This morning at 6 a.m. at Central Baptist Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas, twenty men gathered to begin a five week journey through Ted Roberts’ “Conquer Series.”  The series is designed to address issues of sexuality in general and sexual addiction in particular for men.  I am honored to be co-teaching this course with Travis Burns, a dear friend and Central Baptist member.  In promoting this, we made it abundantly clear that this course is not just for men who consider themselves to have a problem and coming to it is not an admission of anything at all.  On the contrary, we asked the men of the church to prayerfully consider coming simply because it is such a massive issue and an area in which lots of men do struggle and any man potentially could.  I am writing to recommend this tremendous resource.

Ted Roberts is a former Marine fighter pilot who served in Vietnam.  He is also a brother in Christ who had to overcome the ensnarement of sexual addiction.  As a result of what God has done in his life, he founded Pure Desire Ministries out of which the Conquer Series has come and from which numerous other resources are offered.  This morning as I watched the first (of five) dvd session, listened to the amazing and encouraging discussion among the men that came, and received feedback as the day went on, I determined that I wanted to draw attention to this very well done and very effective resource.

The dvd sessions are thorough, of impressive production quality, and quite moving.  Ted Roberts’ is an amazing man with a truly transformative ministry and his passion is evident as one observes the Conquer Series.  The approach is not a quick fix and is realistic about how difficult the journey can be for men who are stuck in this addiction, but is ultimately hopeful about the power of Christ to free us.  Roberts is most emphatic that this takes a community of accountability in which men help men to break free.

As a pastor, I have long been alarmed by the number of men who come to me with confessions of sexual addictions.  Please understand:  I am not ashamed of or angry at or confused by these confessions.  It only makes me angry at Satan and his efforts to destroy men.  Rather, I am simply saddened that we have created a church culture in which men do not feel free to confess their struggles in this area until they have gone too far or until they have done serious damage to themselves or their families.  The Church simply must find a way to address these issues in a timely, sophisticated, biblically faithful, Christ honoring, and redemptive way.  To that end, I can think of no better first step than this series.

If you are a pastor or lead a men’s ministry or a small group, I would encourage you to consider this resource.  (By the way, I am NOT being paid to say this!)  Your men will be challenged and encouraged and, ultimately, your church family as well as the families of your men will be strengthened.

Acts 27

¹ And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan Cohort named Julius. ² And embarking in a ship of Adramyttium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica. ³ The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. ⁴ And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us. ⁵ And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra in Lycia. ⁶ There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. ⁷ We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Cnidus, and as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of Crete off Salmone. ⁸ Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea. ⁹ Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast was already over, Paul advised them, ¹⁰ saying, “Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.” ¹¹ But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said. ¹² And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there, on the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there. ¹³ Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore. ¹⁴ But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. ¹⁵ And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. ¹⁶ Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship’s boat. ¹⁷ After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing that they would run aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the gear, and thus they were driven along. ¹⁸ Since we were violently storm-tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo. ¹⁹ And on the third day they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. ²⁰ When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. ²¹ Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. ²² Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. ²³ For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, ²⁴ and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ ²⁵ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. ²⁶ But we must run aground on some island.” ²⁷ When the fourteenth night had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. ²⁸ So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms. A little farther on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms. ²⁹ And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. ³⁰ And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, ³¹ Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” ³² Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship’s boat and let it go. ³³ As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. ³⁴ Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.” ³⁵ And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. ³⁶ Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves. ³⁷ (We were in all 276 persons in the ship.) ³⁸ And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. ³⁹ Now when it was day, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach, on which they planned if possible to run the ship ashore. ⁴⁰ So they cast off the anchors and left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the ropes that tied the rudders. Then hoisting the foresail to the wind they made for the beach. ⁴¹ But striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf. ⁴² The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any should swim away and escape. ⁴³ But the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, ⁴⁴ and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land.

In 1840, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his astounding poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus.

It was the schooner Hesperus,

      That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,

      To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

      Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

      That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

      His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

      The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailòr,

      Had sailed to the Spanish Main,

“I pray thee, put into yonder port,

      For I fear a hurricane.

“Last night, the moon had a golden ring,

      And to-night no moon we see!”

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

      And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,

      A gale from the Northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

      And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain

      The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

      Then leaped her cable’s length.

“Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,

      And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

      That ever wind did blow.”

He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat

      Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

      And bound her to the mast.

“O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

      Oh say, what may it be?”

“‘T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!” —

      And he steered for the open sea.

“O father! I hear the sound of guns,

      Oh say, what may it be?”

“Some ship in distress, that cannot live

      In such an angry sea!”

“O father! I see a gleaming light,

      Oh say, what may it be?”

But the father answered never a word,

      A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

      With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

      On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

      That savèd she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave

      On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

      Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept

      Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between

      A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf

      On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,

      She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew

      Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves

      Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side

      Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

      With the masts went by the board;

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,

      Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

      A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,

      Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

      The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

      On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

      In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

      On the reef of Norman’s Woe!

What a beautiful, moving, stirring, sad poem! There can be little doubt why it is so appreciated, even to this day. That poem is certainly worth more than the $25 Longfellow was paid for it in 1840!

As I read that poem and then read Acts 27, I am struck by the amazing similarities between the two. Both involve high drama at sea. Both involve a passenger warning those on the ship about the dangers of being on the ocean at that time. Both involve a battering storm that wrecks the ships. And both involve members of the crew floating up onto dry land on pieces of the ship. There is a stark difference, however. The biblical sea adventure recorded in Acts 27 involves the saving and safety of the entire crew whereas Longfellow’s poem involves the death of the crew and, most tragically, the pitiful death of the captain’s daughter.

Everybody loves a good sea adventure! One of my favorite books is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. While studying Acts 27 I was struck also by the similarities between that novel with this chapter as well, not so much in the storyline, of course, as in the structure. By that I mean that both Moby Dick and Acts 27 contain a great deal of technical nautical information and terminology, but this fascinating information is punctuated here and there by powerful insights that move and inspire the reader.

