13 A few days later King Agrippa and Bernice arrived at Caesarea to pay their respects to Festus. 14 Since they were spending many days there, Festus discussed Paul’s case with the king. He said: “There is a man here whom Felix left as a prisoner. 15 When I went to Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews brought charges against him and asked that he be condemned.
16 “I told them that it is not the Roman custom to hand over anyone before they have faced their accusers and have had an opportunity to defend themselves against the charges. 17 When they came here with me, I did not delay the case, but convened the court the next day and ordered the man to be brought in. 18 When his accusers got up to speak, they did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected. 19 Instead, they had some points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive. 20 I was at a loss how to investigate such matters; so I asked if he would be willing to go to Jerusalem and stand trial there on these charges. 21 But when Paul made his appeal to be held over for the Emperor’s decision, I ordered him held until I could send him to Caesar.”
22 Then Agrippa said to Festus, “I would like to hear this man myself.”
He replied, “Tomorrow you will hear him.”
Paul Before Agrippa
23 The next day Agrippa and Bernice came with great pomp and entered the audience room with the high-ranking military officers and the prominent men of the city. At the command of Festus, Paul was brought in. 24 Festus said: “King Agrippa, and all who are present with us, you see this man! The whole Jewish community has petitioned me about him in Jerusalem and here in Caesarea, shouting that he ought not to live any longer. 25 I found he had done nothing deserving of death, but because he made his appeal to the Emperor I decided to send him to Rome. 26 But I have nothing definite to write to His Majesty about him. Therefore I have brought him before all of you, and especially before you, King Agrippa, so that as a result of this investigation I may have something to write. 27 For I think it is unreasonable to send a prisoner on to Rome without specifying the charges against him.”
Dig Deeper
I recently had the opportunity to watch an episode of a rather old television sitcom that I had enjoyed quite a bit as a child. The show was called “The Facts of Life” and was a pretty big hit in the 1980’s. It was a comedy about four friends that lived at a posh boarding school and followed them on their adventures through the school and it even ran so long that they eventually all graduated from high school and the show continued to follow them through college and into adulthood. At the time, the ladies who starred in the show were fairly big stars and easily recognizable anytime they made appearances on other television shows, on awards shows, in magazines, and so on. The last year or two of the show a new character named “George,” who was a handyman who became friends with the four girls joined the cast. A few years later that same actor joined the extremely popular “Roseanne” show next to the wildly famous stars of that show as a side character named “Booker.” At the time, hardly anyone noticed this actor as he was a minor character in both shows and was seemingly a very unimportant actor.
That was then, though. Since then that actor, a guy by the name of “George Clooney” has become one of the famous, most influential, and most recognizable actors in the world. His career has far surpassed those that were once big stars on those television shows and most of those folks have since slipped off into obscurity. Now when those shows are rerun, the big selling point on commercials is that it “stars” George Clooney. I’m sure that if someone would have told the stars of those shows that this would be the case in the future, they would have been rather offended and not believed it. The passage of time, however, can do strange things like that.
An ironic shift of importance like that of the career of Georgy Clooney pales in comparison to the one that we have here. Paul was not considered highly in the first century. At best, he was a first-class nuisance, and at worst he was a crazy, blasphemous, trouble-maker. He was a rag-tag itinerant babbler who was quickly becoming a career prisoner. Yet he somehow kept finding himself in the presence of the high, the mighty, and the most powerful people of his day. In just this ongoing affair involving his arrest in the Temple, Paul has been dragged before the High Priest, the Governor Felix, the Governor Festus, and now he will come before King Agrippa and Bernice, who were something of superstars in their day. Soon he will be sent on to Caesar himself. All Paul had to him was this silly message about a resurrected Messiah that he kept rambling on about.
That was then, though. The high and mighty of Paul’s day would be shocked and scandalized, in fact, to find out that things have changed around completely. No one thinks of Paul as being so lucky to have come into the presence of so many great and mighty people. Most people now only know of Agrippa, Festus, and the others because of their brief encounters with Paul. “How lucky,” we think, “that they were actually in the presence of Paul.” That’s how dramatically time has changed things but we will miss some of the power of this scene if we don’t keep in mind that Paul was not the star in these encounters at the time. He was the no-name. Time and again, the Spirit had moved so that Paul would have chance after chance to proclaim the gospel to the most powerful and influential people of his time.
Agrippa, or Herod Agrippa II, was born Marcus Julius Agrippa and was the great-grandson of Herod the Great. He was a rising star in the Roman empire and was the Rome-appointed ruler over Judea at this time. He grew up in Claudius’ court in Rome and was so favored by the Emperor Claudius that he wanted to make Agrippa King when he was just 17. He was talked out of this due to his youth and inexperience, but Agrippa was eventually appointed King by Nero. Bernice was actually his sister. She was something of a socialite and scandal magnet in the first century. In between a number of high profile marriages and affairs, including Titus (who was the son of Vespasian and brother of Domitian and who would later become the Emperor of Rome), there were persistent rumors that Agrippa and Bernice were embroiled in an ongoing incestuous relationship and that her marriages were merely fronts to quell those rumors. But make no mistake they were superstars in the ancient world and when they showed up to establish a relationship with the new Roman Governor of the region, there was quite a splash that would have been made that would have stood in stark contrast to the prisoner Paul who was brought before them in what was quite likely his prison rags.
Having Agrippa in town was quite beneficial to Festus who really wasn’t quite sure what to make of Paul and perhaps this would be an opportunity to not only get some help from Agrippa but also forge a bond between the two men. Festus’ reasoning that he laid before Agrippa was that there were no specific charges against Paul and it wasn’t wise or right to send him to Caesar with nothing to charge him with. Throughout his explanation, though, it is clear that Festus was attempting to make himself look as good as possible, massaging the truth at every opportunity, including claiming that he would not hand Paul over with out facing his accusers when the truth was not quite so noble as Luke has already made clear that his motivations had much more to do with keeping favor with the Jews than some sense of justice.
What is truly fascinating in this scene is to see Paul from the perspective of the Romans. He was not the highly revered apostle and man of incredible depth and wisdom that Christians spanning from the first century to the twenty-first would view him as. Nor was he the incredibly dangerous blasphemer, spewing out lies that could be damaging to thousands and who must be stopped before he became too influential and powerful, as the Jews viewed him. He wasn’t even a dangerous rebel leader that needed to be dealt with by Rome. From the Roman viewpoint he was little more than a Jew of some sort who was claiming that some man named Jesus was still alive. That is all. Festus really couldn’t figure out why this man would be at the center of such a storm of controversy. He seemed harmless enough to him.
Two important historical points jump out at us here that should not be missed. The first has to do with the insignificance that Jesus had in Roman eyes. Today, many critics of the Bible argue that if the Jesus of the biblical accounts really existed then there should be much more written and known about him in non-biblical sources. Although there actually is an impressive amount of non-biblical material on Jesus, relatively speaking by first-century standards (there are equal number of non-biblical sources about Jesus and Tiberius Caesar, who was Caesar at the time of Jesus’ death, within a 150 years of their lifetimes). The Romans didn’t write about Jesus because those who didn’t come to faith Christ saw it as foolishness and nothing worth writing about. That doesn’t lessen the impact of Jesus, it simply explains the Roman malaise towards him and early Christianity. It wasn’t until Christianity began to really turn the world upside down and become a threat to Rome, at least in their eyes, that Rome truly took full notice of the Christians.
The second important historical note is that the resurrection that Paul was preaching was a physical one. Jesus was really alive was his claim. This was no mere spiritual vision or some type of spiritual resurrection as some today claim. Jesus walked out of the grave in full bodily form and Paul was preaching that those who entrusted their lives to Christ would do the same one day.
Festus didn’t know what to do with Paul because he was looking at him from a human point of view, just as Paul had once looked at Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17). No one in the room that day would have looked at the less-than-impressive Paul and the super couple, Agrippa and Bernice, and surmised that they would one day be known to history almost exclusively because their lives had crossed paths with this strange little man that was proclaiming that some Jewish would-be Messiah had resurrected from the dead and because of that the new creation of the one true God was available to anyone who would enter into his family. It was just one more way that the gospel was turning the world upside down and it serves as a reminder for us to be careful how we view the things of the world. We can so easily become far too impressed with the things of the world but as the old hymn, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” says “the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
Devotional Thought
Are there any things in the world with which you can get impressed and see from the world’s perspective rather than God’s? I’m sure that Paul was tempted to fee intimidated and small but he continued, in faith, to see things from God’s perspective. That’s why he was able to turn the world upside down and it’s the same thing that will enable us to do so.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Monday, March 05, 2012
Acts 25:1-12
Paul’s Trial Before Festus
1 Three days after arriving in the province, Festus went up from Caesarea to Jerusalem, 2 where the chief priests and the Jewish leaders appeared before him and presented the charges against Paul. 3 They requested Festus, as a favor to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way. 4 Festus answered, “Paul is being held at Caesarea, and I myself am going there soon. 5 Let some of your leaders come with me, and if the man has done anything wrong, they can press charges against him there.”
6 After spending eight or ten days with them, Festus went down to Caesarea. The next day he convened the court and ordered that Paul be brought before him. 7 When Paul came in, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him. They brought many serious charges against him, but they could not prove them.
8 Then Paul made his defense: “I have done nothing wrong against the Jewish law or against the temple or against Caesar.”
9 Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there on these charges?”
10 Paul answered: “I am now standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. 11 If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”
12 After Festus had conferred with his council, he declared: “You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go!”
Dig Deeper
Every election cycle it happens. Some new aspiring politician decides to run for the office of their choice and they immediately begun thumping their chest over all of the reforms that they are going to bring to whichever governing body they are hoping to be voted into. They criticize the way things have been done in the past and promise all sorts of new hope and big changes that they are going to bring to the office for which they are running. And like clockwork people get very excited about this new hope and the new possibilities of what this new politician will do. Just as predictably as these new faces come out for every election cycle though, the vast majority of them that are elected come into office and find that they have just entered a hornet’s nest that they were simply not prepared for. They come in with fresh hope and big ideals but most of them get swallowed up by the same system that their predecessors did and the voters soon discover that the only thing that changed was the face of their representative and the only hope left is that maybe the next guy will be different.
What is true today was just as true in the Roman Empire. Granted, they didn’t have elections the way we do in the United States and many other parts of the world these days, but certain elements of politics are strikingly similar wherever you find humans running things, despite the form and function of government. A new governor would come into a region of the Roman Empire and hopes would raise that perhaps this guy would be better than the last, perhaps he’d be able to sort out all of the things that the last guy couldn’t. But then reality set in. The new guy rarely knew all of the ins and outs of the system like the last guy did and once he did learn them, a few mistakes later, he conformed to the pattern of the machine that had been in place just like the last guy.
In this case Felix was the last guy and Festus was the new governor that would preside over the region that included Jerusalem. After arriving in the province, Festus did what a smart new leader would do; He went around to meet and get acquainted with the local leaders in his area. If he was going to be a successful governor then he would have to be able to work with the Jewish leadership. Clearly Festus was eager to do this and set out for Jerusalem after just three days on the job. He certainly had many things on his plate as the new governor but going to Jerusalem for a brief visit was a priority.
It had been two years since the chief priests and Jewish leaders had the opportunity to make their case against Paul before Felix and Felix had stubbornly refused to rule one way or the other. It seems clear that Felix knew Paul wasn’t guilty of anything that he could rightly be punished for but he also knew the headaches that would come for him if released Paul. Two years had gone by, though, and we might think that the anger towards Paul would have abated during that time, but it obviously had not. Of all the things that the Jewish leadership could have brought before Festus on his first day in Jerusalem as governor it was the issue of Paul. They wanted another shot at him.
Those forty radicals that had taken the vow to kill Paul had surely eaten in the convening two years but they were still dead set on eliminating Paul, so the request to bring Paul back to Jerusalem to be tried before the Sanhedrin was little more than a rouse to make another attempt to ambush and kill him. Their hope was a bit desperate that Festus would fall for this, but desperate times call for desperate measures and Felix certainly didn’t bring them what they had wanted.
We don’t know what Paul’s thoughts on having a new governor were. Felix was clearly a coward that was comfortable with allowing Paul to languish away in prison, but he was a known commodity. He was well aware of the dangerous and cut throat political angles in Jerusalem and the Roman Empire as a whole and although he wouldn’t give Paul his freedom, he also was not going to fall for the tricks of the Jews and turn Paul over to them for a sham trial that would result in nothing but Paul’s death. That is, if they didn’t ambush him and kill him on the way. Festus, however, was unknown. What kind of governor would he be? Did he understand the complexities of first century Jerusalem? Did he know anything about the Way and the desire of the Jewish leadership to stamp it out using any means necessary. Did he understand that giving into the favors of the chief priests to have Paul brought to Jerusalem would indeed result in the unjust loss of Paul’s life.
Festus’ initial decision to refuse to have Paul brought to Jerusalem seems to have had more to do with his own convenience than with any particular savvy about the plots of the Jews to kill Paul. If they were so urgent to try this man then they could accompany him back to Caesarea and do it there. As they convened the case, the vitriol of those opposed to Paul had not abated one ounce since their last seeing him. They surrounded him and began shouting out charges in an intimidating manner. It appears, in fact, that during the two year interim they had had time to trump up several new charges against Paul. They were going to throw the kitchen sink at Paul, including the new charge that his activities did not just endanger the Jewish Law and Temple but also Caesar himself. Charging Paul with activities that went against their own way of life had not moved Felix much but perhaps sweetening the pot with a few charges of sedition against the Roman Empire would seal the deal with Festus.
The Jewish leadership could reel off all of the charges that they would like against Paul but even a new governor like Festus didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday and could see that they had no evidence to back up these trumped up charges. But, Festus was prey to the same political games that Felix was susceptible to. He was a little more interested in what benefited him politically than in strictly finding justice for Paul. If he could find favor with the chief priests and leadership by moving a trial of Paul to Jerusalem then maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Felix was wiling to play games but he knew the leaders in Jerusalem enough to know that they were quite willing to assassinate Paul or do whatever they had to to get their way with him. Festus was apparently a little more naive. His willingness to move Paul to Jerusalem made it clear that he was over his head and could be manipulated by Paul’s opponents. This left Paul with Little choice. His vocation was to go to Rome, the Spirit had confirmed that. He had hoped to go there of his own free will and strengthen the brothers and sisters there as well as proclaiming the gospel up and down the streets of the mighty city, but perhaps events were making clear that that would not be possible. God had another plan in mind.
If he agreed to go to Jerusalem for trial, even if it was Festus that was still running the show, he was likely signing his own death certificate and the place of death would be stamped “Jerusalem.” This was the moment when Paul’s prayers to go to Rome would intersect with the opportunity that God had laid before him. He would have to act and put his cards on the table. And at this point, the only other card that Paul had to play was his trump card that he had been saving for the most dire of circumstances. He would engage his right to appeal to Caesar which was an option that was available to Roman citizens but was not widely used because facing Caesar could be dangerous in and of itself, and there was absolutely no recourse if Caesar deemed him guilty. It is stunning and convicting at the same time that Paul was not worried about death. He believed in resurrection and put his faith in the God who was in control of his life or death situations. What concerned Paul was dying before he reached Rome. The option to appeal to the Emperor, then, made a lot of sense because it would remove him from the sham trial that would be run at the hands of the Jews and not only would he have the opportunity to declare the gospel in Rome, he would now be able to do it to the Emperor.
Paul was out of viable options but he kept his eye on what he firmly believed was God’s will for his life. The only way he saw that he could fulfill the Spirit’s will in his life and get to Rome was a risky venture indeed. Paul’s dogged commitment to the will of God in his life is inspiring and challenging. He was willing to do anything to carry out God’s will in his life and so as Festus put it “to Caesar you have appealed and to Caesar you will go.”
Devotional Thought
How committed are you to carrying out God’s will in your life and proclaiming the truth of his kingdom to others? Would you be willing to make a radical decision like Paul did when he appealed to Caesar in your commitment to God’s will in your life? Is God calling you to make a hard decision in your life in order to expand his glory?
1 Three days after arriving in the province, Festus went up from Caesarea to Jerusalem, 2 where the chief priests and the Jewish leaders appeared before him and presented the charges against Paul. 3 They requested Festus, as a favor to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way. 4 Festus answered, “Paul is being held at Caesarea, and I myself am going there soon. 5 Let some of your leaders come with me, and if the man has done anything wrong, they can press charges against him there.”
6 After spending eight or ten days with them, Festus went down to Caesarea. The next day he convened the court and ordered that Paul be brought before him. 7 When Paul came in, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him. They brought many serious charges against him, but they could not prove them.
8 Then Paul made his defense: “I have done nothing wrong against the Jewish law or against the temple or against Caesar.”
9 Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there on these charges?”
10 Paul answered: “I am now standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. 11 If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”
12 After Festus had conferred with his council, he declared: “You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go!”
