Barriers Roadblocks And Bottlenecks Series

Paul faces these barriers of location, close observation, prejudice and self empowerment and yet he overcomes each of them. We face each of these as well, except we believe we can only overcome these barriers on our own.

Now, it is true that Paul is not locked up in a prison. Paul has been given permission to rent his own housing. Essentially, Paul was under house arrest.

We are not sure what Paul rented while he was in Rome, a single standing dwelling or an apartment. The housing Rome at this time was mostly tenement complexes. These were crowed three to four story tall buildings that housed multiple families. Most of the population in Rome lived in these tenement houses. Tenement housing was generally of poor construction, made of wood and not great places to live - they really were fairly similar to project housing of our day. These are the type of building Nero longed to rid Rome of. These tenements frequently caught on fire killing those inside, so it is not creative thinking on Nero’s part when he orders the tenements set on fire, blaming the fire on the Christians….it is very possible that Paul lived in one of these tenement houses since they were the most common housing available.

Paul may not be in prison, but his housing was most likely nowhere near first class.

Paul is stuck, Paul cannot leave his housing - right there the gospel should be stopped cold, but it is not is it? Paul could have schemed all day on how to sneak out of his housing, but Paul doesn’t scheme does he? What does Paul do? Look at verse 17, Paul cannot bring the gospel out to people, so Paul brings people in for the gospel.

Don’t we always dream of a better place to spread the gospel? Someplace else is always a better place to spread the gospel. Here I am stuck at work. Here I am stuck at school. Here I am stuck at home. Since I am stuck here, there is no sense in telling anyone about Jesus Christ around me - I couldn’t possibly be placed by God right here to spread the gospel….someplace else would be better.

Back in 1991 I did an internship as a hospital chaplain in Philadelphia. At that time, AIDS was a new thing, and honestly, the hospital wasn’t sure how to handle people with AIDS, they were not sure what precautions to take when treating AIDS patients, so they took every precaution possible.

I had an AIDS patient arrive in my chaplain area and so when I visited him, the hospital made me dress up like I was working with nuclear materials. This guy’s name was Timothy and since everyone was afraid of AIDS, Timothy had no visitors except the nurses who would race in and out of his room as quickly as they could.

So, as Timothy and I talked, I found that he had led quite the wild life, but recently had become a Christian. Timothy wanted to tell his friends and family about Jesus Christ, but here he was stuck in this room - no one would take his repeated phone calls home, no one would visit him. Timothy’s main concern that day was how he could get his window open far enough….so that he could jump out. I had no advice on opening the window.