Acts 27, however, is God’s Word, not a novel. Even so, our chapter is filled to overflowing with a frankly surprising amount of nautical information. In fact, A.T. Robertson writes that “the great detail and minute accuracy of Luke’s account of this voyage and shipwreck throw more light upon ancient seafaring than everything else put together.”[1]

Our chapter involves Paul’s sea journey from Caesarea to Rome. Paul was certainly no stranger to sea travel. Ben Witherington notes that there are around a dozen accounts in Acts of Paul traveling the sea and that “these accounts suggest that Paul covered some three thousand miles on the sea during the nearly three decades of his ministry recorded in Acts 9-28.”[2] That is a lot of time on the water!

This was a particularly dangerous sea journey and Paul was no stranger to danger on the water! Verse 9 tells us that “much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast was already over.” This is an interesting statement that allows us to date this journey as well as to understand why it was dangerous. John Polhill explains.

“The fast” (v.9) refers to the Day of Atonement. Calculated by the phases of the moon, the Day of Atonement fell at various times from year to year but always in late September or early October. For ancient travel on the Mediterranean, mid-September to early November was considered a dangerous time for traveling the open sea. After early November such travel ceased altogether and generally was not resumed until the beginning of February at the earliest.[3]

So this not a good time to be on the sea, but on the sea they were. What happened there revealed two powerful truths that we truly need to grasp. They were held by and, in our text, demonstrated by Paul in most dramatic fashion.

If you belong to God, His promises belong to you.

Let us begin with a fundamental fact of the Christian life: if you belong to God, His promises belong to you. This was the language of Paul, “belonging to God.” What gave rise to this most telling statement was the high drama of a dangerous sea voyage as Paul was sent to Rome. We will work through the voyage details in a fairly quick manner, paying attention to Paul’s words about the promises of God.

¹ And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan Cohort named Julius. ² And embarking in a ship of Adramyttium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica. ³ The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. ⁴ And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us. ⁵ And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra in Lycia. ⁶ There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. ⁷ We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Cnidus, and as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of Crete off Salmone. ⁸ Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea. ⁹ Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast was already over, Paul advised them, ¹⁰ saying, “Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.” ¹¹ But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said. ¹² And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there, on the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there. ¹³ Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore. ¹⁴ But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. ¹⁵ And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. ¹⁶ Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship’s boat. ¹⁷ After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing that they would run aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the gear, and thus they were driven along. ¹⁸ Since we were violently storm-tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo. ¹⁹ And on the third day they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. ²⁰ When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.

And there you have it. Stranded on the sea, cold, hungry, unable to face the winds, and at the mercy of the elements, Luke, who was on the ship, writes, “all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.” This is reminiscent of the words that Dante puts over the gate of hell in the Inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

Certainly this was the feeling of the men on the ship, just as, truth be told, it is the feeling of many of you here today. I wonder if so many have ever felt such hopelessness as men and women feel today. You can see it everywhere: etched on the faces of a people who are going through great trials and difficulties, in the almost nihilistic words of people who wonder if it is worth while to even attempt to hope in anything, and in our cultural obsession with entertainment distractions that attempt to shield us from the difficulties of life.

There are those of you in here today who know exactly what I am talking about. It even seems at times as if hope is waning among the people of God, as if we who are the recipients of the divine promises also wonder if it is not perhaps madness to hope. Some of you could close your eyes right now and see yourself on the deck of this storm-tossed ship. It seems like the waters are just about to overtake you, as if the tilting ship of your life is just about to capsize.

That is how the crew felt. Perhaps that is even how Luke felt. But there was one there who did not feel that way…who would not feel that way. Listen.

²¹ Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. ²² Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. ²³ For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, ²⁴ and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ ²⁵ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. ²⁶ But we must run aground on some island.”

Glorious! Behold the audacious faith of a man of God! He informed the no-doubt stunned crew that God spoke to him in the night and assured him that none of the crew would die since Paul was on board and God needed Paul to stand before Caesar in Rome. Thus, since they were, for this part of their journey, caught up in the mighty missionary movements of God, they would live because Paul was aboard!

Has it occurred to you that this is the very opposite of the story of Jonah? There, the crew’s life was in danger because disobedient Jonah was on board. Here the crew’s life was safe because the obedient Paul was on board! In Jonah, Jonah finds himself on a stormy sea as a result of his fleeing God’s call on to testify to a pagan power. In Acts 27, Paul finds himself on a stormy sea as he is obediently moving toward the fulfillment of is call to testify to a pagan power.

Paul was gripped by a definite hope of the safety he had resting in the promises of God. Notice the characteristics of Paul’s hope:

• It came from God. (v.23)
• It allowed him to “take heart” in the midst of terrifying difficulties. (v.22,25)
• It cast fear away. (v.24)

The most telling aspect of Paul’s hope was that it was founded on promises given to Paul because Paul belonged to God!

²³ For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship

The promises belonged to Paul because Paul belonged to God. Furthermore, this was the God Whom Paul worshipped!

Perhaps the most foolish thing church members say is, “I know you haven’t seen me in worship in a while, but I’ve been going through a difficult time.” How utterly absurd! It is precisely the worship of God that gives us the endurance to withstand hard times and, most importantly, that opens the doors of our hearts to receive the promises of God in the midst of hard times!

Do you find that you faith is very fragile, that it is prone to collapse at the first sign of trouble? I would ask you: can you say with Paul that God is the God to whom you belong and Whom you worship? Do you belong to Him?

Church, hear me: a casual acquaintanceship with God is not going to get you through cancer, through divorce, through crippling grief, through fear, through anxiety, through addiction, through weakness, or through temptation. Only belonging to God will accomplish this!

Calvin Miller wrote:

“God,” I cried, “I need You,

Can You hear me? Are You there?”

The great glass throne seemed empty,

There was no one in His chair.