Dig Deeper
Every election cycle it happens. Some new aspiring politician decides to run for the office of their choice and they immediately begun thumping their chest over all of the reforms that they are going to bring to whichever governing body they are hoping to be voted into. They criticize the way things have been done in the past and promise all sorts of new hope and big changes that they are going to bring to the office for which they are running. And like clockwork people get very excited about this new hope and the new possibilities of what this new politician will do. Just as predictably as these new faces come out for every election cycle though, the vast majority of them that are elected come into office and find that they have just entered a hornet’s nest that they were simply not prepared for. They come in with fresh hope and big ideals but most of them get swallowed up by the same system that their predecessors did and the voters soon discover that the only thing that changed was the face of their representative and the only hope left is that maybe the next guy will be different.
What is true today was just as true in the Roman Empire. Granted, they didn’t have elections the way we do in the United States and many other parts of the world these days, but certain elements of politics are strikingly similar wherever you find humans running things, despite the form and function of government. A new governor would come into a region of the Roman Empire and hopes would raise that perhaps this guy would be better than the last, perhaps he’d be able to sort out all of the things that the last guy couldn’t. But then reality set in. The new guy rarely knew all of the ins and outs of the system like the last guy did and once he did learn them, a few mistakes later, he conformed to the pattern of the machine that had been in place just like the last guy.
In this case Felix was the last guy and Festus was the new governor that would preside over the region that included Jerusalem. After arriving in the province, Festus did what a smart new leader would do; He went around to meet and get acquainted with the local leaders in his area. If he was going to be a successful governor then he would have to be able to work with the Jewish leadership. Clearly Festus was eager to do this and set out for Jerusalem after just three days on the job. He certainly had many things on his plate as the new governor but going to Jerusalem for a brief visit was a priority.
It had been two years since the chief priests and Jewish leaders had the opportunity to make their case against Paul before Felix and Felix had stubbornly refused to rule one way or the other. It seems clear that Felix knew Paul wasn’t guilty of anything that he could rightly be punished for but he also knew the headaches that would come for him if released Paul. Two years had gone by, though, and we might think that the anger towards Paul would have abated during that time, but it obviously had not. Of all the things that the Jewish leadership could have brought before Festus on his first day in Jerusalem as governor it was the issue of Paul. They wanted another shot at him.
Those forty radicals that had taken the vow to kill Paul had surely eaten in the convening two years but they were still dead set on eliminating Paul, so the request to bring Paul back to Jerusalem to be tried before the Sanhedrin was little more than a rouse to make another attempt to ambush and kill him. Their hope was a bit desperate that Festus would fall for this, but desperate times call for desperate measures and Felix certainly didn’t bring them what they had wanted.
We don’t know what Paul’s thoughts on having a new governor were. Felix was clearly a coward that was comfortable with allowing Paul to languish away in prison, but he was a known commodity. He was well aware of the dangerous and cut throat political angles in Jerusalem and the Roman Empire as a whole and although he wouldn’t give Paul his freedom, he also was not going to fall for the tricks of the Jews and turn Paul over to them for a sham trial that would result in nothing but Paul’s death. That is, if they didn’t ambush him and kill him on the way. Festus, however, was unknown. What kind of governor would he be? Did he understand the complexities of first century Jerusalem? Did he know anything about the Way and the desire of the Jewish leadership to stamp it out using any means necessary. Did he understand that giving into the favors of the chief priests to have Paul brought to Jerusalem would indeed result in the unjust loss of Paul’s life.
Festus’ initial decision to refuse to have Paul brought to Jerusalem seems to have had more to do with his own convenience than with any particular savvy about the plots of the Jews to kill Paul. If they were so urgent to try this man then they could accompany him back to Caesarea and do it there. As they convened the case, the vitriol of those opposed to Paul had not abated one ounce since their last seeing him. They surrounded him and began shouting out charges in an intimidating manner. It appears, in fact, that during the two year interim they had had time to trump up several new charges against Paul. They were going to throw the kitchen sink at Paul, including the new charge that his activities did not just endanger the Jewish Law and Temple but also Caesar himself. Charging Paul with activities that went against their own way of life had not moved Felix much but perhaps sweetening the pot with a few charges of sedition against the Roman Empire would seal the deal with Festus.
The Jewish leadership could reel off all of the charges that they would like against Paul but even a new governor like Festus didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday and could see that they had no evidence to back up these trumped up charges. But, Festus was prey to the same political games that Felix was susceptible to. He was a little more interested in what benefited him politically than in strictly finding justice for Paul. If he could find favor with the chief priests and leadership by moving a trial of Paul to Jerusalem then maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Felix was wiling to play games but he knew the leaders in Jerusalem enough to know that they were quite willing to assassinate Paul or do whatever they had to to get their way with him. Festus was apparently a little more naive. His willingness to move Paul to Jerusalem made it clear that he was over his head and could be manipulated by Paul’s opponents. This left Paul with Little choice. His vocation was to go to Rome, the Spirit had confirmed that. He had hoped to go there of his own free will and strengthen the brothers and sisters there as well as proclaiming the gospel up and down the streets of the mighty city, but perhaps events were making clear that that would not be possible. God had another plan in mind.
If he agreed to go to Jerusalem for trial, even if it was Festus that was still running the show, he was likely signing his own death certificate and the place of death would be stamped “Jerusalem.” This was the moment when Paul’s prayers to go to Rome would intersect with the opportunity that God had laid before him. He would have to act and put his cards on the table. And at this point, the only other card that Paul had to play was his trump card that he had been saving for the most dire of circumstances. He would engage his right to appeal to Caesar which was an option that was available to Roman citizens but was not widely used because facing Caesar could be dangerous in and of itself, and there was absolutely no recourse if Caesar deemed him guilty. It is stunning and convicting at the same time that Paul was not worried about death. He believed in resurrection and put his faith in the God who was in control of his life or death situations. What concerned Paul was dying before he reached Rome. The option to appeal to the Emperor, then, made a lot of sense because it would remove him from the sham trial that would be run at the hands of the Jews and not only would he have the opportunity to declare the gospel in Rome, he would now be able to do it to the Emperor.
Paul was out of viable options but he kept his eye on what he firmly believed was God’s will for his life. The only way he saw that he could fulfill the Spirit’s will in his life and get to Rome was a risky venture indeed. Paul’s dogged commitment to the will of God in his life is inspiring and challenging. He was willing to do anything to carry out God’s will in his life and so as Festus put it “to Caesar you have appealed and to Caesar you will go.”
Devotional Thought
How committed are you to carrying out God’s will in your life and proclaiming the truth of his kingdom to others? Would you be willing to make a radical decision like Paul did when he appealed to Caesar in your commitment to God’s will in your life? Is God calling you to make a hard decision in your life in order to expand his glory?
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Acts 24:22-27
22 Then Felix, who was well acquainted with the Way, adjourned the proceedings. “When Lysias the commander comes,” he said, “I will decide your case.” 23 He ordered the centurion to keep Paul under guard but to give him some freedom and permit his friends to take care of his needs.
24 Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. 25 As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you.” 26 At the same time he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe, so he sent for him frequently and talked with him.
27 When two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus, but because Felix wanted to grant a favor to the Jews, he left Paul in prison.
Dig Deeper
Many years ago, while in college in Oklahoma, I accompanied a group of friends well after midnight one night on an expedition through the woods. After a short walk we arrived at our intended destination which was a fairly high cliff that towered above a river below. I have never liked heights all that much and am not very fond of the outdoors, especially bodies of water that don’t have cement bottoms, but for a number of reasons I decided to join my friends that night and jump off of that cliff into the water below. Keep in mind that it was pitch black out and so we had no way of seeing the water from the cliff above. I’m not quite sure why I was able to jump off that cliff that night but it is certainly not something that I would even attempt now. Fear and courage are funny things when it comes to human behavior. Despite the fact that humans have tried to examine those two controlling emotions for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, we really don’t have many answers as to why one human will show fear in a situation and another will demonstrate incredible strength and courage in the same situation. Nor do we really have any clue as to why the same human can face one situation with courage and another with blatant fear. For instance why would I show courage in jumping off that cliff so many years ago but would not even think of attempting such a feat now? There might be some rational explanations to the differences, but we just don’t always know the answer to what gives courage to one and causes fear in another. We might not fully understand the causes but we certainly do know the difference between fear and courage when we see it.
It’s hard to think of two more contrasting examples of fear and courage than the brief but poignant scene that Luke has painted here in describing the convergence of the lives of Paul and Felix, a Roman governor. A lot could be said about the life of the apostle Paul and regardless of what one may think of Paul, I have never heard anyone argue that he didn’t have an incredible amount of courage. Everything we know about Paul depicts a man of honor, zeal, and courage and he used that courage to great benefit as he went about the monumentally difficult task of spreading the gospel around the Roman Empire. Felix, on the other hand, seems to have operated largely out of fear. This fear seemed to have control of Felix and was never more obvious than when clearly contrasted with one so courageous as Paul.
Certainly the Jewish leadership wanted Felix to rule in their favor quickly but rather than making a decision Felix passed the buck. He certainly had it within his power to make a decision immediately but instead he declared that he would need to hear Lysias’ testimony when he came. That seems like somewhat of a dubious reason as Felix already had a letter from Lysias and it is hard to tell what else he might have thought the commander could add. It is possible, but not provable, that Felix was stalling and making excuses more than anything.
To add to that possibility was Luke’s statement that Felix “was well acquainted with the Way,” which was the earliest moniker that followers of Christ had given to themselves. They believed that Christianity was no mere option or possibility within the larger context of Judaism or religions of the world. It was the Way, the truth and the life and no one would find any path to the one true God outside of a proper response to the gospel that was being preached. But what did Felix know about the Way and how did he come about that knowledge? Some have asserted that Felix’s Jewish wife, Drusilla, might have educated him on the topic but that is simply reasonable speculation. Perhaps Felix was intrigued by Christianity or fascinated with religious teachings; we simply do not know. But Luke’s statement probably referred to the idea that Felix was fairly familiar with what the Christian community was about and didn’t believe them to be a threat to Rome in the classic military sense. He likely understood that they were not trouble-makers by nature and that the charges leveled against Paul were simply bogus.
If Felix believed the charges to be bogus, however, why would he not have just released Paul on the spot? In two words: political pressure. Governors in the Roman Empire had a great deal of power but they still had to answer to Rome and if the subjects in a region raised a great deal of ruckus against the governor, he could quickly find himself out of favor in Rome and in danger of losing his position and more. More than anything, Rome wanted peace in the outlying regions and expected governors to do what they had to in order to maintain that peace. Felix did not want to upset the Sanhedrin and certainly releasing Paul, even if he was innocent, would have done just that. So rather than being courageous and making a decision, Felix did virtually nothing.
In fact, he failed to make a decision at all. It is probable that Lysias did eventually come and give his statement on matters but still Felix did nothing. He didn’t release Paul but he also didn’t punish him. The fact that Felix ordered that Paul be allowed to have other Christians visit him and care for him in prison seem to be further evidence that Felix knew Paul wasn’t a threat or guilty of anything and felt a bit guilty about keeping him imprisoned. Allowing Paul to have visitors would have been vital to his survival because in ancient Rome there was no such thing as a prison sentence that served as punishment. Prison was designed to hold people until they were exonerated or punished and they made no provisions for the food or clothing of a prisoner. If a prisoner had no friends to bring provisions, then they would quickly die. Felix’s allowance for Paul to have a fair amount of freedom and access in prison wasn’t entirely unprecedented but was certainly a sign that he didn’t view Paul as a true enemy of the state.
Felix seems to have been rather curious about Paul and gave him an audience with himself and his wife. Perhaps he saw it as an opportunity to learn even more about the Way or maybe he had genuinely had his heart pricked by the preaching of the gospel with which he was already familiar.
But when Paul came before him, Felix was confronted with a man of pure courage. Paul had been steeled by years of the Spirit emboldening him and sending into situations far beyond his ability to cope with them. Paul had learned that the Spirit gave him strength and courage that coupled with the zeal and courage that he had displayed his entire life. He had never run from anything and never took the easy way out. It might have been far easier to try to beg Felix for his freedom or say whatever he needed to be let free. He could have even reasoned that his being free would be far more beneficial to the spread of the gospel. But there was no give in Paul’s knees. When he came before Felix he boldly preached about the righteousness and self-control that come only through the life of Christ; things that Felix would have experienced very little of in his own life. We all know how uncomfortable and challenging it came be to preach such things to others, especially those that hold your freedom in their hands, but Paul went one step further. He declared the judgment that would come upon those that refused to reconcile to God through the life of His Messiah. That he did so with great courage and the Spirit’s boldness was evident in Felix’s response of fear and sending Paul away.
Felix had heard the gospel and something about it spoke to his heart and caused fear but he did not have the courage to respond. Instead he continued to let Paul sway in the wind for two years hoping that a man that had recently brought such a large collection back to Jerusalem must have the resources to pay a hefty bribed to get out of prison. Again, Felix’s selfish lack of courage was on display in glaring contrast to Paul’s courageous refusal to take the easy way out.
Whatever else may have been going on, Paul had the courage to trust in the Spirit’s provision. Certainly he had to wonder what was going to happen. He had, after all, written the church in Rome that he was hoping to come see them shortly and the Spirit had confirmed that he would go to Rome. It may have looked grim after two years in Felix’s care, especially when his time in office came to an end and Paul had to start over with a new governor solely because Felix did not want to anger the Jews, but surely Paul continued to rely on the Spirit and draw strength from his belief that God was in control of all things.
The world in which we live might not have the answers as to what causes fear in one and courage in another, but the Christian knows that it is God’s own Spirit living through his people that allow them to live courageous lives like Paul. Perhaps when we trust in the Spirit and allow him to embolden and encourage us, we will have more believers live courageously as Paul did regardless of the opposition.
Devotional Thought
Are there any situations in your life right now in which you need courage like Paul had? If so, you’re not going to find true and sustainable courage from anywhere other than the Spirit. Pray consistently for the courage of the Spirit in all situations and see what happens.
24 Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. 25 As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you.” 26 At the same time he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe, so he sent for him frequently and talked with him.
27 When two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus, but because Felix wanted to grant a favor to the Jews, he left Paul in prison.
Dig Deeper
Many years ago, while in college in Oklahoma, I accompanied a group of friends well after midnight one night on an expedition through the woods. After a short walk we arrived at our intended destination which was a fairly high cliff that towered above a river below. I have never liked heights all that much and am not very fond of the outdoors, especially bodies of water that don’t have cement bottoms, but for a number of reasons I decided to join my friends that night and jump off of that cliff into the water below. Keep in mind that it was pitch black out and so we had no way of seeing the water from the cliff above. I’m not quite sure why I was able to jump off that cliff that night but it is certainly not something that I would even attempt now. Fear and courage are funny things when it comes to human behavior. Despite the fact that humans have tried to examine those two controlling emotions for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, we really don’t have many answers as to why one human will show fear in a situation and another will demonstrate incredible strength and courage in the same situation. Nor do we really have any clue as to why the same human can face one situation with courage and another with blatant fear. For instance why would I show courage in jumping off that cliff so many years ago but would not even think of attempting such a feat now? There might be some rational explanations to the differences, but we just don’t always know the answer to what gives courage to one and causes fear in another. We might not fully understand the causes but we certainly do know the difference between fear and courage when we see it.
It’s hard to think of two more contrasting examples of fear and courage than the brief but poignant scene that Luke has painted here in describing the convergence of the lives of Paul and Felix, a Roman governor. A lot could be said about the life of the apostle Paul and regardless of what one may think of Paul, I have never heard anyone argue that he didn’t have an incredible amount of courage. Everything we know about Paul depicts a man of honor, zeal, and courage and he used that courage to great benefit as he went about the monumentally difficult task of spreading the gospel around the Roman Empire. Felix, on the other hand, seems to have operated largely out of fear. This fear seemed to have control of Felix and was never more obvious than when clearly contrasted with one so courageous as Paul.
Certainly the Jewish leadership wanted Felix to rule in their favor quickly but rather than making a decision Felix passed the buck. He certainly had it within his power to make a decision immediately but instead he declared that he would need to hear Lysias’ testimony when he came. That seems like somewhat of a dubious reason as Felix already had a letter from Lysias and it is hard to tell what else he might have thought the commander could add. It is possible, but not provable, that Felix was stalling and making excuses more than anything.
To add to that possibility was Luke’s statement that Felix “was well acquainted with the Way,” which was the earliest moniker that followers of Christ had given to themselves. They believed that Christianity was no mere option or possibility within the larger context of Judaism or religions of the world. It was the Way, the truth and the life and no one would find any path to the one true God outside of a proper response to the gospel that was being preached. But what did Felix know about the Way and how did he come about that knowledge? Some have asserted that Felix’s Jewish wife, Drusilla, might have educated him on the topic but that is simply reasonable speculation. Perhaps Felix was intrigued by Christianity or fascinated with religious teachings; we simply do not know. But Luke’s statement probably referred to the idea that Felix was fairly familiar with what the Christian community was about and didn’t believe them to be a threat to Rome in the classic military sense. He likely understood that they were not trouble-makers by nature and that the charges leveled against Paul were simply bogus.
