital of this region.

And that kind of leaves you being like Corinth's relationship with Rome pretty complicated

by the time Paul arrives. It was chaotic.

And it's like, hey, can we join your team? No? Okay, we're going to destroy you,

but we're going to rebuild you because we love you and we need you.

There's a lot of toxicity in that.

So on top of that, just before Paul arrives in Corinth, Claudius the emperor expels every Jew

because they're too problematic. He expels them all from Rome.

And Corinth is where a lot of them ended up.

And that's how we meet Priscilla and Aquila, who became Paul's greatest partners at this time in ministry.

So Acts 18, 1 through 3 says, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.

There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontius, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla

because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.

They were refugees, and Corinth was where they had ended up.

And so Paul arrived in a very culturally Greek city as a Jewish Roman freeborn citizen.

There would have been some complications with his arrival in those early days for those living in Corinth,

especially for the Jews.

Paul had his own issues with Rome, but they were far from what the Jews' issues in Corinth with Rome looked like.

And so for more than a few reasons, Paul's normal protocols of preaching Christ in the synagogues

and to the Jews needed to end.

And as a result, Paul turned to the Gentiles there in Corinth.

This was a distinct shift in the broader ministry of the church.

Peter had come to see a vision from the spirit of God in Acts 10.

This is Peter, the one that Jesus basically handed over the early leadership of the church to.

And Peter had come to see a vision from the spirit of God in Acts 10, saying that the gospel was now open to the Gentiles.

Do not call unclean what I have made clean.

But Paul was making that a far-reaching message now here in Corinth.

Oh, no. Really? The Gentiles are actually allowed in now?

And in a town like Corinth, people coming and going as they were back to the west, back to the north,

back to the south, through the ports, through the land roads, the message would have significantly spread from here.

In fact, it may have been because of Paul's preaching here that it began itching the ears of Rome more than ever.

If it's reached Corinth, it will reach the world.

But because of where it was and the amount of people that came through, Corinth was also known for its excessive moral decay.

The word Corinthian was used by the Romans for someone who was immoral and excessive in that morality.

Corinth was the sin city of the Roman Empire. And sin makes money.

And so this was a big shift. If the Gentiles were allowed to have the message of Christ, what was that going to do to society?

So in Paul's time in Corinth, he came to deeply love and become connected to the church there.

And helping them get off the ground was such an act of love.

We see through Paul's letters, we have two, but we believe that there were possibly four and maybe three or four is kind of attached to our second Corinthians.

We see letters that have gone back to the Corinthians that are very specifically urging them to love one another, do not be divided.

He addresses superiority in the church and those who wielded presumed entitlements and abused the practices of worship.

And there was so much division that when Paul pled with them to love one another and to be patient and grow with each other and work out their differences,

just as Christ had commanded us, when he says to them in first Corinthians 16, do everything in love,

this last word to them was not a suggestion that was sort of this broad generalization that worshiped, oh, do everything in love.

It was a directive to them. Find the love that you have among each other as children of God and work from there.

Find your level ground. When Paul's time was done in Corinth, he and Priscilla and Aquila, go to picture six next,

when he had left from there, they went to the port of Sancrae, which this was my picture from last year.

That port is still there and you can look at that bay and think, oh, my gosh, that that looks like what it could have looked like.

It's fascinating to see that. And from here, they go to Ephesus.

And I was able to build able to visit Ephesus this last February. And I was not prepared.

Andy and I have geeked out about Ephesus a little bit. It is it's remarkable.

It was not hard to imagine how glittering of a city this once was.

I spent five hours lingering through the streets, me and my audio guide hitting play three times standing in front of like fountains and marble columns.

It's very excited by those. Go ahead to picture seven. This is a view from one far end of Ephesus down to kind of a central point.

But then there's a whole other section of Ephesus to the right of that.

It is huge. And where that grassland is in the background, that's all backfill from a river that used to be a huge port.

And so it was a significant a significant place in the ancient world. Go ahead to picture eight.

You can see that the journey from Athens to Ephesus is not far, but they were worlds away from each other.

Go ahead to nine. Because it was a major port, it was going to see a lot of people like Corinth did.

But it was also sort of the center of the cult of Artemis.

So the Temple of Artemis, which you can see on the right side, it's a little bit of it's a square there.

The Temple of Artemis was not only a tourist attraction, but it had become known as its own bank.

It had become full on a bank, the treasury. People would make deposits to it.

And then they would store their money there because it was known to be incredibly safe and even Rome attested to its importance financially.

Rome even went as far as to permit festivals to the Temple or excuse me, to the goddess Artemis,

permitted them to go on for months beyond what they were originally scheduled for because it made money.

The Greeks also loved their festivals.

And so to extend an extra month because it was essentially more beneficial for Rome, you can see how Rome functions, right?

The cult of Artemis in Ephesus was beneficial to Rome.

So Paul's arrival and the preaching of the gospel was going to be contentious and we see it in Acts 19.

About that time, there arose a great disturbance about the Way, which is what Christians were called.

