Paul In Ephesus; Acts 19:1 – 22 Part 6

Church History: Date: A.D. 53–57

He preached to them for the space of three months, which was a reasonable amount of time to allow them to consider it. There were some that were persuaded to believe in Christ, but many continued in their infidelity, and were confirmed in their prejudices against Christianity. When Paul called on them before, and preached only some general things to them, they asked him to stay among them (Acts18:20); but now that he settled among them, and his word came more closely to their consciences, they soon became weary of him. They had an invincible aversion to the gospel of Christ themselves: they were hardened, and did not believed; they were resolved to unbelief, though the truth shone in their faces with a convincing light and evidence. Therefore they believed not, because they were hardened. They did their utmost to raise and maintain in others an aversion to the gospel. They not only entered not into the kingdom of God themselves, but neither did they allow those that were entering to go in. They spoke evil of it before the multitude, to prejudice them against it. Though they could not show any manner of evil in it, yet they said all manner of evil concerning it. These sinners, like the angels that sinned, became Satan’s, adversaries and devils, false accusers.

When Paul had carried the matter as far as it would go in the synagogue of the Jews, and found that their opposition grew more obstinate, he left the synagogue, because he could not safely, or rather because he could not comfortably and successfully, continue in conversation with them. Though their worship was such that he could join in, and they had not silenced him, nor forbidden him to preach among them, yet they drove him from them by their railing at those things which he spoke concerning the kingdom of God. They hated to be reformed, hated to be instructed, and therefore he departed from them. When Paul departed from the Jews he took the disciples with him, and separated them, to save them from that adverse generation (according to the charge Peter gave to his new converts, Acts 2:40); lest they should be infected with the poisonous tongues of those blasphemers, he separated those who believed, to be the foundation of a Christian church, now that they were a competent number to be incorporated, that others might attend with them upon the preaching of the gospel, and might, upon their believing, be added to them.