If Felix believed the charges to be bogus, however, why would he not have just released Paul on the spot? In two words: political pressure. Governors in the Roman Empire had a great deal of power but they still had to answer to Rome and if the subjects in a region raised a great deal of ruckus against the governor, he could quickly find himself out of favor in Rome and in danger of losing his position and more. More than anything, Rome wanted peace in the outlying regions and expected governors to do what they had to in order to maintain that peace. Felix did not want to upset the Sanhedrin and certainly releasing Paul, even if he was innocent, would have done just that. So rather than being courageous and making a decision, Felix did virtually nothing.
In fact, he failed to make a decision at all. It is probable that Lysias did eventually come and give his statement on matters but still Felix did nothing. He didn’t release Paul but he also didn’t punish him. The fact that Felix ordered that Paul be allowed to have other Christians visit him and care for him in prison seem to be further evidence that Felix knew Paul wasn’t a threat or guilty of anything and felt a bit guilty about keeping him imprisoned. Allowing Paul to have visitors would have been vital to his survival because in ancient Rome there was no such thing as a prison sentence that served as punishment. Prison was designed to hold people until they were exonerated or punished and they made no provisions for the food or clothing of a prisoner. If a prisoner had no friends to bring provisions, then they would quickly die. Felix’s allowance for Paul to have a fair amount of freedom and access in prison wasn’t entirely unprecedented but was certainly a sign that he didn’t view Paul as a true enemy of the state.
Felix seems to have been rather curious about Paul and gave him an audience with himself and his wife. Perhaps he saw it as an opportunity to learn even more about the Way or maybe he had genuinely had his heart pricked by the preaching of the gospel with which he was already familiar.
But when Paul came before him, Felix was confronted with a man of pure courage. Paul had been steeled by years of the Spirit emboldening him and sending into situations far beyond his ability to cope with them. Paul had learned that the Spirit gave him strength and courage that coupled with the zeal and courage that he had displayed his entire life. He had never run from anything and never took the easy way out. It might have been far easier to try to beg Felix for his freedom or say whatever he needed to be let free. He could have even reasoned that his being free would be far more beneficial to the spread of the gospel. But there was no give in Paul’s knees. When he came before Felix he boldly preached about the righteousness and self-control that come only through the life of Christ; things that Felix would have experienced very little of in his own life. We all know how uncomfortable and challenging it came be to preach such things to others, especially those that hold your freedom in their hands, but Paul went one step further. He declared the judgment that would come upon those that refused to reconcile to God through the life of His Messiah. That he did so with great courage and the Spirit’s boldness was evident in Felix’s response of fear and sending Paul away.
Felix had heard the gospel and something about it spoke to his heart and caused fear but he did not have the courage to respond. Instead he continued to let Paul sway in the wind for two years hoping that a man that had recently brought such a large collection back to Jerusalem must have the resources to pay a hefty bribed to get out of prison. Again, Felix’s selfish lack of courage was on display in glaring contrast to Paul’s courageous refusal to take the easy way out.
Whatever else may have been going on, Paul had the courage to trust in the Spirit’s provision. Certainly he had to wonder what was going to happen. He had, after all, written the church in Rome that he was hoping to come see them shortly and the Spirit had confirmed that he would go to Rome. It may have looked grim after two years in Felix’s care, especially when his time in office came to an end and Paul had to start over with a new governor solely because Felix did not want to anger the Jews, but surely Paul continued to rely on the Spirit and draw strength from his belief that God was in control of all things.
The world in which we live might not have the answers as to what causes fear in one and courage in another, but the Christian knows that it is God’s own Spirit living through his people that allow them to live courageous lives like Paul. Perhaps when we trust in the Spirit and allow him to embolden and encourage us, we will have more believers live courageously as Paul did regardless of the opposition.
Devotional Thought
Are there any situations in your life right now in which you need courage like Paul had? If so, you’re not going to find true and sustainable courage from anywhere other than the Spirit. Pray consistently for the courage of the Spirit in all situations and see what happens.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Acts 24:1-21
1 Five days later the high priest Ananias went down to Caesarea with some of the elders and a lawyer named Tertullus, and they brought their charges against Paul before the governor. 2 When Paul was called in, Tertullus presented his case before Felix: “We have enjoyed a long period of peace under you, and your foresight has brought about reforms in this nation. 3 Everywhere and in every way, most excellent Felix, we acknowledge this with profound gratitude. 4 But in order not to weary you further, I would request that you be kind enough to hear us briefly.
5 “We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect 6 and even tried to desecrate the temple; so we seized him. [7] [a] 8 By examining him yourself you will be able to learn the truth about all these charges we are bringing against him.”
9 The other Jews joined in the accusation, asserting that these things were true.
10 When the governor motioned for him to speak, Paul replied: “I know that for a number of years you have been a judge over this nation; so I gladly make my defense. 11 You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship. 12 My accusers did not find me arguing with anyone at the temple, or stirring up a crowd in the synagogues or anywhere else in the city. 13 And they cannot prove to you the charges they are now making against me. 14 However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. 16 So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.
17 “After an absence of several years, I came to Jerusalem to bring my people gifts for the poor and to present offerings. 18 I was ceremonially clean when they found me in the temple courts doing this. There was no crowd with me, nor was I involved in any disturbance. 19 But there are some Jews from the province of Asia, who ought to be here before you and bring charges if they have anything against me. 20 Or these who are here should state what crime they found in me when I stood before the Sanhedrin— 21 unless it was this one thing I shouted as I stood in their presence: ‘It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.’”
Dig Deeper
A few years back I lived in a county that went through a rather tumultuous time in local government. The men and women that had been elected to run the county affairs had failed to live up to their duties and had instead mired the county in scandal and crushing debt. The worst part was that everything they did was technically legal, although most everyone agreed they had violated moral standards of what should rightly be expected from elected officials. So what did they do? They voted themselves and other government workers one of the sweetest retirement and pension deals imaginable. It gave all of these county workers massive pension plans that numbered in the millions of dollars per person and continued to pay them handsomely until the time of their death. They quickly and quietly signed it into contract with the union that represented them all and it took the force of law with no legal recourse to ever nullify the deal. The primary problem was that this retirement plan could not be afforded by the county. In fact, it hurtled the county towards eminent bankruptcy. Once the public discovered what had happened, they were furious and did the only thing they could which was holding recall elections to boot all of these people out of office. The officials who were responsible for all of this simply left office after being voted out and went home with their huge retirements and left the financial mess for someone else to deal with.
As a result of those recall elections a new county executive and representatives came into power vowing to bring a new era of transparency and responsibility and they came through on those promises in general terms. And although that new era of financial accountability had begun they still had to deal with the mess of the current debt and situation that they found themselves in. Simply declaring a new era in county government did not take away the hard work of implementing the values of that new era in the present mess. Make no mistake, although the main leaders had left there were still many who opposed this new era of strict financial discipline and cost-cutting and the new leaders faced incredible opposition. They quickly discovered that for many people that taste a new era, they reject it saying “the old is better” (Luke 5:39).
That was the task that was facing Paul. He really did believe that something monumental happened the moment that the resurrected Jesus walked out of the tomb and out from the jaws of death. It was more than just someone raising from the dead. It was something different. It was a new era; the moment when God’s promised new creation began to break into the present age. It wasn’t the once-and-for-all moment that the Pharisees had hoped for when God would return and sort everything out himself. God had acted definitively but consistently. God has always worked through human beings and he didn’t change that at the resurrection. Jesus really was king and the new era really had begun in Christ, but he had left his family in charge to sort out that new era in the mess of the present age. This was the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus was king and now it was up to us to accept that, live that way, and take part in the reconciling of the present age. Paul knew that and declared it boldly but he also knew that doing so would bring him into a great deal of opposition. That’s what brought him before the Roman Governor Felix.
The high priest had secured a lawyer named Tertullus to present the Jewish leadership’s case against Paul. He went about his task as any skilled lawyer of the day would have as he began his case with flattery aimed towards Felix that didn’t just border on the untrue but sped through that line like a runaway train. Felix was not a very skilled governor and there certainly wasn’t much in the way of unencumbered peace during his rule. But Tertullus’ purpose was not to declare the truth but to curry favor with Felix, because once he got to the actual charges against Paul, it becomes obvious how thin the charges against Paul actually are. Tertullus accused Paul of inciting riots all over the Roman world and with trying to desecrate the Temple. Of course Tertullus didn’t mention that no Roman authority had ever found Paul guilty of anything significant and that the only witnesses that they might be able to produce to claim that he had desecrated the Temple would be lying through their teeth. The Jewish leadership backed the lawyer’s claim but offer nothing in the way of actual evidence or proof that Paul was guilty of these charges.
When finally given a chance to make his defense Paul acknowledged the rightful authority of Felix to judge over the situation and expressed his gratitude at the possibility of making his case before a capable judge. Paul engaged in the same culturally expected respectful opening that Tertullus did without stepping into the realm of not telling the truth.
Paul pointed out that his exasperation at the charges stemmed from the fact that he was being charged with the very sort of thing that he had gone to great trouble to avoid. Despite how hard it must have been for him, Paul was trying to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. He didn’t want to raise further alarm among the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and didn’t want to bring any additional and unnecessary persecution on his brothers and sisters. But from the time of Paul’s baptism God had made it clear that Paul would suffer persecution for the sake of the gospel (Acts 9:16) and although Paul had repeatedly asked that this thorn of constant conflict and persecution be taken from him (2 Corinthians 12:7), God instead told him that he would have to rely on God alone for his strength. So it must have been very difficult for Paul to face charges of causing problems when he had worked hard to avoid that very thing.
Yet, his point to Felix was straightforward. He did nothing in Jerusalem but act like a God-fearing, Temple-revering Jew. This fact might seem difficult for a modern Christian to grasp, though. If the Temple and sacrifices for sin were made unnecessary by God’s true Temple, Jesus Christ, then why would Paul continue to pray there and show respect to God’s Temple? The only plausible answer is that Paul and the other first century Christians were living during a strange but brief period of overlap where the building of the Temple still stood and meant a great deal to the Jews and Jewish Christians, but Christ had declared himself to be God’s true Temple and the resurrection had made it clear that this was indeed the truth. Thus, there was this strange period of overlap that took awhile for the early Christians to fully work out. But in AD 70 God made the situation very clear when he allowed the Roman army to lay waste to the Temple and destroy it.
Paul was adamant had not engaged in any preaching against or denouncing of the Temple while in Jerusalem and he certainly hadn’t desecrated it. In his mind all he had done was to worship God in Spirit and truth. Paul was not trying to rebel against the God of their ancestors. He was not engaged in a blasphemous coup against the God of Israel. He was, in fact, obeying the word of God and going where that word led him.
To understand what Paul was arguing it might be helpful to think of those pictures that look like little more than a mass of dots but after staring at it for a time, something else under the surface begins to become discernible to the eye. Suddenly you don’t just see a random design any longer but a beautiful picture emerges. In a sense, Paul was saying that the Old Testament was something like those modern paintings. The Law and the Prophets were a collection of promises and prophecies that were now emerging as a beautiful picture of Jesus as the Messiah and the fulfillment of those very Scriptures. Paul wasn’t inventing some new religion or doctrine. He was following the clues and arriving at the destination that the Old Testament had pointed all along and it was the same hope of resurrection, the same hope of God putting things back to order in the world that most of his fellow Jews believed in and waited for.
In fact, in following where Moses and the prophets led, Paul arrived at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and saw that this is where all the signs on the road had been pointing all along. God had inaugurated his new creation and already begun to set things in order through his people who would embrace the resurrection life of their Messiah.
It might be surprising that Paul summed up his ministry to the Gentiles by highlighting the collection that he had been taking for years among them to support the brothers and sisters in the Jerusalem church who had fallen on hard times. That collection, was, for Paul, a real-life example of the resurrection life breaking into the present age. Pagan nations were honoring God by sacrificing for Jews that they now considered part of their family rather than enemies. What could that be other than the life of the new creation bursting into the present age?
How could anyone seriously claim that this was not of God? But just to make clear that Paul was not a blaspheming pagan in anyway, when he returned to Jerusalem he gave the gave the collections to his Jewish brothers and sisters, and went to pray at the Temple as a ceremonially clean worshipper of the one true God. Paul emphasized for Felix that he was not causing trouble. If he could be accused of anything it would be for nothing more than proclaiming the resurrection of the dead, the very thing that constituted the hope of Israel, at least those not numbered among the elite Sadducees.
Paul was simply brilliant in the way that he declared the truth of the gospel while taking great pains to show that he was not simply rebelling against God, his people, or the faith of his youth. If anyone with a fair mind would give Paul a chance they would have seen that he was honoring God and his faith by following where God’s word led him. For those of us that have found ourselves raised in faith that more resembled tradition of man than the true and radical gospel of the resurrection life available in the family of God, we can find much to learn from Paul’s ministry.
Devotional Thought
Declaring the truth of the gospel against the constant opposition and persecution of his countrymen had to be very difficult for Paul. Do you have the same commitment to speaking the truth regardless of the consequences that Paul had. Which difficult or intimidating conversations in your own life or within your own family or sphere of influence have you been avoiding?
5 “We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect 6 and even tried to desecrate the temple; so we seized him. [7] [a] 8 By examining him yourself you will be able to learn the truth about all these charges we are bringing against him.”
9 The other Jews joined in the accusation, asserting that these things were true.
10 When the governor motioned for him to speak, Paul replied: “I know that for a number of years you have been a judge over this nation; so I gladly make my defense. 11 You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship. 12 My accusers did not find me arguing with anyone at the temple, or stirring up a crowd in the synagogues or anywhere else in the city. 13 And they cannot prove to you the charges they are now making against me. 14 However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. 16 So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.
17 “After an absence of several years, I came to Jerusalem to bring my people gifts for the poor and to present offerings. 18 I was ceremonially clean when they found me in the temple courts doing this. There was no crowd with me, nor was I involved in any disturbance. 19 But there are some Jews from the province of Asia, who ought to be here before you and bring charges if they have anything against me. 20 Or these who are here should state what crime they found in me when I stood before the Sanhedrin— 21 unless it was this one thing I shouted as I stood in their presence: ‘It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.’”
Dig Deeper
A few years back I lived in a county that went through a rather tumultuous time in local government. The men and women that had been elected to run the county affairs had failed to live up to their duties and had instead mired the county in scandal and crushing debt. The worst part was that everything they did was technically legal, although most everyone agreed they had violated moral standards of what should rightly be expected from elected officials. So what did they do? They voted themselves and other government workers one of the sweetest retirement and pension deals imaginable. It gave all of these county workers massive pension plans that numbered in the millions of dollars per person and continued to pay them handsomely until the time of their death. They quickly and quietly signed it into contract with the union that represented them all and it took the force of law with no legal recourse to ever nullify the deal. The primary problem was that this retirement plan could not be afforded by the county. In fact, it hurtled the county towards eminent bankruptcy. Once the public discovered what had happened, they were furious and did the only thing they could which was holding recall elections to boot all of these people out of office. The officials who were responsible for all of this simply left office after being voted out and went home with their huge retirements and left the financial mess for someone else to deal with.
As a result of those recall elections a new county executive and representatives came into power vowing to bring a new era of transparency and responsibility and they came through on those promises in general terms. And although that new era of financial accountability had begun they still had to deal with the mess of the current debt and situation that they found themselves in. Simply declaring a new era in county government did not take away the hard work of implementing the values of that new era in the present mess. Make no mistake, although the main leaders had left there were still many who opposed this new era of strict financial discipline and cost-cutting and the new leaders faced incredible opposition. They quickly discovered that for many people that taste a new era, they reject it saying “the old is better” (Luke 5:39).
That was the task that was facing Paul. He really did believe that something monumental happened the moment that the resurrected Jesus walked out of the tomb and out from the jaws of death. It was more than just someone raising from the dead. It was something different. It was a new era; the moment when God’s promised new creation began to break into the present age. It wasn’t the once-and-for-all moment that the Pharisees had hoped for when God would return and sort everything out himself. God had acted definitively but consistently. God has always worked through human beings and he didn’t change that at the resurrection. Jesus really was king and the new era really had begun in Christ, but he had left his family in charge to sort out that new era in the mess of the present age. This was the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus was king and now it was up to us to accept that, live that way, and take part in the reconciling of the present age. Paul knew that and declared it boldly but he also knew that doing so would bring him into a great deal of opposition. That’s what brought him before the Roman Governor Felix.
The high priest had secured a lawyer named Tertullus to present the Jewish leadership’s case against Paul. He went about his task as any skilled lawyer of the day would have as he began his case with flattery aimed towards Felix that didn’t just border on the untrue but sped through that line like a runaway train. Felix was not a very skilled governor and there certainly wasn’t much in the way of unencumbered peace during his rule. But Tertullus’ purpose was not to declare the truth but to curry favor with Felix, because once he got to the actual charges against Paul, it becomes obvious how thin the charges against Paul actually are. Tertullus accused Paul of inciting riots all over the Roman world and with trying to desecrate the Temple. Of course Tertullus didn’t mention that no Roman authority had ever found Paul guilty of anything significant and that the only witnesses that they might be able to produce to claim that he had desecrated the Temple would be lying through their teeth. The Jewish leadership backed the lawyer’s claim but offer nothing in the way of actual evidence or proof that Paul was guilty of these charges.
