PAUL THE APOSTLE ( Part 6 )

Pastor Christopher Choo

Lesson 3105

PAUL THE APOSTLE ( Part 6 )

In Jerusalem, Paul again started preaching...to the Jews instead of the Gentiles as he was called to do.

Some of the Jews recognized him as a Pharisee and were so incensed he had changed sides that they plotted to kill him.

Jesus appeared to Paul in a vision when he was praying at the Temple and told him to leave Jerusalem immediately ( Acts 22:17-18 ). Jesus said: "Depart, for I will send you from here to the Gentiles" ( v.21 ).

His new friends in Christ took him to the port city of Caesarea and put him on a boat - a journey that would end in his hometown of Tarsus in Cilicia.

For the next ten years after his arrival back in his hometown, we do not have much information of Paul's whereabouts.

Paul himself would recollect in Galatians 1:21-24:

Afterward, I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ. But they were hearing only,  "He who formerly prosecuted us now preaches the faith which he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God in me.

Abba Father, Paul's experience back in Tarsus must have been humbling. Here was the once-proud prosecutor of believers now "hiding" in the backwaters of his hometown away from the call he so wanted to honour as the apostle to the Gentiles. But they were not lost years. In his hometown, he had all the time to seek God in intimacy and to allow the Holy Spirit to prepare him for his greater ministry -the missionary journeys that lie ahead. He just had to wait in patience for God's perfect timing.