19:8
Paul then went into the synagogue, so he is continuing his practice of going to the Jews first. One might have thought he would have got fed up of doing this, but it was part of God’s mission. At the end of Acts Paul seems to finally give up on “going to the Jews”. The point is that the Jews were given ample opportunity to believe the gospel (and remember that some did believe). God was extremely patient. Paul “spoke boldly” for three months. He was “reasoning and persuading”. These things do have a part in our gospel presentation. And he spoke about the kingdom of God. This is one of the few instances of the phrase “kingdom of God” in Acts. It is mentioned six times in Acts, compared to thirty two times in Luke, but this does not mean it was not underlying a lot of what was going on.
19:9,10
As always, opposition did arise. The gospel brought life to some, but others were hardened. Hearing of God’s glory, goodness and kindness hardened their hearts. So they spoke evil of the Way. So Paul left and went to the school of Tyrannus. He is acting like a philosopher, so hoping people would come to hear him, or rather to hear the gospel. And Paul spent two years there proclaiming the gospel. Note that it says he had “discussions daily”. So this was presumably not all straight forward preaching, but interactions with people as well. When Luke says “all the Jews and Greeks ...” we should probably not take this too literally, but rather imply that lots of the people in the province of Asia had a chance to hear, and there was a widespread impact.
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