When finally given a chance to make his defense Paul acknowledged the rightful authority of Felix to judge over the situation and expressed his gratitude at the possibility of making his case before a capable judge. Paul engaged in the same culturally expected respectful opening that Tertullus did without stepping into the realm of not telling the truth.
Paul pointed out that his exasperation at the charges stemmed from the fact that he was being charged with the very sort of thing that he had gone to great trouble to avoid. Despite how hard it must have been for him, Paul was trying to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. He didn’t want to raise further alarm among the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and didn’t want to bring any additional and unnecessary persecution on his brothers and sisters. But from the time of Paul’s baptism God had made it clear that Paul would suffer persecution for the sake of the gospel (Acts 9:16) and although Paul had repeatedly asked that this thorn of constant conflict and persecution be taken from him (2 Corinthians 12:7), God instead told him that he would have to rely on God alone for his strength. So it must have been very difficult for Paul to face charges of causing problems when he had worked hard to avoid that very thing.
Yet, his point to Felix was straightforward. He did nothing in Jerusalem but act like a God-fearing, Temple-revering Jew. This fact might seem difficult for a modern Christian to grasp, though. If the Temple and sacrifices for sin were made unnecessary by God’s true Temple, Jesus Christ, then why would Paul continue to pray there and show respect to God’s Temple? The only plausible answer is that Paul and the other first century Christians were living during a strange but brief period of overlap where the building of the Temple still stood and meant a great deal to the Jews and Jewish Christians, but Christ had declared himself to be God’s true Temple and the resurrection had made it clear that this was indeed the truth. Thus, there was this strange period of overlap that took awhile for the early Christians to fully work out. But in AD 70 God made the situation very clear when he allowed the Roman army to lay waste to the Temple and destroy it.
Paul was adamant had not engaged in any preaching against or denouncing of the Temple while in Jerusalem and he certainly hadn’t desecrated it. In his mind all he had done was to worship God in Spirit and truth. Paul was not trying to rebel against the God of their ancestors. He was not engaged in a blasphemous coup against the God of Israel. He was, in fact, obeying the word of God and going where that word led him.
To understand what Paul was arguing it might be helpful to think of those pictures that look like little more than a mass of dots but after staring at it for a time, something else under the surface begins to become discernible to the eye. Suddenly you don’t just see a random design any longer but a beautiful picture emerges. In a sense, Paul was saying that the Old Testament was something like those modern paintings. The Law and the Prophets were a collection of promises and prophecies that were now emerging as a beautiful picture of Jesus as the Messiah and the fulfillment of those very Scriptures. Paul wasn’t inventing some new religion or doctrine. He was following the clues and arriving at the destination that the Old Testament had pointed all along and it was the same hope of resurrection, the same hope of God putting things back to order in the world that most of his fellow Jews believed in and waited for.
In fact, in following where Moses and the prophets led, Paul arrived at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and saw that this is where all the signs on the road had been pointing all along. God had inaugurated his new creation and already begun to set things in order through his people who would embrace the resurrection life of their Messiah.
It might be surprising that Paul summed up his ministry to the Gentiles by highlighting the collection that he had been taking for years among them to support the brothers and sisters in the Jerusalem church who had fallen on hard times. That collection, was, for Paul, a real-life example of the resurrection life breaking into the present age. Pagan nations were honoring God by sacrificing for Jews that they now considered part of their family rather than enemies. What could that be other than the life of the new creation bursting into the present age?
How could anyone seriously claim that this was not of God? But just to make clear that Paul was not a blaspheming pagan in anyway, when he returned to Jerusalem he gave the gave the collections to his Jewish brothers and sisters, and went to pray at the Temple as a ceremonially clean worshipper of the one true God. Paul emphasized for Felix that he was not causing trouble. If he could be accused of anything it would be for nothing more than proclaiming the resurrection of the dead, the very thing that constituted the hope of Israel, at least those not numbered among the elite Sadducees.
Paul was simply brilliant in the way that he declared the truth of the gospel while taking great pains to show that he was not simply rebelling against God, his people, or the faith of his youth. If anyone with a fair mind would give Paul a chance they would have seen that he was honoring God and his faith by following where God’s word led him. For those of us that have found ourselves raised in faith that more resembled tradition of man than the true and radical gospel of the resurrection life available in the family of God, we can find much to learn from Paul’s ministry.
Devotional Thought
Declaring the truth of the gospel against the constant opposition and persecution of his countrymen had to be very difficult for Paul. Do you have the same commitment to speaking the truth regardless of the consequences that Paul had. Which difficult or intimidating conversations in your own life or within your own family or sphere of influence have you been avoiding?
Friday, February 24, 2012
Acts 23:12-35
12 The next morning some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. 13 More than forty men were involved in this plot. 14 They went to the chief priests and the elders and said, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. 15 Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”
16 But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.
17 Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him.” 18 So he took him to the commander.
The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”
19 The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”
20 He said: “Some Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him. 21 Don’t give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.”
22 The commander dismissed the young man with this warning: “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”
23 Then he called two of his centurions and ordered them, “Get ready a detachment of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen[b] to go to Caesarea at nine tonight. 24 Provide horses for Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.”
25 He wrote a letter as follows:
26 Claudius Lysias,
To His Excellency, Governor Felix:
Greetings.
27 This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen. 28 I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. 29 I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment. 30 When I was informed of a plot to be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once. I also ordered his accusers to present to you their case against him.
31 So the soldiers, carrying out their orders, took Paul with them during the night and brought him as far as Antipatris. 32 The next day they let the cavalry go on with him, while they returned to the barracks. 33 When the cavalry arrived in Caesarea, they delivered the letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him. 34 The governor read the letter and asked what province he was from. Learning that he was from Cilicia, 35 he said, “I will hear your case when your accusers get here.” Then he ordered that Paul be kept under guard in Herod’s palace.
Dig Deeper
As a relatively new disciple of Jesus, I knew that it was important to pray regularly and so I did. Admittedly, though, I didn’t understand a whole lot about prayer beyond that. I prayed about the things that I had been taught to pray about but I don’t think that I really prayed with a whole lot of faith. I don’t mean that I didn’t have faith in God or the Bible or anything of that nature. What I mean is that my prayers were pretty straightforward and contained a lot of praise of God, confession, and so on. But they weren’t full of faith in that I didn’t step out and ask God for very much. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand that I lacked faith but that was the reality of the situation. I didn’t have radical faith in God and his ability and willingness to answer prayers that were in keeping with his will, and so the things that I prayed for were very simple and conservative. But I recall sitting in a class one day when an older Christian recounted how they had learned to pray faithfully by praying boldly for some very specific things concerning them helping another person that they hadn’t even met yet become a disciple. They were blown away by the fact that God answered those prayers in stunning detail. It hit me right then that I needed to have more faith in my prayers so that God could actually have something to answer and show himself to me as the one who answers prayer.
As I have learned more about God and his desire to work powerfully through his people I have learned to step out in faith in my prayers and pray for specific things concerning God’s will in my life. God doesn’t always answer those prayers exactly as might like or expect but he does answer and I can attest that there are few things in life as encouraging or faith building as seeing prayers answered.
Before he even arrived in Jerusalem Paul knew that he would face difficult circumstances there that would endanger his life and result in his being handed over to the Romans as a prisoner. Paul was so committed to his Spirit-led commission to preach the gospel all the way to Rome that he seemed far more concerned with dying in Judea and not being able to proclaim the gospel in Rome than he was with actually dying. This is why just weeks before he arrived in Jerusalem he wrote the brothers and sisters in Rome, declaring to them: “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen” (Rom. 15:30-33).
Paul’s prayer here had three primary points. The third of those points was that he come to the Roman brothers and sisters with joy. The incredible, albeit completely unpredictable, answer to that part of the prayer will encompass much of the remainder of the book of Acts. But the stunning answer to the first part of that prayer happens right here in this section (Luke doesn’t spend much time on the middle part of the prayer, the reception of the contribution, but it was received with a great deal of gratitude). Paul had prayed that he be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea. He didn’t pray that he be freed or spared from persecution but just that he be kept safe so that he could make it to Rome.
Paul needed those prayers because he was certainly in more danger than perhaps even he could have realized. He was up against men who were as zealous to protect the Law and their way of life as he once was. In fact, more than forty men had taken a a vow not to eat any food until they had killed Paul. As violent and ungodly as that might sound to us, they were, in their minds, defending God’s word and doing his work by following the Law and putting a blasphemer to death. So they hatched a plan to have Paul brought back to the Sanhedrin just so that they could kill him in transit.
That’s when one of those amazing “coincidences” took place. It is, of course, rather difficult to distinguish between mere coincidence or happenstance and an answer to prayer, and usually instances of answered prayer will wholly leave an unbeliever unconvinced that it was anything more than coincidence. I do know, however, that I seem to have a lot more “coincidences” of the amazing kind happen when I pray faithfully and, I guess, that’s all I need to know.
Luke doesn’t gives us many details but somehow Paul’s young nephew got wind of this plot as it was whispered from shadow to dark corner. Not only do we not know how he came into this information, this is all we know of Paul’s nephew, his sister, or any of his relatives. We know virtually nothing of Paul’s relatives or what happened in his relationships with them when he became a Christian. It is extremely likely that his own physical family was part of what Paul had to sacrifice in following Christ, as his father and the rest of his relatives likely cut him off. Somehow, though, he had kept up some semblance of a relationship with his nephew and possibly his sister. All that aside, however, this young lad (probably a teenager) came to Paul with the information of his impending assassination and Paul immediately sent him to the commander, Lysias, to tell him of the plot.
Upon hearing of the plot, Lysias was greatly disturbed. To have a Roman citizen murdered in his care would have looked very badly for him and been a major blot on his reputation. He would not have that and be embarrassed by such a plot so he ordered a company of nearly 500 hundred soldiers to guard and protect Paul as he was transferred safely to Governor Felix. Lysias sent along letter of explanation to Governor Felix along with the soldiers. At each stage of Paul’s trial and being passed on towards Rome, Luke is careful to point out that the Roman officials repeatedly found Paul innocent of any charges that would deserve death or imprisonment. The new Christian movement was not a threat to Rome, Luke wanted to make clear, in the classic sense. They were not revolutionaries engaged in some dangerous militaristic rebellion. The persecution that the Christians like Paul received was a result of their peacefully following Christ, loving others, and simply preaching the gospel.
The reality and irony of the gospel is that it is peaceful and never engages in violence or outright revolution (despite a long, sad history of some doing just that while falsely claiming the name of Christ), but when the gospel is embraced, it changes societies quietly and peacefully from within. That is precisely why we see no ranting speeches against social injustices like slavery in the New Testament. Christianity is not a social justice religion. It is the life of God’s age to come breaking into the life of believing communities here in the present age. But as that life is lived out and embodied, social injustices like slavery melt away in this new world and new way of living. This is seen clearly in a book like Philemon where Paul never chides Philemon for owning a slave but simply encourages him to treat Onesimus as a brother. It is also why Paul could write that “For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave” (1 Cor. 7:22). Luke wanted his skeptical Roman readers to understand that Christianity was not a movement that would engage in violent revolution but would challenge societies by changing them from within, one person at a time as they entered into the life of the new creation.
As Paul made his way to Governor Felix, though, imagine the overwhelming gratitude and encouragement that he felt. Sure he was still a prisoner and there were forty men who had vowed to take his life. But God had answered the prayer of Paul and his fellow brothers and sisters in a dramatic and grand fashion. He wasn’t just kept safe, he was surrounded by 470 Roman soldiers. Now that’s an answer to prayer, one that must confirmed Paul’s deeply held conviction that God was going to send him to Rome.
What we can only imagine is what these men did with their vow once their immediate plans were foiled. No doubt, they left themselves some little loophole to wiggle out of their vow without feeling that they had failed to live up to it. What we can be certain of is that none of them starved to death while waiting for a time to get at Paul so that they could kill him.
The first two elements of Paul’s prayer that he wrote to the church in Rome had been answered in fantastic fashion but we cannot ever start to expect that God will always do things that way. Paul is about to find out that his prayer to come to the believers in Rome will be answered in a way that he could have never imagined; still spectacular in its own right but not nearly as grand.
Devotional Thought
Do your prayers tend to be bold and faithful, expecting God to answer them or do you lack faith in your prayers? How might your prayers differ from the norm if you stepped out in great faith?
16 But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.
17 Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him.” 18 So he took him to the commander.
The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”
19 The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”
20 He said: “Some Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him. 21 Don’t give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.”
22 The commander dismissed the young man with this warning: “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”
23 Then he called two of his centurions and ordered them, “Get ready a detachment of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen[b] to go to Caesarea at nine tonight. 24 Provide horses for Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.”
25 He wrote a letter as follows:
26 Claudius Lysias,
To His Excellency, Governor Felix:
Greetings.
27 This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen. 28 I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. 29 I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment. 30 When I was informed of a plot to be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once. I also ordered his accusers to present to you their case against him.
31 So the soldiers, carrying out their orders, took Paul with them during the night and brought him as far as Antipatris. 32 The next day they let the cavalry go on with him, while they returned to the barracks. 33 When the cavalry arrived in Caesarea, they delivered the letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him. 34 The governor read the letter and asked what province he was from. Learning that he was from Cilicia, 35 he said, “I will hear your case when your accusers get here.” Then he ordered that Paul be kept under guard in Herod’s palace.
Dig Deeper
As a relatively new disciple of Jesus, I knew that it was important to pray regularly and so I did. Admittedly, though, I didn’t understand a whole lot about prayer beyond that. I prayed about the things that I had been taught to pray about but I don’t think that I really prayed with a whole lot of faith. I don’t mean that I didn’t have faith in God or the Bible or anything of that nature. What I mean is that my prayers were pretty straightforward and contained a lot of praise of God, confession, and so on. But they weren’t full of faith in that I didn’t step out and ask God for very much. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand that I lacked faith but that was the reality of the situation. I didn’t have radical faith in God and his ability and willingness to answer prayers that were in keeping with his will, and so the things that I prayed for were very simple and conservative. But I recall sitting in a class one day when an older Christian recounted how they had learned to pray faithfully by praying boldly for some very specific things concerning them helping another person that they hadn’t even met yet become a disciple. They were blown away by the fact that God answered those prayers in stunning detail. It hit me right then that I needed to have more faith in my prayers so that God could actually have something to answer and show himself to me as the one who answers prayer.
As I have learned more about God and his desire to work powerfully through his people I have learned to step out in faith in my prayers and pray for specific things concerning God’s will in my life. God doesn’t always answer those prayers exactly as might like or expect but he does answer and I can attest that there are few things in life as encouraging or faith building as seeing prayers answered.
Before he even arrived in Jerusalem Paul knew that he would face difficult circumstances there that would endanger his life and result in his being handed over to the Romans as a prisoner. Paul was so committed to his Spirit-led commission to preach the gospel all the way to Rome that he seemed far more concerned with dying in Judea and not being able to proclaim the gospel in Rome than he was with actually dying. This is why just weeks before he arrived in Jerusalem he wrote the brothers and sisters in Rome, declaring to them: “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen” (Rom. 15:30-33).
Paul’s prayer here had three primary points. The third of those points was that he come to the Roman brothers and sisters with joy. The incredible, albeit completely unpredictable, answer to that part of the prayer will encompass much of the remainder of the book of Acts. But the stunning answer to the first part of that prayer happens right here in this section (Luke doesn’t spend much time on the middle part of the prayer, the reception of the contribution, but it was received with a great deal of gratitude). Paul had prayed that he be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea. He didn’t pray that he be freed or spared from persecution but just that he be kept safe so that he could make it to Rome.
Paul needed those prayers because he was certainly in more danger than perhaps even he could have realized. He was up against men who were as zealous to protect the Law and their way of life as he once was. In fact, more than forty men had taken a a vow not to eat any food until they had killed Paul. As violent and ungodly as that might sound to us, they were, in their minds, defending God’s word and doing his work by following the Law and putting a blasphemer to death. So they hatched a plan to have Paul brought back to the Sanhedrin just so that they could kill him in transit.
That’s when one of those amazing “coincidences” took place. It is, of course, rather difficult to distinguish between mere coincidence or happenstance and an answer to prayer, and usually instances of answered prayer will wholly leave an unbeliever unconvinced that it was anything more than coincidence. I do know, however, that I seem to have a lot more “coincidences” of the amazing kind happen when I pray faithfully and, I guess, that’s all I need to know.