A silversmith named Demetrius who made silver shrines of Artemis brought in a lot of business to the craftsmen there.

He called them together along with the workers in related trades and said, you know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business.

And you see how here, how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray a large number of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia.

He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all.

There is danger that not only our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited.

The goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.

Significant, right?

And so there was a riot for two hours.

It says in for two hours, they all shouted in unison, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

They dragged Paul's friends into this theater and kept shouting this for two hours.

It was a frenzy.

It created some tension.

The people of Ephesus, because of the cult of Artemis, had been granted some special privileges by the empire, had puffed up in power and had grown in greed.

This was the cultural bedrock of the community that the church of this Ephesus was trying to grow out of.

How is tough?

The letter that Paul writes back to them later in the opening greeting says in Ephesians 1, 18 through 23,

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you,

the riches of his glorious inheritance and his holy people and his incomparably great power for those of us who believe.

The power is the same as the might strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand of the heavenly realms.

Paul's words were specific to the church in Ephesus here.

Don't get waylaid by what you see around you, the culture around you.

If you want power, let's talk about where that power comes from.

If you want riches, let's talk about the riches of Christ's glorious inheritance.

It was directly in response to what the Ephesians were experiencing.

When Paul checked back with these communities wherever he had gone to, when he wrote these letters, the where of them mattered.

It gives rich insight into why certain words were chosen, why certain directives were given.

And though Paul's words are useful, instructive, and encouraging, when Paul wrote them,

they were meant to be specific exhortations and instructions to specific people in specific contexts.

We need to keep that in mind.

When Paul wrote these letters, he was not writing them to all of Christendom because it didn't exist.

He was writing them to people he loved and prayed for, whose heart he broke for.

And in fact, the early church believed Jesus was coming in days to decades.

They could not conceive that words, Paul would not have conceived that words he wrote would reach an audience 2,000 years later.

And so this is useful to keep in mind, but it's also worth celebrating too.

It's extraordinary that we have these words.

It's not, what we get from them is that it's not just where the gospel went,

but what it meant that it grew where it did because of where it was.

That's amazing that the gospel took root in Ephesus, that the gospel took root in Corinth.

That is a miracle, and it happened in spite of humanity because all of the odds were against it, right?

All the odds were against that the gospel would not only get off the ground, but then grow and then thrive

and last for another 300 years until it became a recognized and accepted religion

and is available to us here and now.

I'm encouraged by that.

I'm grateful for those who believed for the work of the Spirit in spite of the context, in spite of the empire,

in spite of the violence, the trials, the danger.

I'm so encouraged that in spite of all of that, I get to know Jesus today.

I'm grateful for those that met in homes, in marketplaces, hidden places.

I'm grateful for people who traveled really dangerous routes, far and wide.

When I was in Greece, I was astounded by the landscape.

I did not understand how big the mountains in Greece were.

And when you think about the people that traveled over them during dry periods, during terrible weather,

during whatever, because the gospel needed to go, that is unbelievable.

And I'm encouraged by that and I'm challenged by it, too.

Our lives are so comfortable, aren't they?

Our lives are so comfortable.

But it makes me wonder, too, like, can the words that I offer to build the church today,

will they have lasting effects 2,000 years from now?

I don't know, but I'm hopeful that they are.

I'm hopeful that the work we get to do together and the community that we build here,

as we encourage each other, admonish each other, support each other,

remind each other of the story of God, we are building.

We are building church for the next day.

We're sending the gospel forward.

That's unbelievable.

And so I'm challenged.

I'm challenged by that and I'm encouraged by that.

So for you in your life, whatever that looks like for you right now, I don't know.

I mean, has God given you a vision to go to Macedonia?

I don't know, maybe.

Is he telling you to get on a boat and go farther afield than you expected to go,

or a plane or a car or a train, whatever?

Sounds like a Dr. Seuss book.

Like a what?

John Cane, yeah, yeah, the planes, trains and automobiles.

Yes.

And so I want to encourage us to just be listening well to God's Spirit

and that if there is a go attached to whatever he is putting in our hearts,

that we would be brave and we would be encouraged

and that we would know that we would be supported by this community

and that we would be a part of that to support and help in any way.

And I'm not talking about like going far for missions work.

I'm talking about like maybe you just need to go talk to your neighbor

or we talk about Greenbush, you know,

or spend more time at a certain business or a friend or whatever,

whatever that go looks like, let's be faithful to that.

Because God has gone before us and in spite of the conditions,

he will bring the gospel forward when we do go.

What an amazing thing.

Let's pray.

Jesus, help us be faithful to your go.

When you say go, help us be faithful to your Spirit

when we are in the places you've asked us to stay for 18 months.

Whatever that looks like, whatever the go and the related time looks like,

help us be faithful with it, help us be open to it, help us be brave.

Help us listen to that together as a community.

Help us support each other and speak truth to each other

and do what we can to help your gospel move forward.

We want to work with the work you're already doing.

We want to work with your Spirit that's already moving.

So help us be brave and faithful, God, in these things.

We pray this in your name. Amen.