I waited in His absence.

Finally on my bloody knees

I laid my doubting obscene head

On His high-gilded guillotine,

And meekly said, “I trust!”[4]

That is what it is to belong to God! To place our doubting obscene heads on His high-gilded guillotine and meekly say, “I trust.” This is what Paul did. We must do so as well.

And if His promises belong to you, His peace does as well.

And here is the prize: with His promises comes His peace. To have one is to have the other. Pick the story back up in verse 27.

²⁷ When the fourteenth night had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. ²⁸ So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms. A little farther on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms. ²⁹ And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. ³⁰ And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, ³¹ Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” ³² Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship’s boat and let it go. ³³ As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. ³⁴ Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.” ³⁵ And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. ³⁶ Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves.

Beautiful! Simply beautiful! The men were still frantic to escape on their own terms. Paul, however, encouraged them to calm down and stay on the ship. Then he told them to eat. Why? Because even though it had been fourteen days of suspense, “not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.” Then, Paul said the blessing.

He said the blessing and started eating.

Stunned, the crew, Luke informs us, “were encouraged and ate some food themselves.”

How does a man attain to this level of peace? It is simply staggering. He attains to this level of peace when he rests so deeply and completely in the promises of God that doubting and fearing seems positively obscene to him. This was Paul.

Friends, what had happened to Paul? What had happened to give him this kind of courage? What had happened to give him this kind of peace?

I will tell you: he met Jesus on the Damascus road many years before this. He met Jesus, and he had not abandoned Jesus, and the peace of Christ had taken up residence in his mind.

It happens. It happens when men and women and boys and girls determine that their voiced creeds will be the concrete convictions of their actual hearts, that they will actually plant their feet in what they claim to be true: the gospel, the good news that Jesus has come, that Jesus has risen, that Christ is for us!

Here is how Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 1:

¹⁹ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. ²⁰ For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

“In Him, it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.”

In Jesus. Jesus is the promise of God.

Andrew Hess has compiled a list of all of Christ’s promises.[5] It is a powerful list to behold! Among them are these:

Matthew 5:8 – Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Matthew 6:3-4 – But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

John 8:31-32 – So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

John 10:9-10 – I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

John 14:12-14 – Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

John 15:11 – These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

John 15:5 – I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:7 – If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Revelation 22:12-13 – Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

Revelation 22:20 – He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

And here is my favorite promise:

Hebrews 13:5b – “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

What a promise! What a beautiful promise! “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Paul claimed this promise. He knew it! It belonged to him because he belonged to God! Do you? Do you?

On October 26, 1862, Charles Spurgeon stood before his London congregation and preached on this verse: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Hear what he said:

Oh, I wish this promise belonged to you all! I would give my right hand if it could! But some of you must not touch it; it does not belong to some of you, for it is the exclusive property of the man who trusts in Christ. “Oh!” saith one, “then I will trust in Christ.” Do it, soul, do it; and if thou trustest in him he will never leave thee…Wicked as thou art, he will make thee holy, he will never leave thee. Though thou hast nought that should win his love, he will press thee to his bosom; he will never leave thee. Living or dying, in time or in eternity, he will never forsake thee, but will surely bring thee to his right hand, and say, “Here am I, and the children whom thou hast given me.”[6]

Ah! The promises of Jesus! Jesus is God’s Yes to humanity.

Sometimes that Yes comes in difficult and unexpected and even painful ways…but it is all God’s Yes to us in Christ!

Are you on the stormy sea? Are you panicking, afraid, fearful? Rest in the divine Yes of Jesus. Run to Him. Fall at His feet, take hold of Him, and refuse to let go.

He is a good King.

He is the promise of God.

Do you belong to Him?

[1] A.T. Robertson, Acts. Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.III (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1930), p.163-456.

[2] Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), p.422.

[3] John B. Polhill, Acts. The New American Commentary. Vol.26. David Dockery, gen. ed. (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1992), p.518.

[4] Calvin Miller, The Divine Symphony (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 2000, p.110.

[5] https://ahessblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/the-promises-of-christ.pdf

[6] https://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0477.htm

I picked up a copy of John Faulkner’s book, My Brother Bill, from Beckham’s Bookshop in New Orleans last year.  Having just finished it, I can say it is a profoundly likable, charming, and enjoyable book.  If you are a William Faulkner fan, you will find it insightful and interesting as well.

The book is a simple (that’s not an insult), accessible, and fairly-straight forward account of William Faulkner as told by his little brother John, who died in 1963, one year after his older brother.  John Faulkner had an amazing memory and the reader will no doubt be touched by his affectionate anecdotal remembrances.  John tells numerous stories of the Faulkner boys (there were three – the youngest, Dean, would later die after a student pilot, who he was training in William’s plane, crashed) and their growing up years in Oxford, Mississippi. Being the youngest of three myself, I found these brotherly remembrances quite touching.  They were, in short, normal mischievous boys growing up in the deep South in the early 1900’s.  William was always the leader, and John looked up to him with obvious and understandable esteem and respect.

John tells of how William (and John as well) became writers and how fame did and did not change William.  A fierce devotion to Oxford remained throughout their lives, even though the good people of Oxford struggled at times to understand the occasionally eccentric William.  Even so, John paints a picture of his brother as being unfailingly kind to those in need, an independent thinker, a brilliant writer and thinker, and a true friend to him.

There are intriguing anecdotes throughout the book.  To name a few:  William’s father did not like the novel Sanctuary (the first book that made him famous) and tried to have it suppressed until their mother told him to let him be.  They were occasional Sunday School churchgoers but were never really religious.  Their father attended for a while, but only because the Scopes Monkey Trial and the prospect of evolution scared him into it.  That did not last long.  John reveals that the family, including himself, was largely irritated by William’s integrationist phase, but that his brother had his own mind and did not care if people disagreed with him.  (John strikes me as having been a good man but a fairly typical Southerner for the time regarding race.)  He reveals that people occasionally thought William was a communist, but that he was not.  He says that William did give $50 once to the lone Communist in Oxford simply because he felt sorry for him and his underdog position.  He further reveals that his brother could run through money like nobody else and that the money largely came through his periodic stints writing for Hollywood.  Along the way, John reveals a great deal about life in early-twentieth-century Mississippi.