Luke doesn’t gives us many details but somehow Paul’s young nephew got wind of this plot as it was whispered from shadow to dark corner. Not only do we not know how he came into this information, this is all we know of Paul’s nephew, his sister, or any of his relatives. We know virtually nothing of Paul’s relatives or what happened in his relationships with them when he became a Christian. It is extremely likely that his own physical family was part of what Paul had to sacrifice in following Christ, as his father and the rest of his relatives likely cut him off. Somehow, though, he had kept up some semblance of a relationship with his nephew and possibly his sister. All that aside, however, this young lad (probably a teenager) came to Paul with the information of his impending assassination and Paul immediately sent him to the commander, Lysias, to tell him of the plot.
Upon hearing of the plot, Lysias was greatly disturbed. To have a Roman citizen murdered in his care would have looked very badly for him and been a major blot on his reputation. He would not have that and be embarrassed by such a plot so he ordered a company of nearly 500 hundred soldiers to guard and protect Paul as he was transferred safely to Governor Felix. Lysias sent along letter of explanation to Governor Felix along with the soldiers. At each stage of Paul’s trial and being passed on towards Rome, Luke is careful to point out that the Roman officials repeatedly found Paul innocent of any charges that would deserve death or imprisonment. The new Christian movement was not a threat to Rome, Luke wanted to make clear, in the classic sense. They were not revolutionaries engaged in some dangerous militaristic rebellion. The persecution that the Christians like Paul received was a result of their peacefully following Christ, loving others, and simply preaching the gospel.
The reality and irony of the gospel is that it is peaceful and never engages in violence or outright revolution (despite a long, sad history of some doing just that while falsely claiming the name of Christ), but when the gospel is embraced, it changes societies quietly and peacefully from within. That is precisely why we see no ranting speeches against social injustices like slavery in the New Testament. Christianity is not a social justice religion. It is the life of God’s age to come breaking into the life of believing communities here in the present age. But as that life is lived out and embodied, social injustices like slavery melt away in this new world and new way of living. This is seen clearly in a book like Philemon where Paul never chides Philemon for owning a slave but simply encourages him to treat Onesimus as a brother. It is also why Paul could write that “For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave” (1 Cor. 7:22). Luke wanted his skeptical Roman readers to understand that Christianity was not a movement that would engage in violent revolution but would challenge societies by changing them from within, one person at a time as they entered into the life of the new creation.
As Paul made his way to Governor Felix, though, imagine the overwhelming gratitude and encouragement that he felt. Sure he was still a prisoner and there were forty men who had vowed to take his life. But God had answered the prayer of Paul and his fellow brothers and sisters in a dramatic and grand fashion. He wasn’t just kept safe, he was surrounded by 470 Roman soldiers. Now that’s an answer to prayer, one that must confirmed Paul’s deeply held conviction that God was going to send him to Rome.
What we can only imagine is what these men did with their vow once their immediate plans were foiled. No doubt, they left themselves some little loophole to wiggle out of their vow without feeling that they had failed to live up to it. What we can be certain of is that none of them starved to death while waiting for a time to get at Paul so that they could kill him.
The first two elements of Paul’s prayer that he wrote to the church in Rome had been answered in fantastic fashion but we cannot ever start to expect that God will always do things that way. Paul is about to find out that his prayer to come to the believers in Rome will be answered in a way that he could have never imagined; still spectacular in its own right but not nearly as grand.
Devotional Thought
Do your prayers tend to be bold and faithful, expecting God to answer them or do you lack faith in your prayers? How might your prayers differ from the norm if you stepped out in great faith?
Monday, February 20, 2012
Acts 23:1-11
1 Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” 2 At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. 3 Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”
4 Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!”
5 Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’[a]”
6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)
9 There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they said. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” 10 The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.
11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”
Dig Deeper
Several years ago I watched a rather intense action film that had a very interesting premise. A man was on the run from rogue government officials who were using rather high-tech equipment to try to chase him down and have him killed. At first the man didn’t know who was chasing him or why but he eventually figured out that an old friend of his had bumped into him in a public place while running from these same bad guys. His friend had slipped a video tape into his pocket that showed a high ranking government official committing murder. The friend had accidentally taped the murder and now was being hunted for that tape, so right before he was caught and killed he slipped it to his old friend, the star of the film. Now our main character had these same men trying to kill him and get that tape back. Near the end of the movie the main character arranges a meeting between a mobster and the bad guys that are working for the government official. They both view the main character as the enemy until he pulls off a brilliant move. Without taking the time to explain all of the details, he convinces the two groups that they are the enemies of one another. He then jumps under a table and protects himself while these two groups turn their attention away from him and begin to shoot at each other. In the end, he is able to escape the wrath of both groups.
Paul was certainly not facing exactly the same sort of situation but he was being taken in front of a body, the Sanhedrin, where he wasn’t going to really find any friends. The Sanhedrin was the ruling council of the Jewish people and they were allowed to continue exercising a certain amount of local authority and influence by the Roman Emperor. To put it in the simplest of terms, the Sanhedrin consisted of two main factions of Jews. The conservative group were the Sadducees. The Sadducees had a lot of wealth and power and had a vested interest in keeping both so they looked down upon any movements or ways of thinking that might upset the status quo with Rome. They were also religiously conservative and argued that only the books of Moses (the Pentateuch) should be considered as legitimate Scripture. Because of that they did not believe in a future resurrection, a doctrine that is only alluded to in the books of Moses but developed much more thoroughly in the latter writings of the Old Testament prophets (and, of course, the New Testament). Jesus had actually pointed out to the Sadducees that they were in error on this point (Luke 20:27-38) but they continued to deny any belief in resurrection as they felt, at least in part, that people who believed in a resurrection age were dangerous and liable to throw off the constraint of the Roman rule without fear because if they died, they would simply be resurrected in the age to come.
On the other side of the aisle were the Pharisees. They were actual the more liberal thinkers in the first century. They had no official ruling authority as a group but they wielded considerable influence among the people. The Pharisees believed strongly that God had promised to right the wrongs in his fallen creation and that this would culminate in the resurrection of the dead on the great day of the Lord when God returned to exalt his people and live with them for eternity. In many respects their beliefs were very close to Christians who believed that all those promises of reconciliation, restoration, and resurrection had been answered in the affirmative by God through his Messiah and Son, Jesus Christ. The shocking part that they had trouble embracing was that the promise of resurrection had begun with one man in the middle of the present age rather than for all of God’s people at the end of the present age.
When Paul was brought before this body that was so divided in their world outlooks, he managed to do what few could, bring the two sides together in their common dislike for him and this Christian movement that they did not understand very well but disliked intensely. Surely they could both agree that Paul was a menace to the Jewish people and that his teachings were blasphemous and detrimental to the peace. Yet, Paul was no rookie in these matters even though he had not been in Jerusalem for many years and had not been active in Sanhedrin affairs for at least twenty years. He knew that the Sadducees and Pharisees made up one ruling body but had such deep divisions among them that a few well-placed words could send that tentative unity into a tailspin.
That’s not to say that disuniting the two factions was the primary purpose of Paul. Paul’s primary goal was to declare the gospel to the men of the Sanhedrin. He knew that this was a tall task but still one that needed to be undertaken and he was game. For the Sadducees to listen to and accept a declaration of good news that was built on the resurrection of one claiming to be the Messiah would have taken a monumental shift in their worldview. But for the Pharisees. . . for the Pharisees, not so much. Paul had been trained as a Pharisee and he well knew that their beliefs and hopes in the promises of God matched his own quite well. He believed, in fact, that if they would only hear him out and humble themselves to what God’s word actually says, that they would come to the same conclusion that he had. In fact, it is probably fair to say that Paul believed that true and spiritually honest Pharisees would become Christians because Christ was the fulfillment of everything that they hoped and waited for if they would only open their eyes to it. It’s safe to say that Paul believed a true Pharisee would be a Christian.
So as Paul started, he declared that he fulfilled his duty to God in good conscience, meaning not that he was perfect before God but that he had always done his best to follow God’s will and quickly aligned himself with God humbly whenever he found himself in error. Before he could even get going in his defense, though, a man ordered that Paul be slapped, a man that Paul didn’t recognize, probably because this was an informal meeting that was a bit chaotic and Paul had not been in Jerusalem for nearly a decade, not to mention it is possible that the man was not wearing the formal garb of his position.
The slap was intended to convey the message that he should close his mouth because he had no defense to offer that wasn’t blasphemous and it was ordered by none other than the high priest. But this action rankled Paul. It was against the law of the Sanhedrin to issue any punishment without being found guilty and Paul had no problem protesting against this illegal action. Paul quickly and boldly rebuked the man that ordered the hit, comparing him to the denounced people of Ezekiel 13:10 who were like a rickety wall that was ready to fall but thought that a good painting would make it sturdier. In other words, this hypocritical man could act just as piously as he wanted, but his actions, asserted Paul, betrayed who he really was.
What Paul was unaware of was that this was the High Priest himself and he was quickly informed of that fact. This was no regular Sanhedrin member that was getting a little carried away. This was the High Priest of Israel, Ananias, a man whom history tells us was certainly brutal enough to have ordered such a strike. He was accused of inciting a rebellion against Rome a few years before this incident but was eventually cleared of all charges. Ananias was a rough and tumble player in the world of first century politics who would, in less than ten years from this event, face his own bloody and brutal death.
After learning that this was the high priest, Paul took a deferential step back. It seems that he was willing to respect the authority structure that God had put in place, even if that authority was not acting in a godly manner at the moment. Exodus 22:28 had warned against speaking against the ruler of Israel and Paul would respect that in deference and submission to God.
Paul was now in a bind and seemingly on his heels. He had unknowingly insulted the High Priest and stood no chance of gaining a fair hearing before this group. But he knew this group and knew them well so he played a trump card. The real issue, he declared, was that he believed in and was speaking the truth of resurrection of the dead. This changed everything. The focus quickly swung from Paul to the decades old fight between these two groups. Paul had brilliantly shifted the focus off of him and got these two groups to start taking shots at one another.
The Pharisees were not willing to believe that Jesus or anyone else had resurrected physically before the great and final day of the Lord, but because they did believe that one day the Messiah would come and resurrect all of the righteous, they were open to the idea that, in the meantime, it was possible for someone to appear as an a “spirit” in some form or another. So, maybe that’s what Paul saw, they reasoned. Of course, he didn’t see the resurrected Christ but he may have seen his spirit in a vision if God so willed. They had to give him that much. The Sadducees would allow no room for any such nonsense. And now the fight was on. Suddenly the Pharisees were in the odd position of defending Paul. If he was simply standing with them in their belief of the great resurrection that God had promised then they could hardly cut off the branch on which they perched and attack Paul. They might not have liked Paul, but they apparently disliked the Sadducees even more. The arguing became so intense that once again the Romans had to take Paul away into seclusion. Somehow this man had an incredible power to stir up people’s passions and it was something that puzzled the Romans.
All along, Paul clearly wanted to throw a wrench in things so that he would be moved along to Rome. That was where he believed his current vocation lay. The next night the Lord came to Paul and confirmed that vocation. He would not die in Jerusalem. He would get his chance to go to Rome. Paul had declared the gospel boldly in every situation that he found himself in but his biggest task and stiffest challenge still lay ahead of in the most powerful city in the world, before the most powerful man in the world.
Devotional Thought
Paul had a real knack for stirring up trouble wherever went by doing nothing more than boldly declaring the true gospel of Jesus. The simple question to ask yourself is when is the last time that you stirred up a little healthy opposition while declaring the gospel with gentleness and respect? You won’t be opposed every time you share the gospel but if you’re never opposed, are you sure you are actually declaring the gospel to others at all?
4 Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!”
5 Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’[a]”
6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)
9 There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they said. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” 10 The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.
11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”
Dig Deeper
Several years ago I watched a rather intense action film that had a very interesting premise. A man was on the run from rogue government officials who were using rather high-tech equipment to try to chase him down and have him killed. At first the man didn’t know who was chasing him or why but he eventually figured out that an old friend of his had bumped into him in a public place while running from these same bad guys. His friend had slipped a video tape into his pocket that showed a high ranking government official committing murder. The friend had accidentally taped the murder and now was being hunted for that tape, so right before he was caught and killed he slipped it to his old friend, the star of the film. Now our main character had these same men trying to kill him and get that tape back. Near the end of the movie the main character arranges a meeting between a mobster and the bad guys that are working for the government official. They both view the main character as the enemy until he pulls off a brilliant move. Without taking the time to explain all of the details, he convinces the two groups that they are the enemies of one another. He then jumps under a table and protects himself while these two groups turn their attention away from him and begin to shoot at each other. In the end, he is able to escape the wrath of both groups.
Paul was certainly not facing exactly the same sort of situation but he was being taken in front of a body, the Sanhedrin, where he wasn’t going to really find any friends. The Sanhedrin was the ruling council of the Jewish people and they were allowed to continue exercising a certain amount of local authority and influence by the Roman Emperor. To put it in the simplest of terms, the Sanhedrin consisted of two main factions of Jews. The conservative group were the Sadducees. The Sadducees had a lot of wealth and power and had a vested interest in keeping both so they looked down upon any movements or ways of thinking that might upset the status quo with Rome. They were also religiously conservative and argued that only the books of Moses (the Pentateuch) should be considered as legitimate Scripture. Because of that they did not believe in a future resurrection, a doctrine that is only alluded to in the books of Moses but developed much more thoroughly in the latter writings of the Old Testament prophets (and, of course, the New Testament). Jesus had actually pointed out to the Sadducees that they were in error on this point (Luke 20:27-38) but they continued to deny any belief in resurrection as they felt, at least in part, that people who believed in a resurrection age were dangerous and liable to throw off the constraint of the Roman rule without fear because if they died, they would simply be resurrected in the age to come.
On the other side of the aisle were the Pharisees. They were actual the more liberal thinkers in the first century. They had no official ruling authority as a group but they wielded considerable influence among the people. The Pharisees believed strongly that God had promised to right the wrongs in his fallen creation and that this would culminate in the resurrection of the dead on the great day of the Lord when God returned to exalt his people and live with them for eternity. In many respects their beliefs were very close to Christians who believed that all those promises of reconciliation, restoration, and resurrection had been answered in the affirmative by God through his Messiah and Son, Jesus Christ. The shocking part that they had trouble embracing was that the promise of resurrection had begun with one man in the middle of the present age rather than for all of God’s people at the end of the present age.
When Paul was brought before this body that was so divided in their world outlooks, he managed to do what few could, bring the two sides together in their common dislike for him and this Christian movement that they did not understand very well but disliked intensely. Surely they could both agree that Paul was a menace to the Jewish people and that his teachings were blasphemous and detrimental to the peace. Yet, Paul was no rookie in these matters even though he had not been in Jerusalem for many years and had not been active in Sanhedrin affairs for at least twenty years. He knew that the Sadducees and Pharisees made up one ruling body but had such deep divisions among them that a few well-placed words could send that tentative unity into a tailspin.
That’s not to say that disuniting the two factions was the primary purpose of Paul. Paul’s primary goal was to declare the gospel to the men of the Sanhedrin. He knew that this was a tall task but still one that needed to be undertaken and he was game. For the Sadducees to listen to and accept a declaration of good news that was built on the resurrection of one claiming to be the Messiah would have taken a monumental shift in their worldview. But for the Pharisees. . . for the Pharisees, not so much. Paul had been trained as a Pharisee and he well knew that their beliefs and hopes in the promises of God matched his own quite well. He believed, in fact, that if they would only hear him out and humble themselves to what God’s word actually says, that they would come to the same conclusion that he had. In fact, it is probably fair to say that Paul believed that true and spiritually honest Pharisees would become Christians because Christ was the fulfillment of everything that they hoped and waited for if they would only open their eyes to it. It’s safe to say that Paul believed a true Pharisee would be a Christian.
So as Paul started, he declared that he fulfilled his duty to God in good conscience, meaning not that he was perfect before God but that he had always done his best to follow God’s will and quickly aligned himself with God humbly whenever he found himself in error. Before he could even get going in his defense, though, a man ordered that Paul be slapped, a man that Paul didn’t recognize, probably because this was an informal meeting that was a bit chaotic and Paul had not been in Jerusalem for nearly a decade, not to mention it is possible that the man was not wearing the formal garb of his position.
The slap was intended to convey the message that he should close his mouth because he had no defense to offer that wasn’t blasphemous and it was ordered by none other than the high priest. But this action rankled Paul. It was against the law of the Sanhedrin to issue any punishment without being found guilty and Paul had no problem protesting against this illegal action. Paul quickly and boldly rebuked the man that ordered the hit, comparing him to the denounced people of Ezekiel 13:10 who were like a rickety wall that was ready to fall but thought that a good painting would make it sturdier. In other words, this hypocritical man could act just as piously as he wanted, but his actions, asserted Paul, betrayed who he really was.
What Paul was unaware of was that this was the High Priest himself and he was quickly informed of that fact. This was no regular Sanhedrin member that was getting a little carried away. This was the High Priest of Israel, Ananias, a man whom history tells us was certainly brutal enough to have ordered such a strike. He was accused of inciting a rebellion against Rome a few years before this incident but was eventually cleared of all charges. Ananias was a rough and tumble player in the world of first century politics who would, in less than ten years from this event, face his own bloody and brutal death.
