Acts 18:9-11 - A night vision

18:9-11

God then speaks to Paul in a night vision, encouraging him to continue speaking. There are so many things we can learn from this. One is that Paul was presumably experiencing some fear, otherwise God would not have spoken to him about it. We sometimes have a picture that Paul was absolutely fearless. Courage is overcoming fear, or doing things despite fear. Paul was a man like you and me. So God encourages him not to be afraid to speak. When we preach or teach things that are counter to the culture we will face opposition, sometimes violent opposition. God assures him that no one would attack him. Now we know, indeed have already read of some, that there were many times when Paul was attacked. So what are we to make of this? Well, it is in God’s hands whether we are attacked or not, and there is no record of any further attacks on Paul in Corinth. Sometimes we suffer and sometimes we don’t, both are in God’s hands. The next section will illustrate the veracity of the vision that Paul received.

“For I have many people in this city”. It would have been easy to focus on the opposition and the rejection, but in it God had many people He was bringing into the kingdom. When we look at our increasingly godless society and its ever-increasing descent into depravity we can lose heart, but in the midst of this we need to remember that God has a plan. Society may be out of control, but God is not.

Finally there is the whole matter of visions and dreams in the life of the Christian. There are those who say that now God never speaks to people directly, the sole way in which He speaks to us is through the Bible. I will be quite blunt and say I consider such notions to be unbiblical nonsense. From beginning to end in the Bible there are times when God speaks to people. Certainly, there is no new revelation in the sense of doctrine, but God sometimes speaks to individuals about particular situations, as here. Now we also need balance. Most of the time we are to make decisions based on (i) Biblical knowledge and a mind infused with the written word of God; (ii) sanctified common sense; and (iii) and a consistent godly lifestyle. Most of the time this is how we are to live, and this is what happened most of the time in Acts, and is what we see commended in the letters. We are not to sit around doing nothing until we receive a dream or vision. Nor are we to expect visions every other day. But God is a personal God, He communicates with His people, and sometimes, as here, He communicates directly.