If you enjoy memoirs and Southern history, you will appreciate this book.  If you appreciate William Faulkner and his writings, you will really enjoy it!  Highly recommended.

I heard this song some years back and it has never quite left me.  I was thinking about it today.  Skeptically, it might be because it’s got a kind of melancholic pathos to it and it’s grey and rainy out (i.e., sometimes the old Seasonal Affective Disorder still gets me! Ha!).  More seriously, I suspect it’s because there is something profound about its simple melody and its powerful insights.  Mother Theresa once referred to the dying lepers of Calcutta as “Christ in distressing disguise.”  I think that’s what Groves is getting at here.

Of course, both Groves and Mother Theresa were simply restating what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 25:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Enjoy:

Acts 25-26

¹ Now three days after Festus had arrived in the province, he went up to Jerusalem from Caesarea. ² And the chief priests and the principal men of the Jews laid out their case against Paul, and they urged him, 3 asking as a favor against Paul that he summon him to Jerusalem—because they were planning an ambush to kill him on the way. ⁴ Festus replied that Paul was being kept at Caesarea and that he himself intended to go there shortly. ⁵ “So,” said he, “let the men of authority among you go down with me, and if there is anything wrong about the man, let them bring charges against him.” ⁶ After he stayed among them not more than eight or ten days, he went down to Caesarea. And the next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought. ⁷ When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him that they could not prove. ⁸ Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.” ⁹ But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me?” ¹⁰ But Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as you yourself know very well. ¹¹ If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.” ¹² Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, “To Caesar you have appealed; to Caesar you shall go.” ¹³ Now when some days had passed, Agrippa the king and Bernice arrived at Caesarea and greeted Festus. ¹⁴ And as they stayed there many days, Festus laid Paul’s case before the king, saying, “There is a man left prisoner by Felix, ¹⁵ and when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews laid out their case against him, asking for a sentence of condemnation against him. ¹⁶ I answered them that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him. ¹⁷ So when they came together here, I made no delay, but on the next day took my seat on the tribunal and ordered the man to be brought. ¹⁸ When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. ¹⁹ Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. ²⁰ Being at a loss how to investigate these questions, I asked whether he wanted to go to Jerusalem and be tried there regarding them. ²¹ But when Paul had appealed to be kept in custody for the decision of the emperor, I ordered him to be held until I could send him to Caesar.” ²² Then Agrippa said to Festus, “I would like to hear the man myself.” “Tomorrow,” said he, “you will hear him.” ²³ So on the next day Agrippa and Bernice came with great pomp, and they entered the audience hall with the military tribunes and the prominent men of the city. Then, at the command of Festus, Paul was brought in. ²⁴ And Festus said, “King Agrippa and all who are present with us, you see this man about whom the whole Jewish people petitioned me, both in Jerusalem and here, shouting that he ought not to live any longer. ²⁵ But I found that he had done nothing deserving death. And as he himself appealed to the emperor, I decided to go ahead and send him. ²⁶ But I have nothing definite to write to my lord about him. Therefore I have brought him before you all, and especially before you, King Agrippa, so that, after we have examined him, I may have something to write. ²⁷ For it seems to me unreasonable, in sending a prisoner, not to indicate the charges against him.”

¹ So Agrippa said to Paul, “You have permission to speak for yourself.” Then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense: ² “I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, ³ especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews. Therefore I beg you to listen to me patiently. ⁴ “My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews. ⁵ They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee. ⁶ And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, ⁷ to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! ⁸ Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? ⁹ “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. ¹⁰ And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. ¹¹ And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. ¹² “In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. ¹³ At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. ¹⁴ And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ ¹⁵ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. ¹⁶ But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, ¹⁷ delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you ¹⁸ to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. ¹⁹ “Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, ²⁰ but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. ²¹ For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. ²² To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: ²³ that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.” ²⁴ And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.” ²⁵ But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. ²⁶ For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. ²⁷ King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.” ²⁸ And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” ²⁹ And Paul said, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains.” ³⁰ Then the king rose, and the governor and Bernice and those who were sitting with them. ³¹ And when they had withdrawn, they said to one another, “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.” ³² And Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.”

Kent Hughes tells the amazing story of Steve Linscott.

            In the early morning hours of October 4, 1980, a young nursing student was brutally murdered in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. Following the advice of well-meaning friends, Steve Linscott, a student at Emmaus Bible College, told police about a dream he’d had the night of the crime. Oak Park police later arrested him, interpreting his dream account as the roundabout confession of a psychopathic killer. Later a jury found Linscott guilty, and he was sentenced to forty years in prison. There was just one problem – Linscott was innocent! Only after time in prison and numerous legal appeals – a process that lasted twelve years – was Linscott free and vindicated.

            Those years undoubtedly brought the most difficult challenges Linscott will ever face – separated from his wife and children for three and a half years except for brief visits, wondering if he had somehow brought all this on himself and why God had allowed it to happen, surviving prison violence. Those were tough years, and yet years of growth and a growing awareness of the goodness of God. In Linscott’s words:

I have come to realize that we cannot judge God’s purposes, nor where He places us, nor why He chooses one path for our lives as opposed to another.

            The Bible itself is replete with accounts of divine action (or inaction) that does not seem fair, that does not make sense except when viewed in light of God’s perfect plan. Thousands of Egyptian children were massacred while a baby named Moses was spared. Jacob was a liar and a thief, and yet it was he, not his faithful brother Esau, who received the blessing of their father Isaac and of God. On one level it makes no sense that God would allow His Son to die for the sins of humankind. But God has a plan – a perfect plan.[1]

What a difficult but powerful learning experience that was for Steve Linscott! Paul would have understood. The last chapters of Acts are simply a chronicle of Paul having to give a defense against trumped up and false charges intended to destroy him. Like Steve Linscott, however, Paul saw these challenges with the right eyes. In fact, Paul used these unjust circumstances as amazing opportunities for bearing witness to Christ.