After learning that this was the high priest, Paul took a deferential step back. It seems that he was willing to respect the authority structure that God had put in place, even if that authority was not acting in a godly manner at the moment. Exodus 22:28 had warned against speaking against the ruler of Israel and Paul would respect that in deference and submission to God.
Paul was now in a bind and seemingly on his heels. He had unknowingly insulted the High Priest and stood no chance of gaining a fair hearing before this group. But he knew this group and knew them well so he played a trump card. The real issue, he declared, was that he believed in and was speaking the truth of resurrection of the dead. This changed everything. The focus quickly swung from Paul to the decades old fight between these two groups. Paul had brilliantly shifted the focus off of him and got these two groups to start taking shots at one another.
The Pharisees were not willing to believe that Jesus or anyone else had resurrected physically before the great and final day of the Lord, but because they did believe that one day the Messiah would come and resurrect all of the righteous, they were open to the idea that, in the meantime, it was possible for someone to appear as an a “spirit” in some form or another. So, maybe that’s what Paul saw, they reasoned. Of course, he didn’t see the resurrected Christ but he may have seen his spirit in a vision if God so willed. They had to give him that much. The Sadducees would allow no room for any such nonsense. And now the fight was on. Suddenly the Pharisees were in the odd position of defending Paul. If he was simply standing with them in their belief of the great resurrection that God had promised then they could hardly cut off the branch on which they perched and attack Paul. They might not have liked Paul, but they apparently disliked the Sadducees even more. The arguing became so intense that once again the Romans had to take Paul away into seclusion. Somehow this man had an incredible power to stir up people’s passions and it was something that puzzled the Romans.
All along, Paul clearly wanted to throw a wrench in things so that he would be moved along to Rome. That was where he believed his current vocation lay. The next night the Lord came to Paul and confirmed that vocation. He would not die in Jerusalem. He would get his chance to go to Rome. Paul had declared the gospel boldly in every situation that he found himself in but his biggest task and stiffest challenge still lay ahead of in the most powerful city in the world, before the most powerful man in the world.
Devotional Thought
Paul had a real knack for stirring up trouble wherever went by doing nothing more than boldly declaring the true gospel of Jesus. The simple question to ask yourself is when is the last time that you stirred up a little healthy opposition while declaring the gospel with gentleness and respect? You won’t be opposed every time you share the gospel but if you’re never opposed, are you sure you are actually declaring the gospel to others at all?
Friday, February 17, 2012
Acts 22:23-30
23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25 As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”
26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”
27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.
29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Paul Before the Sanhedrin
30 The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews. So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.
Dig Deeper
A few months ago I was wearily returning from a wonderful ministry trip that took me all over Southern Africa. I normally enjoy the quiet and peaceful 24-28 hour plane journey home but I was dreading this one a bit because my wife had returned back to our home in the states a couple of weeks earlier and I would be traveling alone internationally for the first time. It’s not that I can’t handle being alone, but my wife usually takes care of the logistics of our trips and carries all of our tickets, passports, and other necessary items and I just follow her to get where I need to go. As I arrived in Washington DC I was tired and only half paying attention to what I was doing. I followed everyone else as they got into line to go through customs and be allowed into the rest of the airport. I walked past the line attendant who didn’t say anything and began to wait in that line as it snaked around for quite awhile until I encountered another customs worker who was quickly walking through checking each person’s paperwork to make sure that they would be prepared once they reached the customs desk. As the man looked at my passport, he got a look on his face that looked like a mixture of concern and embarrassment. What I had not realized is that I had unwittingly walked into the wrong line but that initial attendant should have checked and caught my error. I had walked into the custom line for those with non-US passports, but I was a citizen and would need to go to the correct line, which was, thankfully, much shorter. Perhaps to make up a bit for the mistake, the attendant personally walked me over to the right line and cheerfully sent me on my way. At least in this case, citizenship had offered a small advantage.
Paul had made his appeal to his countrymen in the hopes that they would respond to the gospel. He had requested permission from the Roman commander to speak to the Jews in what was apparently rather eloquent Greek. He had then turned to his Jewish brothers and sisters and addressed them in the common language of their day, Aramaic. The advantage of this was that it earned him at least a momentary hearing from the crowd of Jews pressing in on Paul. The downside of speaking in Aramaic is that the commander probably didn’t understand what Paul was saying or what made the Jews so irate. All he would likely have been able to determine was that Paul spoke to the crowd and said something that enraged them and caused them to want Paul beaten or worse. The commander had been rather generous and conciliatory with Paul just moments earlier but now the Romans were ready to get to the bottom of this.
The Jews were screaming, throwing their cloaks in the air, and flinging dust in what may have been an action similar to the wiping off of dust from one’s shoes, an act that showed that they believed the person to be no better than a pagan and worthy of the judgment that Jews believed was due to the pagan nations. The commander wasn’t in a playing mood so he ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks and questioned. We must be clear that the Roman version of “interrogating” someone was incredibly brutal and vicious. It involved flogging the person with a whip that typically had strips of leather with pieces of bone or metal attached and could cripple a person for life if not kill them. The Romans turned to this method believing that torturing someone was the only truly effective way to get a witness to tell the whole truth. So, the commander would cut right to the chase and get to the bottom of the problem with Paul through this brutal method.
But that is when Paul pulled out his trump card. It was a card that is only discussed twice in Acts (here and chapter 16) so Paul must have used only when absolutely necessary. Paul was willing to suffer for the gospel but not unnecessarily. It was then that he informed the centurion, who was moments away from carrying out the commanders orders, that he was a Romans citizen.
Clearly, being a Roman citizen was not the most important thing to Paul in his life. It probably ranked fourth on his list. Far and away the most important for Paul was his citizenship as part of God’s kingdom, a citizenship that emanated from heaven itself (Phil. 3:20). Far down the list but next for Paul was the fact that he was a Jew and then that he was a citizen of Tarsus. But Roman citizenship was not without disadvantages and Paul would exercise his rights when absolutely necessary.
The fact was that Roman citizens could not be shackled and certainly could not be flogged without a fair trial and conviction. Non-citizens didn’t have that same protection but citizens of Rome did. A Roman official who violated those rights of a Roman citizen would be facing severe punishment that could even include death. It is understandable, then, that both the centurion and the commander were a bit unnerved upon hearing this news (There were severe penalties that exceeded even the flogging for falsely claiming citizenship so the Romans would have been rather apt to believe Paul’s claim and he may have even produced the small scroll that most citizens would have possessed to verify their status). But this bit of news so surprised the commander that his response to Paul’s claim was more than a little bit sarcastic. He had paid for his citizenship, something that was technically illegal. His point was that he had paid a lot of money in bribes in order to get his name on the citizenship roles, so what he was saying was something along the lines of saying “anyone can buy a citizenship these days.” Paul’s response was not rude but was a factual statement that would have respectfully put the commander in his place a bit. Paul did not bribe his way into citizenship papers, he was born a citizen meaning that his father and possibly even grandfather had been a citizen in Tarsus.
It was quite wise of Paul to declare his citizenship away from the Jewish crowd where such a claim would have made him look even worse in their eyes. But his claim back in the barracks was a game-changer. He could not be flogged. No longer was the concern that Paul was in trouble, it was whether or not they would be in trouble for treating a Roman citizen in such a way. They had just discovered that Paul was in the wrong line, so to speak, and had to scramble to get him in the right one.
But the commander still wanted to know if Paul was guilty of anything that should concern Rome. He was not going to get any useful information from the crowds outside, and the option of simply torturing Paul was off the table. That left him with few options so he decided to request that the Sanhedrin assemble so that Paul could be brought before them. This was clearly a Jewish issue so perhaps the Sanhedrin could get to the bottom of it and explain things to him. That would be Paul’s next stop on his journey.
Paul’s willingness to take advantage of his Roman citizenship, however, should not be glossed over for its instructive value for us today. He never sought to abuse his rights, nor did he even take advantage of them at every opportunity. Paul was far more concerned with his citizenship in God’s kingdom and being loyal to that way of life, but he was no fool either. Paul was never one to shy away from suffering for the sake of the gospel but he would appeal to legitimate means for his deliverance. In fact, we begin to see that God could use Paul so powerfully at least in small part because of his language skills, his Jewish training, and his Roman citizenship.
So are there specific lessons that we can take from Paul’s choice to claim his citizenship when it comes to our lives in Christ today? Paul clearly wasn’t someone who spent the better part of his day whining about his rights. In fact, in most cases, Paul would argue that when rights ran up against the good for others that rights should be surrendered willingly. Perhaps in this case, though, we can see a clear example of Jesus’ words being fulfilled in Paul’s life: ““I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt 10:26-20). We can speculate, based on this, that it was the Spirit who directed Paul to claim his Roman citizenship. The primary lesson for us, then, is that we don’t need to be obsessed with our rights as citizens but when exercising them benefits the kingdom of God, we should be wise and use them as gifts from God.
Devotional Thought
Throughout his life Paul showed unflagging trust in the Holy Spirit. He was willing to go into life threatening situations if that’s where the Spirit led. He trusted in the Spirit to provide him wisdom and the right words in difficult situations and he wasn’t afraid to stand up for his rights if the Spirit so allowed. Do you have that same kind of radical trust and reliance on the Spirit? Would you even know his voice if he was speaking to you?
26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”
27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.
29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Paul Before the Sanhedrin
30 The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews. So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.
Dig Deeper
A few months ago I was wearily returning from a wonderful ministry trip that took me all over Southern Africa. I normally enjoy the quiet and peaceful 24-28 hour plane journey home but I was dreading this one a bit because my wife had returned back to our home in the states a couple of weeks earlier and I would be traveling alone internationally for the first time. It’s not that I can’t handle being alone, but my wife usually takes care of the logistics of our trips and carries all of our tickets, passports, and other necessary items and I just follow her to get where I need to go. As I arrived in Washington DC I was tired and only half paying attention to what I was doing. I followed everyone else as they got into line to go through customs and be allowed into the rest of the airport. I walked past the line attendant who didn’t say anything and began to wait in that line as it snaked around for quite awhile until I encountered another customs worker who was quickly walking through checking each person’s paperwork to make sure that they would be prepared once they reached the customs desk. As the man looked at my passport, he got a look on his face that looked like a mixture of concern and embarrassment. What I had not realized is that I had unwittingly walked into the wrong line but that initial attendant should have checked and caught my error. I had walked into the custom line for those with non-US passports, but I was a citizen and would need to go to the correct line, which was, thankfully, much shorter. Perhaps to make up a bit for the mistake, the attendant personally walked me over to the right line and cheerfully sent me on my way. At least in this case, citizenship had offered a small advantage.
Paul had made his appeal to his countrymen in the hopes that they would respond to the gospel. He had requested permission from the Roman commander to speak to the Jews in what was apparently rather eloquent Greek. He had then turned to his Jewish brothers and sisters and addressed them in the common language of their day, Aramaic. The advantage of this was that it earned him at least a momentary hearing from the crowd of Jews pressing in on Paul. The downside of speaking in Aramaic is that the commander probably didn’t understand what Paul was saying or what made the Jews so irate. All he would likely have been able to determine was that Paul spoke to the crowd and said something that enraged them and caused them to want Paul beaten or worse. The commander had been rather generous and conciliatory with Paul just moments earlier but now the Romans were ready to get to the bottom of this.
The Jews were screaming, throwing their cloaks in the air, and flinging dust in what may have been an action similar to the wiping off of dust from one’s shoes, an act that showed that they believed the person to be no better than a pagan and worthy of the judgment that Jews believed was due to the pagan nations. The commander wasn’t in a playing mood so he ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks and questioned. We must be clear that the Roman version of “interrogating” someone was incredibly brutal and vicious. It involved flogging the person with a whip that typically had strips of leather with pieces of bone or metal attached and could cripple a person for life if not kill them. The Romans turned to this method believing that torturing someone was the only truly effective way to get a witness to tell the whole truth. So, the commander would cut right to the chase and get to the bottom of the problem with Paul through this brutal method.
But that is when Paul pulled out his trump card. It was a card that is only discussed twice in Acts (here and chapter 16) so Paul must have used only when absolutely necessary. Paul was willing to suffer for the gospel but not unnecessarily. It was then that he informed the centurion, who was moments away from carrying out the commanders orders, that he was a Romans citizen.
Clearly, being a Roman citizen was not the most important thing to Paul in his life. It probably ranked fourth on his list. Far and away the most important for Paul was his citizenship as part of God’s kingdom, a citizenship that emanated from heaven itself (Phil. 3:20). Far down the list but next for Paul was the fact that he was a Jew and then that he was a citizen of Tarsus. But Roman citizenship was not without disadvantages and Paul would exercise his rights when absolutely necessary.
The fact was that Roman citizens could not be shackled and certainly could not be flogged without a fair trial and conviction. Non-citizens didn’t have that same protection but citizens of Rome did. A Roman official who violated those rights of a Roman citizen would be facing severe punishment that could even include death. It is understandable, then, that both the centurion and the commander were a bit unnerved upon hearing this news (There were severe penalties that exceeded even the flogging for falsely claiming citizenship so the Romans would have been rather apt to believe Paul’s claim and he may have even produced the small scroll that most citizens would have possessed to verify their status). But this bit of news so surprised the commander that his response to Paul’s claim was more than a little bit sarcastic. He had paid for his citizenship, something that was technically illegal. His point was that he had paid a lot of money in bribes in order to get his name on the citizenship roles, so what he was saying was something along the lines of saying “anyone can buy a citizenship these days.” Paul’s response was not rude but was a factual statement that would have respectfully put the commander in his place a bit. Paul did not bribe his way into citizenship papers, he was born a citizen meaning that his father and possibly even grandfather had been a citizen in Tarsus.
It was quite wise of Paul to declare his citizenship away from the Jewish crowd where such a claim would have made him look even worse in their eyes. But his claim back in the barracks was a game-changer. He could not be flogged. No longer was the concern that Paul was in trouble, it was whether or not they would be in trouble for treating a Roman citizen in such a way. They had just discovered that Paul was in the wrong line, so to speak, and had to scramble to get him in the right one.
But the commander still wanted to know if Paul was guilty of anything that should concern Rome. He was not going to get any useful information from the crowds outside, and the option of simply torturing Paul was off the table. That left him with few options so he decided to request that the Sanhedrin assemble so that Paul could be brought before them. This was clearly a Jewish issue so perhaps the Sanhedrin could get to the bottom of it and explain things to him. That would be Paul’s next stop on his journey.
Paul’s willingness to take advantage of his Roman citizenship, however, should not be glossed over for its instructive value for us today. He never sought to abuse his rights, nor did he even take advantage of them at every opportunity. Paul was far more concerned with his citizenship in God’s kingdom and being loyal to that way of life, but he was no fool either. Paul was never one to shy away from suffering for the sake of the gospel but he would appeal to legitimate means for his deliverance. In fact, we begin to see that God could use Paul so powerfully at least in small part because of his language skills, his Jewish training, and his Roman citizenship.
So are there specific lessons that we can take from Paul’s choice to claim his citizenship when it comes to our lives in Christ today? Paul clearly wasn’t someone who spent the better part of his day whining about his rights. In fact, in most cases, Paul would argue that when rights ran up against the good for others that rights should be surrendered willingly. Perhaps in this case, though, we can see a clear example of Jesus’ words being fulfilled in Paul’s life: ““I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt 10:26-20). We can speculate, based on this, that it was the Spirit who directed Paul to claim his Roman citizenship. The primary lesson for us, then, is that we don’t need to be obsessed with our rights as citizens but when exercising them benefits the kingdom of God, we should be wise and use them as gifts from God.
Devotional Thought
Throughout his life Paul showed unflagging trust in the Holy Spirit. He was willing to go into life threatening situations if that’s where the Spirit led. He trusted in the Spirit to provide him wisdom and the right words in difficult situations and he wasn’t afraid to stand up for his rights if the Spirit so allowed. Do you have that same kind of radical trust and reliance on the Spirit? Would you even know his voice if he was speaking to you?
Monday, February 13, 2012
Acts 22:12-22
12 Someone named Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good reputation with all the Jews residing there, 13 came and stood by me and said, ‘Brother Saul, regain your sight.’ And in that very hour I looked up and saw him. 14 Then he said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear the sound of His voice.[c] 15 For you will be a witness for Him to all people of what you have seen and heard. 16 And now, why delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins by calling on His name.’
17 “After I came back to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple complex, I went into a visionary state 18 and saw Him telling me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about Me!’
19 “But I said, ‘Lord, they know that in synagogue after synagogue I had those who believed in You imprisoned and beaten. 20 And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I was standing by and approving,[d] and I guarded the clothes of those who killed him.’
21 “Then He said to me, ‘Go, because I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”
22 They listened to him up to this word. Then they raised their voices, shouting, “Wipe this person off the earth—it’s a disgrace for him to live!”
