Homeward Bound
Paul and his nine man entourage leave Troas (v13). Everyone except the apostle travels by ship to Assos. Meanwhile he takes the overland route across the peninsula. This may have allowed him to continue teaching and encouraging the believers as they traveled with him. Assos is just 20 miles down the coast from Troas.
The traveling team reassembles aboard ship in Assos and sails for Mitylene on the island of Lesbos (v14). From there, they head south and pass opposite Chios (v15), the birthplace of the poet Homer. They make a brief stop at Samos. This island is just off the coast of Ephesus and the birthplace of the great mathematician Pythagoras. After a very short stay, they head to Miletus, a city on the mainland of modern day Turkey some 30 miles south of Ephesus.
Paul had made the very difficult decision to bypass Ephesus (v16). He was doing everything possible to get the famine relief offering to Jerusalem by Pentecost. He had now finished his collection and needed to get it to the people who needed it the most. The apostle knew that a stop in Ephesus would simply slow down the help that was desperately needed.
The apostle left on this third missionary journey some four years ago (AD 54). Putting together his itinerary in Acts and what he wrote in 2 Corinthians, we know that a key purpose of this expedition was to gather financial help for the church in Jerusalem. God had already touched Paul's heart through the prophet Agabus about "a great famine over all the world." It would be particularly difficult for "the brothers living in Judea" (Acts 11:28-30). In a letter to the church in Corinth, he describes the tremendous generosity of the Macedonian believers in the midst of great poverty (2Cor 8:1-5). Paul encouraged the Corinthians to gather up the gift they had previously promised to send (2Cor 9:3).
The apostle has spent the past four years traveling through modern day Turkey, Macedonia and Achaia, visiting the churches, encouraging Christ followers and collecting money to help their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Now it's time to get back. It's AD 58. People are starving. People are hurting. There is no time to waste. Paul is homeward bound. It's Jerusalem or bust!
Created 4 months ago