We are going to work through chapters 25 and 26, for much of these chapters are simply the narrative unfolding of this fascinating political and legal drama. In the midst of each chapter, however, we see further evidence of the Paul’s resolve to die to self and live to Christ.

Having been turned over to Porcius Festus by his predecessor Felix, Paul continued to deny the fallacious allegations of the Jews. When Festus asked Paul if he would prefer to be tried in Jerusalem (which would certainly have given the conspirators occasion to murder Paul), Paul appealed to Caesar. As a Roman citizen, it was within his writes to do so. Craig Keener explains:

Roman citizens had the right to appeal to Caesar’s tribunal (provocation ad Caesarem)…A citizen could appeal a capital sentence (appelatio), but appealing before a case had been heard (provocatio), as Paul does here, was less common, because it was not necessarily advantageous.[2]

Paul made use of this provocatio and thereby found himself in the presence of King Agrippa. King Agrippa, in our text, is King Agrippa II, whom Clinton Arnold calls a “client-king from the northern territories (which includes a portion of the area of modern Lebanon).” Furthermore, Agrippa was “the grandson of Herod the Great, a valued friend of Rome, knowledgeable about the affairs of the Jews, curator of the temple, and someone in charge of appointing high priests in Jerusalem. If anyone could legally lay claim to the title ‘king of the Jews,’ it is Agrippa.”[3]

Thus, Paul found himself before the powers. His behavior in this situation is most telling and, indeed, convicting for us all!

Paul’s life was above reproach and baseless accusations of misconduct would not stick to him.

Before we consider the key doctrine that fueled Paul’s boldness, let us note that Paul’s life was above reproach and the baseless accusations of misconduct leveled him would not stick. His integrity was such that his opponents simply could not lie and destroy him. We will begin with Paul before Festus.

⁷ When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him that they could not prove. ⁸ Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.”

Paul stubbornly, doggedly, and clearly offered a simple refutation of the baseless charge of sedition: “They’re wrong!” And, indeed, Paul spoke as if his innocence was self-evident to any fair-minded person observing the proceedings. When Festus asks if Paul wished to be sent to Jerusalem, Paul responds in this way:

¹⁰ But Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as you yourself know very well. ¹¹ If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.”

And, indeed, Festus did “know very well,” for he himself said this to King Agrippa about Paul:

¹⁸ When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed.

Whatever else Festus meant by this, he certainly meant that Paul was no enemy of the state, no rank anarchist or usurper or insurrectionist. On the contrary, Festus saw the Jews’ accusations as being rather intramural and theological whereas they no doubt wanted him to see them as much more serious, thereby prompting state action against Paul.

There can be no doubt that the Jews were profoundly irritated by the inability of their wilder accusations to stick to Paul. This is because Paul was a man of integrity! He did not apologize for preaching Christ and Him crucified, but he would not allow himself to be wrongly impugned as an ignoble wretch and troublemaker.

Paul was, so to speak, keeping his accusers, and his judges, honest. He was willing to die for Christ, but he was not willing to be wrongly accused of hypocrisy and wickedness. He was a follower of Jesus, and wished to be recognized as such.

Church, live your life in such a way that no man or no woman or no group can impugn your character!

Paul was willing to suffer for the historical reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

No, Paul refused to suffer for baseless charges, but he was more than willing to suffer, if need be, for a particular reality that had forever altered the course of his own life: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can see this in Festus’ explanation of the situation to Agrippa as well as in Paul’s on words before the king.

¹⁷ So when they came together here, I made no delay, but on the next day took my seat on the tribunal and ordered the man to be brought. ¹⁸ When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. ¹⁹ Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive.

This is almost charming in its simplicity. “Here’s what this whole brouhaha seems to be about,” Festus said. “There’s a man named Jesus. He’s dead but Paul says He’s alive.”

I love it! That is indeed what the whole brouhaha was about! Paul, speaking to Agrippa, said this:

⁴ “My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews. ⁵ They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee. ⁶ And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, ⁷ to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! ⁸ Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

Paul was, once again, being provocative. It was provocative because, yes, he was being accused on the basis of his belief in the resurrection of the dead (a belief, Paul seems to relish in pointing out, that the Pharisees who are accusing him also hold to), but Paul and the Jews all knew that it was his particular take on the resurrection that had landed him in hot water. After all, Paul was not merely arguing for a general resurrection. He was arguing that God raised Jesus from the dead!

In a moment, Paul boldly challenges Agrippa with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but here he simply owned up to the fact that the only real point in question was a conviction he had concerning the resurrection. Let us notice that Paul denied the baseless charges of wickedness only to bring forward the primary issue: resurrection.

Paul was willing to suffer for the historical reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus mattered profoundly to Paul. He refused to deny this, even as he playfully goaded the Pharisees over their own belief in resurrection, as if to say to them, “If you have no problem believing that God can raise the dead, why do you have such a problem with the idea of God raising Jesus from the dead?”

One wonders if our modern church culture can make sense of this kind of radical commitment to theological truths? One wonders if our lowest-common-denominator age even knows how to understand a man who is willing to die for a conviction?

Roger Olson is a Baptist theologian at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Recently, Dr. Olson wrote about an experience he had in a more left-leaning Baptist church.