Dig Deeper
I have recently taken a liking to a campy little science fiction show called “Warehouse 13” on the SyFy Network. It’s certainly not the highest budget show or even the most well-made but I really enjoy the fun themes and adventures of the series and I like the characters that they have created. The show chronicles a team of relic hunters who travel around the world collecting artifacts that have somehow been imbued with the power to induce amazing and somewhat magical events if invoked in the proper manner. Of course, the catch is that there are always bad guys who wish to harness the power of these artifacts for there own nefarious plans. The team must chase down and capture these artifacts and lock them safely away in Warehouse 13. In the most recent season, the team welcomed a new member to help them as the need to collect artifacts and fight off the bad guys continued to mount. But just when they were facing their stiffest challenge, this new member of their group betrayed them. They were facing a life and death situation against a bad guy who seemed poised to take control of the Warehouse itself and gain the power of all of the thousands of artifacts. As you can imagine, his betrayal caused a major amount of bitterness on the part of those that he had betrayed. How could someone so vital to their cause betray them when the challenges were at their most dangerous? When they finally tracked him down, he was with the primary bad guy that they were chasing but as they trapped this betrayer, he had an amazing tale to tell them just before dying as a result of actions of the bad guy. He had not betrayed them at all. Their boss that oversaw all of the operations at the Warehouse had actually called him to go undercover. They thought he was betraying him but he was actually working for their benefit the entire time. At that moment they had a big decision to face. Would they believe him or reject his story?
Paul might have been able to identify with this fictional character just a bit. He was a proud and zealous Jew and was willing to take a life or given his own in defense of God’s Law. He was making his way through the Jewish ranks and quickly becoming one of the major players in Judaism and their fight to rid Israel of this new Christian movement gathered around their so-called Messiah Jesus. Just when this fight began to reach a fever pitch, Paul had seemingly betrayed his own brethren and joined the other side. This must have been rather dumbfounding for his fellow Jews and led them to despise him as a blasphemous betrayer, even worse, in some ways, than other Christians because of all that he had given up.
To add to this bitterness and hatred for Paul was the historical background to all of this. The Jewish people had suffered greatly at the hands of the pagan nations. They had been slaughtered ruthlessly and scattered throughout the world time again, ripped from their homeland and dragged off into exile, all because they were the people of God’s Law. They refused to betray their God, at least from their perspective, and had paid the price for it. Now they laid on the ground once again in their own homeland with the boot of the pagan oppressor on their necks, this time in the form of the Roman Empire, and waited for God to free them from pagan domination. They waited for God to return and exalt his people, cast off the evil that ruled over them, show himself as the God of Israel, and rule over his people once-and-for-all. At that time, thought the Jews, God would put the pagan nations in their place and call them, humbled and defeated, to the mountain of the Lord to somehow share in God’s grace.
But just when things were at their worse, Paul had abandoned them, or so they thought. But now Paul was standing before them trying to explain that they had gotten it all wrong. He wasn’t betraying them and he certainly wasn’t abandoning the God of Israel. In fact, he had been working under the orders of their God the whole time and if the people would just hear him out they would see that he had been working to help them and serve God without fail. He was no betrayer but was as devoted to God as he had ever been.
That is why throughout this speech Paul is so careful to point out, at every possible opportunity, that Paul was and continued to act as a good and devout Jew who was nothing more than a servant to the God of Israel. In fact, after he had been confronted by the heavenly light and figure that announced that it was the Messiah himself who was confronting Paul from God’s realm in heaven, Paul was directed to Ananias. He doesn’t stress that Ananias was already a follower of Christ but that he was a devout man who followed the Law and still had a good reputation among the Jews in Damascus. Paul wanted them to see that he was no rabble rouser fighting against the Law and the Jewish people. He was a follower of God just as they were.
When Ananias came in there was no blasphemy or pagan rituals going on, he was praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Ananias spoke to him of “the God of our fathers” and was the conduit through whom that God worked to restore the sight that Paul had lost for three days. There was no betrayal here. What else could Paul do. The God of Israel himself had healed him, had come to him, and was revealing his will to him. Yes, it was in a way that Paul would have never imagined, and in a way that would have seemed shocking to most Jews. The very man who had seemed like little more than a failed Messiah and who had died at the hands of the pagans was now being revealed as God’s very own Righteous One, the Messiah that had long been promised by God. The God of Israel really had returned to free his people from their oppression but they had gotten the bad guy wrong. It wasn’t the pagan nations or the Roman Empire but the power of sin and death. The God of Israel was calling Paul to be his witness to the good news that Jesus really was the Son of God who had defeated sin and death, and in him was everything that Israel had hoped for (2 Cor. 1:20).
Ananias had called him to enter into fulfillment of the great promises of the prophets that one day God’s people would truly be able to call on his name and be saved (Joel 2:32; Zech. 13:9). But his was not coming about in a way that Paul or anyone else might have seen coming. It makes sense, of course, looking back in hindsight, that by being baptized into the life of Christ one is, in fact, calling on the name of the Lord. The term “name” was used in such a way in those times that it could be virtually synonymous with “life,” and that was the point. In calling on the name of the Lord at baptism, one was calling on, and demonstrating faith that the life of Christ is the only path to salvation.
After that, Paul was still not maligning the Lord or the Temple despite the fact that he was now being accused of both things. He was actually praying in the Temple complex as any good Jew would, when the Lord came to him again and told him to leave in respect to his safety. It was God himself who foresaw and warned Paul that the Jews would not accept the truth of his testimony at that time, and they were in danger of repeating that error now. Paul stressed that he knew how difficult it would be for the Jews to swallow his testimony. He could hardly believe it himself. He was not disgruntled Jew looking to cast off the beliefs of his people. He was a devout believer of the one, true God who was willing to follow wherever that God led. That God was calling him to be a witness to the resurrected Christ and if the Jews wouldn’t accept his testimony, then that was fine because God had something else in mind for him anyway. He would be sent to the Gentiles to bring them into God’s family.
And that is when the stuff hit the proverbial fan. Centuries of anger and disdain for the ungodly and destructive ways of the Gentile pagans and hundreds of years of longing for God to end the long exile of God’s people from God himself, largely at the hands of those same pagans (at least in the eyes of the Jews) came spewing out in Paul’s assertion that God had sent him to the Gentiles. He had the audience up to that point but that was way too far for them. How dare Paul insinuate that God was allowing the pagans into his family as they were without following the Law, without becoming Jewish; it was unthinkable. Despite everything else that Paul had said, this was all they heard and then they quickly filled in all of the gaps with their own preconceived prejudices. It no longer mattered what Paul would have said after that. The Jews were now convinced that he really had been teaching pagan Gentiles that they could become God’s people without doing anything and that he really had been telling Jews to abandon the Law of Moses and desecrate Gods’ Word and the Temple. They had heard what they wanted to hear and nothing else mattered.
With those words, all of the anger and frustration that had been building up in the Jewish people were about to be aimed at Paul. They wanted him wiped off the face of the earth, saving for him the feelings of disgust that are generally saved for those that people feel have betrayed them, feelings which are often much deeper and more explosive than the actual enemy.
So, just as we saw as the crowds violently and maliciously call for the death of Jesus, they wanted the same for Paul. This was perhaps a sad parody of the parable of the prodigal son when the younger brother returned home, only to be rejected by the older brother. This whole incident took place probably months or even weeks after Paul wrote the book of Romans where he expressed his own crushing sorrow over the fact that his own Jewish brethren were rejecting the Messiah to the point that he almost felt that he would trade places with him if he could (Rom. 9:3-4). They had a great zeal for God but it was without knowledge and they had been left in the precarious position of trying to obtain righteousness their own way rather than understanding and accepting what God was actually doing (Rom. 10:2-3). One of the great hopes of Paul’s ministry was that in bringing the Gentiles into the kingdom of God it would spur some of the Jews to jealously seeing that this was their God, their hope, their inheritance, and be motivated into accepting the truth of the gospel. If only they would hear him out and let him finish his speech. Sadly, they were not the first to refuse to hear out the full message of the gospel and drown it out with their own expectations and prejudices, and they weren’t the last. In fact, history and experience shows us that they weren’t even close to the last.
Devotional Thought
Paul was willing to stand before a hostile audience and share the gospel even though he knew the chances of success were slim. It was an uncomfortable and even dangerous situation, but Paul felt compelled by the love of Christ despite the circumstances. Do you share Paul’s zeal? What difficult and uncomfortable circumstances are you willing to wade into today in order to share the gospel with someone else?
17 “After I came back to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple complex, I went into a visionary state 18 and saw Him telling me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about Me!’
19 “But I said, ‘Lord, they know that in synagogue after synagogue I had those who believed in You imprisoned and beaten. 20 And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I was standing by and approving,[d] and I guarded the clothes of those who killed him.’
21 “Then He said to me, ‘Go, because I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”
22 They listened to him up to this word. Then they raised their voices, shouting, “Wipe this person off the earth—it’s a disgrace for him to live!”
Dig Deeper
I have recently taken a liking to a campy little science fiction show called “Warehouse 13” on the SyFy Network. It’s certainly not the highest budget show or even the most well-made but I really enjoy the fun themes and adventures of the series and I like the characters that they have created. The show chronicles a team of relic hunters who travel around the world collecting artifacts that have somehow been imbued with the power to induce amazing and somewhat magical events if invoked in the proper manner. Of course, the catch is that there are always bad guys who wish to harness the power of these artifacts for there own nefarious plans. The team must chase down and capture these artifacts and lock them safely away in Warehouse 13. In the most recent season, the team welcomed a new member to help them as the need to collect artifacts and fight off the bad guys continued to mount. But just when they were facing their stiffest challenge, this new member of their group betrayed them. They were facing a life and death situation against a bad guy who seemed poised to take control of the Warehouse itself and gain the power of all of the thousands of artifacts. As you can imagine, his betrayal caused a major amount of bitterness on the part of those that he had betrayed. How could someone so vital to their cause betray them when the challenges were at their most dangerous? When they finally tracked him down, he was with the primary bad guy that they were chasing but as they trapped this betrayer, he had an amazing tale to tell them just before dying as a result of actions of the bad guy. He had not betrayed them at all. Their boss that oversaw all of the operations at the Warehouse had actually called him to go undercover. They thought he was betraying him but he was actually working for their benefit the entire time. At that moment they had a big decision to face. Would they believe him or reject his story?
Paul might have been able to identify with this fictional character just a bit. He was a proud and zealous Jew and was willing to take a life or given his own in defense of God’s Law. He was making his way through the Jewish ranks and quickly becoming one of the major players in Judaism and their fight to rid Israel of this new Christian movement gathered around their so-called Messiah Jesus. Just when this fight began to reach a fever pitch, Paul had seemingly betrayed his own brethren and joined the other side. This must have been rather dumbfounding for his fellow Jews and led them to despise him as a blasphemous betrayer, even worse, in some ways, than other Christians because of all that he had given up.
To add to this bitterness and hatred for Paul was the historical background to all of this. The Jewish people had suffered greatly at the hands of the pagan nations. They had been slaughtered ruthlessly and scattered throughout the world time again, ripped from their homeland and dragged off into exile, all because they were the people of God’s Law. They refused to betray their God, at least from their perspective, and had paid the price for it. Now they laid on the ground once again in their own homeland with the boot of the pagan oppressor on their necks, this time in the form of the Roman Empire, and waited for God to free them from pagan domination. They waited for God to return and exalt his people, cast off the evil that ruled over them, show himself as the God of Israel, and rule over his people once-and-for-all. At that time, thought the Jews, God would put the pagan nations in their place and call them, humbled and defeated, to the mountain of the Lord to somehow share in God’s grace.
But just when things were at their worse, Paul had abandoned them, or so they thought. But now Paul was standing before them trying to explain that they had gotten it all wrong. He wasn’t betraying them and he certainly wasn’t abandoning the God of Israel. In fact, he had been working under the orders of their God the whole time and if the people would just hear him out they would see that he had been working to help them and serve God without fail. He was no betrayer but was as devoted to God as he had ever been.
That is why throughout this speech Paul is so careful to point out, at every possible opportunity, that Paul was and continued to act as a good and devout Jew who was nothing more than a servant to the God of Israel. In fact, after he had been confronted by the heavenly light and figure that announced that it was the Messiah himself who was confronting Paul from God’s realm in heaven, Paul was directed to Ananias. He doesn’t stress that Ananias was already a follower of Christ but that he was a devout man who followed the Law and still had a good reputation among the Jews in Damascus. Paul wanted them to see that he was no rabble rouser fighting against the Law and the Jewish people. He was a follower of God just as they were.
When Ananias came in there was no blasphemy or pagan rituals going on, he was praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Ananias spoke to him of “the God of our fathers” and was the conduit through whom that God worked to restore the sight that Paul had lost for three days. There was no betrayal here. What else could Paul do. The God of Israel himself had healed him, had come to him, and was revealing his will to him. Yes, it was in a way that Paul would have never imagined, and in a way that would have seemed shocking to most Jews. The very man who had seemed like little more than a failed Messiah and who had died at the hands of the pagans was now being revealed as God’s very own Righteous One, the Messiah that had long been promised by God. The God of Israel really had returned to free his people from their oppression but they had gotten the bad guy wrong. It wasn’t the pagan nations or the Roman Empire but the power of sin and death. The God of Israel was calling Paul to be his witness to the good news that Jesus really was the Son of God who had defeated sin and death, and in him was everything that Israel had hoped for (2 Cor. 1:20).
Ananias had called him to enter into fulfillment of the great promises of the prophets that one day God’s people would truly be able to call on his name and be saved (Joel 2:32; Zech. 13:9). But his was not coming about in a way that Paul or anyone else might have seen coming. It makes sense, of course, looking back in hindsight, that by being baptized into the life of Christ one is, in fact, calling on the name of the Lord. The term “name” was used in such a way in those times that it could be virtually synonymous with “life,” and that was the point. In calling on the name of the Lord at baptism, one was calling on, and demonstrating faith that the life of Christ is the only path to salvation.
After that, Paul was still not maligning the Lord or the Temple despite the fact that he was now being accused of both things. He was actually praying in the Temple complex as any good Jew would, when the Lord came to him again and told him to leave in respect to his safety. It was God himself who foresaw and warned Paul that the Jews would not accept the truth of his testimony at that time, and they were in danger of repeating that error now. Paul stressed that he knew how difficult it would be for the Jews to swallow his testimony. He could hardly believe it himself. He was not disgruntled Jew looking to cast off the beliefs of his people. He was a devout believer of the one, true God who was willing to follow wherever that God led. That God was calling him to be a witness to the resurrected Christ and if the Jews wouldn’t accept his testimony, then that was fine because God had something else in mind for him anyway. He would be sent to the Gentiles to bring them into God’s family.
And that is when the stuff hit the proverbial fan. Centuries of anger and disdain for the ungodly and destructive ways of the Gentile pagans and hundreds of years of longing for God to end the long exile of God’s people from God himself, largely at the hands of those same pagans (at least in the eyes of the Jews) came spewing out in Paul’s assertion that God had sent him to the Gentiles. He had the audience up to that point but that was way too far for them. How dare Paul insinuate that God was allowing the pagans into his family as they were without following the Law, without becoming Jewish; it was unthinkable. Despite everything else that Paul had said, this was all they heard and then they quickly filled in all of the gaps with their own preconceived prejudices. It no longer mattered what Paul would have said after that. The Jews were now convinced that he really had been teaching pagan Gentiles that they could become God’s people without doing anything and that he really had been telling Jews to abandon the Law of Moses and desecrate Gods’ Word and the Temple. They had heard what they wanted to hear and nothing else mattered.
With those words, all of the anger and frustration that had been building up in the Jewish people were about to be aimed at Paul. They wanted him wiped off the face of the earth, saving for him the feelings of disgust that are generally saved for those that people feel have betrayed them, feelings which are often much deeper and more explosive than the actual enemy.
So, just as we saw as the crowds violently and maliciously call for the death of Jesus, they wanted the same for Paul. This was perhaps a sad parody of the parable of the prodigal son when the younger brother returned home, only to be rejected by the older brother. This whole incident took place probably months or even weeks after Paul wrote the book of Romans where he expressed his own crushing sorrow over the fact that his own Jewish brethren were rejecting the Messiah to the point that he almost felt that he would trade places with him if he could (Rom. 9:3-4). They had a great zeal for God but it was without knowledge and they had been left in the precarious position of trying to obtain righteousness their own way rather than understanding and accepting what God was actually doing (Rom. 10:2-3). One of the great hopes of Paul’s ministry was that in bringing the Gentiles into the kingdom of God it would spur some of the Jews to jealously seeing that this was their God, their hope, their inheritance, and be motivated into accepting the truth of the gospel. If only they would hear him out and let him finish his speech. Sadly, they were not the first to refuse to hear out the full message of the gospel and drown it out with their own expectations and prejudices, and they weren’t the last. In fact, history and experience shows us that they weren’t even close to the last.
Devotional Thought
Paul was willing to stand before a hostile audience and share the gospel even though he knew the chances of success were slim. It was an uncomfortable and even dangerous situation, but Paul felt compelled by the love of Christ despite the circumstances. Do you share Paul’s zeal? What difficult and uncomfortable circumstances are you willing to wade into today in order to share the gospel with someone else?
