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?