I will never forget one Sunday morning “worship service” at this Baptist (so-called) church. The pastor was sitting with his new wife. His ex-wife and children were sitting in another part of the sanctuary. Some people in the church were proud that they were “handling this matter well.” The “sermon” was a dialogue between two women leaders of the congregation and the discussion between them was about doctrinal diversity within the congregation. One had been uncomfortable with the total lack of doctrinal norms or standards and the other one felt that, at times, the church had over emphasized beliefs. They eventually agreed that the “wonderful thing” about this church was that people could belong without believing anything in particular.[4]

What would Paul have made of this conversation? He no doubt would have been stunned. For Paul, for the early Church, and, most of all, for the Lord Jesus Himself, the great truths of the Kingdom of God were not filler for an otherwise bored Church, they were essential truths, the truths of the gospel.

The resurrection has never been a mere idea for the Church. The resurrection is a fact that has changed the way we view the world and everything in it. The resurrection of Jesus on that first Easter morning is the reason we have hope, the reason we gather weekly to worship, the reason we are emboldened to bare witness for Christ. Will Willimon put it like this:

Certain facts should be known, for the Christian faith is not about feelings, even very deep feelings, but about something which has happened, something which has happened to us: the fact of the risen Christ.[5]

To that, Paul would say, “Amen!”

Paul was emboldened by the living Christ to use his trial as an occasion for calling a king to accept Christ.

So powerful was the reality of the resurrection that it compelled Paul to call upon King Agrippa himself to accept Christ. Watch.

²² To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: ²³ that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.” ²⁴ And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.” ²⁵ But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. ²⁶ For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. ²⁷ King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.” ²⁸ And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” ²⁹ And Paul said, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains.”

Festus was initially shocked by Paul’s boldness before Agrippa. “Paul,” he exclaims, “you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.” Why did he say this? The key is found in Paul’s rather jarring words in verse 22 that he stood “testifying both to small and great.” And here was his testimony: “that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”

Do you see what has happened here? In saying this, Paul was revealing that he was not merely giving an account of what had happened to him, he was indeed bearing witness to the King himself (“testifying both to small and great”), that is, calling the King to consider these truths for himself!

Well! This a bold move indeed. Even in our own judicial system we cannot imagine a man on the witness stand calling upon a judge to consider the implications of his words for his own (i.e., the judge’s) heart! Paul goes even further and turned the table on Agrippa, questioning him outright: “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.”

The King saw the astonishing turn of events for what they were: Paul was attempting to win the King to Christ!

He asked Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?”

Paul answered, “Yes!” “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains.”

Ah! “I wish that you knew Christ as I know Christ, Agrippa!”

Will Willimon observes that “there can be no doubt that Luke believes that a personal experience of the risen Christ is the bedrock upon which faithful witness is built.”[6] To be sure, that is the case! We might also say that a personal experience of the risen Christ is the bedrock upon which bold, audacious, shocking, unsettling, unexpected, unquenchable, undiluted, passionate, exuberant, no-holds-barred, unconquerable witness is built!

Do you see what the risen Christ can do with a person wholly yielded to Him? He makes of him or her a champion, a leader, a proclaimer of gospel truth! He uses a man or woman like this in mighty ways!

Church, your King was slain, yet now He lives! Go…tell…everybody…and never stop!

[1] R. Kent Hughes, Acts. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996), p.317-318.

[2] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: 1993), p.396.

[3] Clinton E. Arnold, “Acts.” Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Vol.2. Clinton E. Arnold, gen. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p.355.

[4] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/02/another-great-moderate-baptist-leader-on-the-necessity-of-doctrines/#ixzz3TB2sYM3U

[5] William H. Willimon, Acts. Interpretation. (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988), p.181.

[6] Willimon, p.180.

Acts 24

¹ And after five days the high priest Ananias came down with some elders and a spokesman, one Tertullus. They laid before the governor their case against Paul. ² And when he had been summoned, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying: “Since through you we enjoy much peace, and since by your foresight, most excellent Felix, reforms are being made for this nation, ³ in every way and everywhere we accept this with all gratitude. ⁴ But, to detain you no further, I beg you in your kindness to hear us briefly. ⁵ For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. ⁶ He even tried to profane the temple, but we seized him. ⁸ By examining him yourself you will be able to find out from him about everything of which we accuse him.” ⁹ The Jews also joined in the charge, affirming that all these things were so. ¹⁰ And when the governor had nodded to him to speak, Paul replied: “Knowing that for many years you have been a judge over this nation, I cheerfully make my defense. ¹¹ You can verify that it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem, ¹² and they did not find me disputing with anyone or stirring up a crowd, either in the temple or in the synagogues or in the city. ¹³ Neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me. ¹⁴ But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, ¹⁵ having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. ¹⁶ So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. ¹⁷ Now after several years I came to bring alms to my nation and to present offerings. ¹⁸ While I was doing this, they found me purified in the temple, without any crowd or tumult. But some Jews from Asia— ¹⁹ they ought to be here before you and to make an accusation, should they have anything against me. ²⁰ Or else let these men themselves say what wrongdoing they found when I stood before the council, ²¹ other than this one thing that I cried out while standing among them: ‘It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you this day.’” ²² But Felix, having a rather accurate knowledge of the Way, put them off, saying, “When Lysias the tribune comes down, I will decide your case.” ²³ Then he gave orders to the centurion that he should be kept in custody but have some liberty, and that none of his friends should be prevented from attending to his needs. ²⁴ After some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁵ And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.” ²⁶ At the same time he hoped that money would be given him by Paul. So he sent for him often and conversed with him. ²⁷ When two years had elapsed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus. And desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison.

Evelyn Waugh was a famous satirist and novelist in the early part of the twentieth century. A Christian, Waugh usually found a way to speak in all of his novels about the most important things in life. In his novel, Decline and Fall, there is a scene in which Otto Silenus tells the hero of the story, Paul, about the meaning of life. His illustration is powerful:

“…Shall I tell you about life?”

            “Yes, do,” said Paul politely.

            “Well, it’s like the big wheel at Luna Park. Have you seen the big wheel?”

            “No, I’m afraid not.”

            “You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all round, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It’s great fun.”