Friday, February 10, 2012
Paul Speaks to the Crowd
37 As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. 38 “Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?”
39 Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”
40 After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic[a]:
Acts 22
1 “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”
2 When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.
Then Paul said: 3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4 I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5 as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.
6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’
8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.
10 “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ 11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.
Dig Deeper
One of the hot button issues that is currently raging in the United States is the rise of citizens of the US who align themselves with Muslim terrorist groups and seek to oppose and even fight against their own country. This causes a very specific problem for a country that prides itself on being run by the rule of law. Citizens of the United States have certain rights and freedoms that come along with that citizenship. This becomes especially relevant when one is accused of committing a crime. Terrorists around the world, however, have been labeled as enemy combatants in a war and are treated as such. But what should be done with a citizen of the United States who is Muslim and decided to throw their lot in with the terrorists regardless of whether their illegal activities take place within the borders of the United States or somewhere abroad? Should these people be considered as enemy combatants based on their illegal activities and treated as such or should they be considered US citizens and be afforded all of the rights of a citizen accused of a crime? The answer to that bears large ramifications for the way that someone is treated within our legal system.
But imagine that some American citizen was arrested in Iraq or somewhere engaging in open terrorism against the interests of the United States and was arrested and brought back to the US. Imagine the anger of the people of the US that would be aimed at this traitor who they had been informed was in fact a citizen of America. People would be livid and want something done and probably not be very interested in hearing this man babble on about his reasons for betrayal. But what if he didn’t think that he was a traitor at all but was actually trying to help his countrymen? Imagine that as he was brought down a busy street in New York City, being transported to a courtroom, he turned to the angry mob surrounding the courthouse and asked to address them. After being given permission, he quickly turned to the crowd and addressed them in perfect English and even with a New York accent. That might surprise the crowd just enough to listen for a moment wouldn’t it? For how long, though, would depend on what he had to say once he began to speak.
Paul, of course, would not have considered himself to be a traitor at all to his Jewish brethren. In fact, he longed for them all to come to salvation and join God’s family in the Messiah (Rom. 9:1-6). But many of the Jews saw him as a traitor and they were more than ready to treat him like any foreign blasphemer. The crowd would seemingly have been happy to execute Paul on the spot but they contented themselves with protesting loudly, on the verge of rioting in their anger against Paul. But them something a bit surprising happened for the crowd, most of whom by now didn’t know much about Paul other than he was a betrayer of his people. He addressed them in their own language and he appealed to them politely as a fellow countrymen. This had to have been a bit shocking for the crowd as most people tend to imagine their enemies as violent brutes that are more beast than animal. This man spoke to them in their own tongue and he knew how to appeal to them as a fellow Jew. This would earn Paul, at least for a moment, the one thing he desired deeply: the chance to be heard out by his fellow Jews.
First though, we must look at some important historical background to this situation. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, there was an Egyptian who claimed to be a prophet who led as many as 30,000 men (Luke’s number of 4,000 seems a little more realistic and less exaggerated) to the Mount of Olives with the intent of taking Jerusalem and the Temple. He promised his men that the walls of Jerusalem would miraculously fall soon after they arrived but instead, Felix, the governor, attacked and killed or captured most of the Egyptian’s men, with the Egyptian himself narrowly escaping. He had whipped up the Messianic hopes of some but had sorely disappointed and was certainly reviled by most Jews. It makes a fair amount of sense, then, that with such an uproar going on that the commander, Lysias, mistook Paul for this Egyptian. It probably only helped to confirm that suspicion when Paul addressed him respectfully in Greek, something that he would have been expected from any Egyptian. Some English translations, including the NIV, give the impression that Paul’s Greek speaking stood in opposition to Lysias’ thoughts that this might be the Egyptian but the sentence should probably be translated something more like: “Do you know Greek? Then surely you are the Egyptian. . . “ It seems reasonable that the commander might even have been hoping that this was the Egyptian as that would have been quite a big moment for his own career to capture this rascal.
Much to the commander’s surprise, though, this was no Egyptian but a highly educated Jew from Tarsus, “a citizen of no ordinary city.” In this short sentence Paul established two things. The first is that he was a man of distinction and education, not the type that would start a riot in the Temple. The second important thing he did was establish that he was from no ordinary city. This wasn’t just a case of Paul taking pride in his home town. There was a belief in Paul’s day that the city one came from said a great deal about the measure of the man. Being from Tarsus gave Paul some credibility. Thus, even though he was bloodied and beaten, Paul was still calmly and coolly in control of the situation through the power of the Spirit and having both respected the commander’s authority while making significant honor and status claims for himself, he was given the permission to speak to this crowd who may have contained at least a few people who knew Paul from the old days as well as a large majority who did not recognize him by sight.
Paul began his speech in the same way that Stephen did in Acts 7:2 (an interesting irony from the man who had listened to Stephen’s speech and then had him put to death), confirming his solidarity with the crowd as fellow Jews. Just as Paul had wisely used his language abilities to catch the attention of the Roman commander, he now switched and apparently spoke to the crowd in the most common language for Jews in Jerusalem, Aramaic. Paul reiterated for the crowd that he was born in Tarsus, thus establishing his status and honor for the crowd, but he was no mere Diaspora Jew (a Jew who lived away from Jerusalem having been scattered after the 6th century BC defeat of Jerusalem). He had been born in Tarsus but had been brought up and educated in Jerusalem.
Beyond that, he was educated at the feet of the highly respected Gamaliel. We have already met Gamaliel in Acts 5 when he was urging his fellow Jews to back away from the tactic of persecuting Christians lest they find themselves fighting God. Gamaliel was of the more tolerant brand of Judaism of Paul’s day known as the school of Hillel, but Paul had developed his own convictions that didn’t line up with his famous teacher. This would be analogous in our day to a politician cutting his teeth as a staff for a rather moderate Independent, only to come on out in his own right as an extremely conservative far right candidate. Paul’s biggest credential of credibility with this crowd was that he was so zealous in defending the Law of Moses that he put more than one member of the Christian group to death (they called themselves “The Way” in the early days) and many more in prison. In simple terms, Paul was a big player in these matters. He personally knew the high priest, something few in the crowd would have been able to claim, and he and many members of the Council could verify the truth of Paul’s statements. He was no small-time rabble rouser.
But as he made his way to Damascus, something amazing happened. Something that Paul would have never expected. But at this point, it is worth asking an important question concerning the fact that this is the second time of three that Luke records Paul giving the story of his conversion. Why would Luke include this three times in one short book? We are probably left with two possibilities. Either Luke was a forgetful or careless writer and editor, or he intentionally wanted us to become extremely familiar with Paul’s story to the point where we start to know it almost as well as our own story. I’ll leave you to choose from those two options, although the answer seems rather obvious.
Before Paul could arrive in Damascus, he was stunned by a light that was so bright and powerful that it overpowered the light of the midday Sun. In piecing together the three accounts that Paul gives of this incident (Acts 9; 22; 26) it seems that his companions saw the light and heard a sound but could not understand specific words as Jesus confronted Saul and asked him why he was persecuting him. Those must have been chilling words for a man that was persecuting the church, but had no concept that he was truly persecuting a Messiah who stood in the presence of the Father in heaven.
Having been humbled and already prepared to recognize this heavenly figure as the Lord (Lord was the Greek term “kyrios” and could mean simply “sir” or “master” but was most often used by used in this context to refer to YHWH himself, the God of Israel). This was no small change in Paul’s worldview. The man that Paul saw as a failed Messiah at best had just radically changed everything he thought he knew. This Jesus, the man Paul was quickly realizing was nothing less than the Messiah and the Lord himself, told Paul to go into Damascus and wait for further instruction. Paul was carefully laying out his case to help his audience see that he had no other choice but to obey this heavenly voice. In fact, he wanted them to see that they would have likely down the same thing were they in Paul’s shoes.
At this point Paul has not yet gotten into the more controversial parts of his testimony but the foundation has been laid. Paul was no fool, though, he wasn’t just out to antagonize the crowd. Rather he desperately wanted to share the gospel with them in a way that they could best hear it. This meant that Paul deftly brought his audience in so that they could most easily identify with him and hear him out. The question is: Would they turn away from their desire to persecute him and listen to Paul, turning to the Messiah as Lord just as Paul had turned away from his persecution of the Messiah and turned to Jesus as Lord and Messiah?
Devotional Thought
Luke shares Paul’s conversion testimony no less than three times, and surely Paul shared it more often that that. It was one of his best vehicles to explain to people who Jesus was and why he was preaching the good news of Jesus. Do you have your own testimony of what Jesus has done in your life down so that you can share it powerfully with others? Take some time to think about that if you haven’t already done so.
37 As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. 38 “Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?”
39 Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”
40 After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic[a]:
Acts 22
1 “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”
2 When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.
Then Paul said: 3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4 I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5 as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.
6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’
8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.
10 “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ 11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.
Dig Deeper
One of the hot button issues that is currently raging in the United States is the rise of citizens of the US who align themselves with Muslim terrorist groups and seek to oppose and even fight against their own country. This causes a very specific problem for a country that prides itself on being run by the rule of law. Citizens of the United States have certain rights and freedoms that come along with that citizenship. This becomes especially relevant when one is accused of committing a crime. Terrorists around the world, however, have been labeled as enemy combatants in a war and are treated as such. But what should be done with a citizen of the United States who is Muslim and decided to throw their lot in with the terrorists regardless of whether their illegal activities take place within the borders of the United States or somewhere abroad? Should these people be considered as enemy combatants based on their illegal activities and treated as such or should they be considered US citizens and be afforded all of the rights of a citizen accused of a crime? The answer to that bears large ramifications for the way that someone is treated within our legal system.
But imagine that some American citizen was arrested in Iraq or somewhere engaging in open terrorism against the interests of the United States and was arrested and brought back to the US. Imagine the anger of the people of the US that would be aimed at this traitor who they had been informed was in fact a citizen of America. People would be livid and want something done and probably not be very interested in hearing this man babble on about his reasons for betrayal. But what if he didn’t think that he was a traitor at all but was actually trying to help his countrymen? Imagine that as he was brought down a busy street in New York City, being transported to a courtroom, he turned to the angry mob surrounding the courthouse and asked to address them. After being given permission, he quickly turned to the crowd and addressed them in perfect English and even with a New York accent. That might surprise the crowd just enough to listen for a moment wouldn’t it? For how long, though, would depend on what he had to say once he began to speak.
Paul, of course, would not have considered himself to be a traitor at all to his Jewish brethren. In fact, he longed for them all to come to salvation and join God’s family in the Messiah (Rom. 9:1-6). But many of the Jews saw him as a traitor and they were more than ready to treat him like any foreign blasphemer. The crowd would seemingly have been happy to execute Paul on the spot but they contented themselves with protesting loudly, on the verge of rioting in their anger against Paul. But them something a bit surprising happened for the crowd, most of whom by now didn’t know much about Paul other than he was a betrayer of his people. He addressed them in their own language and he appealed to them politely as a fellow countrymen. This had to have been a bit shocking for the crowd as most people tend to imagine their enemies as violent brutes that are more beast than animal. This man spoke to them in their own tongue and he knew how to appeal to them as a fellow Jew. This would earn Paul, at least for a moment, the one thing he desired deeply: the chance to be heard out by his fellow Jews.
First though, we must look at some important historical background to this situation. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, there was an Egyptian who claimed to be a prophet who led as many as 30,000 men (Luke’s number of 4,000 seems a little more realistic and less exaggerated) to the Mount of Olives with the intent of taking Jerusalem and the Temple. He promised his men that the walls of Jerusalem would miraculously fall soon after they arrived but instead, Felix, the governor, attacked and killed or captured most of the Egyptian’s men, with the Egyptian himself narrowly escaping. He had whipped up the Messianic hopes of some but had sorely disappointed and was certainly reviled by most Jews. It makes a fair amount of sense, then, that with such an uproar going on that the commander, Lysias, mistook Paul for this Egyptian. It probably only helped to confirm that suspicion when Paul addressed him respectfully in Greek, something that he would have been expected from any Egyptian. Some English translations, including the NIV, give the impression that Paul’s Greek speaking stood in opposition to Lysias’ thoughts that this might be the Egyptian but the sentence should probably be translated something more like: “Do you know Greek? Then surely you are the Egyptian. . . “ It seems reasonable that the commander might even have been hoping that this was the Egyptian as that would have been quite a big moment for his own career to capture this rascal.
Much to the commander’s surprise, though, this was no Egyptian but a highly educated Jew from Tarsus, “a citizen of no ordinary city.” In this short sentence Paul established two things. The first is that he was a man of distinction and education, not the type that would start a riot in the Temple. The second important thing he did was establish that he was from no ordinary city. This wasn’t just a case of Paul taking pride in his home town. There was a belief in Paul’s day that the city one came from said a great deal about the measure of the man. Being from Tarsus gave Paul some credibility. Thus, even though he was bloodied and beaten, Paul was still calmly and coolly in control of the situation through the power of the Spirit and having both respected the commander’s authority while making significant honor and status claims for himself, he was given the permission to speak to this crowd who may have contained at least a few people who knew Paul from the old days as well as a large majority who did not recognize him by sight.
Paul began his speech in the same way that Stephen did in Acts 7:2 (an interesting irony from the man who had listened to Stephen’s speech and then had him put to death), confirming his solidarity with the crowd as fellow Jews. Just as Paul had wisely used his language abilities to catch the attention of the Roman commander, he now switched and apparently spoke to the crowd in the most common language for Jews in Jerusalem, Aramaic. Paul reiterated for the crowd that he was born in Tarsus, thus establishing his status and honor for the crowd, but he was no mere Diaspora Jew (a Jew who lived away from Jerusalem having been scattered after the 6th century BC defeat of Jerusalem). He had been born in Tarsus but had been brought up and educated in Jerusalem.
Beyond that, he was educated at the feet of the highly respected Gamaliel. We have already met Gamaliel in Acts 5 when he was urging his fellow Jews to back away from the tactic of persecuting Christians lest they find themselves fighting God. Gamaliel was of the more tolerant brand of Judaism of Paul’s day known as the school of Hillel, but Paul had developed his own convictions that didn’t line up with his famous teacher. This would be analogous in our day to a politician cutting his teeth as a staff for a rather moderate Independent, only to come on out in his own right as an extremely conservative far right candidate. Paul’s biggest credential of credibility with this crowd was that he was so zealous in defending the Law of Moses that he put more than one member of the Christian group to death (they called themselves “The Way” in the early days) and many more in prison. In simple terms, Paul was a big player in these matters. He personally knew the high priest, something few in the crowd would have been able to claim, and he and many members of the Council could verify the truth of Paul’s statements. He was no small-time rabble rouser.
But as he made his way to Damascus, something amazing happened. Something that Paul would have never expected. But at this point, it is worth asking an important question concerning the fact that this is the second time of three that Luke records Paul giving the story of his conversion. Why would Luke include this three times in one short book? We are probably left with two possibilities. Either Luke was a forgetful or careless writer and editor, or he intentionally wanted us to become extremely familiar with Paul’s story to the point where we start to know it almost as well as our own story. I’ll leave you to choose from those two options, although the answer seems rather obvious.
Before Paul could arrive in Damascus, he was stunned by a light that was so bright and powerful that it overpowered the light of the midday Sun. In piecing together the three accounts that Paul gives of this incident (Acts 9; 22; 26) it seems that his companions saw the light and heard a sound but could not understand specific words as Jesus confronted Saul and asked him why he was persecuting him. Those must have been chilling words for a man that was persecuting the church, but had no concept that he was truly persecuting a Messiah who stood in the presence of the Father in heaven.
Having been humbled and already prepared to recognize this heavenly figure as the Lord (Lord was the Greek term “kyrios” and could mean simply “sir” or “master” but was most often used by used in this context to refer to YHWH himself, the God of Israel). This was no small change in Paul’s worldview. The man that Paul saw as a failed Messiah at best had just radically changed everything he thought he knew. This Jesus, the man Paul was quickly realizing was nothing less than the Messiah and the Lord himself, told Paul to go into Damascus and wait for further instruction. Paul was carefully laying out his case to help his audience see that he had no other choice but to obey this heavenly voice. In fact, he wanted them to see that they would have likely down the same thing were they in Paul’s shoes.
At this point Paul has not yet gotten into the more controversial parts of his testimony but the foundation has been laid. Paul was no fool, though, he wasn’t just out to antagonize the crowd. Rather he desperately wanted to share the gospel with them in a way that they could best hear it. This meant that Paul deftly brought his audience in so that they could most easily identify with him and hear him out. The question is: Would they turn away from their desire to persecute him and listen to Paul, turning to the Messiah as Lord just as Paul had turned away from his persecution of the Messiah and turned to Jesus as Lord and Messiah?
Devotional Thought
Luke shares Paul’s conversion testimony no less than three times, and surely Paul shared it more often that that. It was one of his best vehicles to explain to people who Jesus was and why he was preaching the good news of Jesus. Do you have your own testimony of what Jesus has done in your life down so that you can share it powerfully with others? Take some time to think about that if you haven’t already done so.
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