            “I don’t think that sounds very much like life,” said Paul rather sadly.

            “Oh, but it is, though. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There’s generally some one in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he’s paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he’s allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there’s a point completely at rest, if one could only find it. I’m not sure I am not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others…who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that.”[1]

What a fascinating picture of life, and how true! Life, Otto says, is like a great turning wheel. If you sit at the edges, you get thrown off and hurt. At the very least, you get dizzy and disoriented at the edges of life. The closer you move to the center, however, the more stability you have. At the very center, he says, “there’s a point completely at rest, if one could only find it.”

Did you hear what else he said? He said that the people who own the wheel will usually hire somebody who knows how to get to the very center. So they stand in the center and dance. By doing so, they are providing an example to everybody else in the room. They are saying, by their dancing, that you can have joy and live at the very center, but not until you get there.

I believe this is a very helpful illustration for life. There is a place of stability, of calm, a place where we can stand and live and even dance. But that place is at the very center, and none of us ever seem to be able to reach the center. But One did. Jesus came and showed us how to stand in the center of life so that we would not be thrown off, so that we could find a place of equilibrium. Jesus showed us the way.

I love the fact that the early Church was known as followers of “the Way.” In fact, the Church itself came to be called “the Way.” Why? It is undoubtedly related to the Church’s conviction that Jesus is the way, as He said in John 14.

¹ “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Yes, Jesus is the way. Why? Because He opens the door to God. Because He is the door to God. Because He is God! He is the One who stands the center and calls all of us to Him. He is, therefore, the source of stability, of life, of living! So the Church came to be known as “the Way” because it had embraced the way of Christ.

Jesus enables all of those who come to Him to have life and that abundantly. Paul knew this. For Paul, Jesus was the way. For Paul, Jesus was the key to unlocking everything he had been missing. He says as much in his defense before the governor Felix. Let us first set the stage. As usual, Paul was being accused of wrongdoing.

¹ And after five days the high priest Ananias came down with some elders and a spokesman, one Tertullus. They laid before the governor their case against Paul. ² And when he had been summoned, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying: “Since through you we enjoy much peace, and since by your foresight, most excellent Felix, reforms are being made for this nation, ³ in every way and everywhere we accept this with all gratitude. ⁴ But, to detain you no further, I beg you in your kindness to hear us briefly. ⁵ For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. ⁶ He even tried to profane the temple, but we seized him. ⁸ By examining him yourself you will be able to find out from him about everything of which we accuse him.” ⁹ The Jews also joined in the charge, affirming that all these things were so.

This Turtullus would appear to be a lawyer who is going to present the Jews’ case against Paul to Felix. He began with a flowery introduction intended to flatter Felix. This is called a captatio benevolentiae and was a standard rhetorical device intended to win the favor of the presiding authority. Turtullus, by all accounts, lays it on thick. Craig Keener, commenting on this introduction, writes that “although flattery was sometimes true, this example is blatantly false: revolutionaries had escalated under Felix’s corrupt and repressive administration, bringing neither peace nor reforms.”[2]

Regardless, Turtullus laid out his case, charging Paul with being an instigator, a troublemaker, and seditious. Felix, hearing the charges, turned his attention to Paul.

¹⁰ And when the governor had nodded to him to speak, Paul replied: “Knowing that for many years you have been a judge over this nation, I cheerfully make my defense. ¹¹ You can verify that it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem, ¹² and they did not find me disputing with anyone or stirring up a crowd, either in the temple or in the synagogues or in the city. ¹³ Neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me.

Paul began by brushing off the allegations of the Jews, flatly denying that he had gone up to the Temple to cause any trouble. Then, Paul moved to a positive statement about who he wa and what he was about. It is here that we can begin to unfold just what Jesus had freed Paul to do and how Jesus had brought Paul to the stable center of life.

¹⁴ But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets ¹⁵ having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.

The key phrase in verse 14 is “according to the Way.” That is a controlling phrase and it colors all of the particulars that follow it. “According to the Way” could just as easily be rendered “because of Jesus.” In other words, all that follows is situated by Paul within the context of Jesus Christ and the gospel of Christ. “According to the Way.” “According to Jesus and what He has done for me, for us.”

And what had Jesus done for Paul? Four things, the first three of which are in verses 14 and 15.

Worship

First, Jesus had freed Paul to worship.

^14a But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers

Paul said that he worshipped “the God of our fathers.” The “our” there is a reference to the Jews who stand beside him condemning him. This is a critically important phrase. Paul did not see Jesus as having pulled him away from the worship of the God of Israel. Paul saw Jesus as pulling him deeper into the worship of the God of Israel.

Paul undoubtedly knew the words of Jesus from Matthew 5:

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Whether or not he knew that exact statement, he knew the truth of it: that in Christ Jesus God’s promises to His people and the covenants had been fulfilled. Jesus said that nothing from the Law would pass until all was accomplished…then Jesus accomplished it! So in Christ we find the perfection to which the Law pointed and which the Law demanded. Jesus is the hope of Israel.

For this reason, Paul said he worshipped God “according to the Way” or “according to the way of Jesus” or “because of Jesus.”

Jesus is the door through which the true worship of God takes place. This is what makes the modern ecumenical effort to allegedly beautify worship by pouring any and all other forms of (i.e., non-Jesus-based) worship into one large pot so very frustrating. I heard last week of a Baptist church that called a preacher fixated on Buddhist meditation techniques. So he began to teach these Buddhist meditation techniques. Understandably, the church was upset! We do not believe that the gospel of Christ needs Buddha to make it cool or edgy. Christ is enough!

Christ, for Paul, was the key, he was “the Way.” Jesus had unlocked for Paul a deeper and fuller understanding of what worship is than he had ever known before…and may I remind us that, prior to coming to know Jesus, Paul was a very devout man! He had worshiped before, but not like this! This is what he meant when he said he worshipped “according to the Way.”

Belief

Similiarly, Jesus enabled Paul to believe.

^14b But this I confess to you, that according to the Way…believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets

What can this mean? Had Paul not believed before? Yes, he had known belief before. Listen to what he says in Philippians 3.

^4b If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

What, then, was the problem? With a religious pedigree like that, how could Paul attain a deeper position of belief “according to the Way”? Listen to that text again but with Paul’s conclusion.

^4b If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. ⁷ But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— ¹⁰ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Amazing! Paul essentially says, “All that I thought I knew before and all of my religious devotions and actions are nothing compared to knowing Jesus!”

Paul refers to “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” What a beautiful way of putting it! Indeed, there is an infinitely exceptional quality to Jesus Christ that makes all rival truth claims recede into the darkness!

According to the Way…I believe!

We are told in our supposedly progressive age that faith itself is inherently beautiful. “Just believe in something,” we are told, as if the object of that belief is superfluous. Hollywood people say this kind of thing all the time: “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual. I believe deeply. I feel deeply. I am aware of some kind of vague but present power.”

Dear friends, is that enough? Is it enough to console yourself with the fact that you know this visible, temporal world is not all there is? How can that be enough! A child of 2 years old knows that!

No, give us Jesus! Let the object of our affections be the Jesus of space and time and the Jesus of eternity, the Jesus who walked the dusty streets of Palestine and the Jesus who now sits at the right hand of the Father making intercession for the saints!

Hope

And on the basis of this belief, Paul now had hope!

^14a But this I confess to you, that according to the Way…¹⁵ having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.

Paul is here alluding to his earlier argument before the Jewish high priest that both he and the Pharisees held to a belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is true. But Paul also meant the resurrection of the dead in Christ because of the resurrection of Christ Himself! Paul therefore had hope in this life and the life to come because Paul knew that Jesus had defeated death in the resurrection.

“According to the Way…having a hope in God.”

Jesus gives us hope.

It is a terrible thing to have no hope.

Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, held to a kind of eclectic spirituality. He held to certain aspects of Christianity and rejected others. As a result, he was excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. Kazantzakis died of leukemia in 1957. His tombstone reads, “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”[3]

No doubt he thought that was a brave sentiment. “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”

I find it tragic.

Christians do not say, “I hope for nothing.” Paul said that he had hope in God “that there will be a resurrection.” But so many today do not have hope!

On Edgar Allen Poe’s deathbed, he was tormented by a lack of hope. One biographer described his deathbed scene like this:

He asked her [Dr. Moran’s wife] if there was any hope. She replied, thinking he meant, hope for recovery, that her husband thought him a very ill man. He then said, “I meant hope for a wretch like me beyond this life.” She tried to comfort him, “with words of the Great Physician,” and read him the fourteenth chapter of St. John. Wiping the beads of perspiration from his brow, she smoothed his pillow, gave him a soothing draught, and departed to make his shroud. What Poe thought no one will ever know. Nothing less heartrending can truthfully be said, than that the death of Edgar Allan Poe was more painful than his life.[4]

How very, very sad! Poe had no hope! Did he trust in Christ there at the very end? Oh, I very much hope so! But we do not know, and so we are left to wonder.

But Paul knew the rock-solid reality of the hope that Christ brings. Paul had wagered all on Christ and, “according to the Way,” he now how the hope of life eternal!

Live

He also had the hope of life here and now! Paul continued the account of his story before Felix.

¹⁶ So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. ¹⁷ Now after several years I came to bring alms to my nation and to present offerings. ¹⁸ While I was doing this, they found me purified in the temple, without any crowd or tumult. But some Jews from Asia— ¹⁹ they ought to be here before you and to make an accusation, should they have anything against me. ²⁰ Or else let these men themselves say what wrongdoing they found when I stood before the council, ²¹ other than this one thing that I cried out while standing among them: ‘It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you this day.’” ²² But Felix, having a rather accurate knowledge of the Way, put them off, saying, “When Lysias the tribune comes down, I will decide your case.” ²³ Then he gave orders to the centurion that he should be kept in custody but have some liberty, and that none of his friends should be prevented from attending to his needs. ²⁴ After some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus.

This is most interesting. It is helpful to know that Felix had stolen his Jewish wife Drusilla from her Jewish husband after he became fixated on her. It was something of a scandal. Thus, the contents of Paul’s words to this couple take on a poignant and pointed meaning.

²⁵ And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.” ²⁶ At the same time he hoped that money would be given him by Paul. So he sent for him often and conversed with him. ²⁷ When two years had elapsed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus. And desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison.

Paul “reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment.” It is understandable, then, that “Felix was alarmed.” His marriage had been founded on a complete lack of righteousness and self-control and fear of the coming judgment. Was Paul trying to make a point to this couple in particular? Almost certainly! Felix’s alarm almost certainly knew the uncomfortable implications of Paul’s words.

That being said, he is making a point for us as well. We must remember that this proclamation was likewise related to that phrase “according to the Way.” In other words, because of Jesus I now know how to exercise self-control, to live righteousness, and to be ready for judgment. That is, because of the Way, because of Jesus, we are now equipped to live life.

What Jesus gave Paul was therefore not only hope for the life to come but the tools to live life here and now. John Stott has written that “life on earth is a brief pilgrimage between two moments of nakedness. So we would be wise to travel light. We shall take nothing with us.”[5] How very well said!

Paul stood between his two moments of nakedness with the knowledge that now, finally, he had found the center of life, the point of peace and equilibrium: Jesus Himself. For Paul, and for us, this meant regaining the ability to worship, believe, hope, and live!

The gifts of Christ are rich gifts indeed! Have you received them? If not, it is not for any lack of offering on His part, but rather for a lack of receiving on your own.

He offers them to you now.

Jesus’ hand is extended to you.

In that hand is life itself.

Won’t you take it?

Take it now.

[1] Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), p.282-283.

[2] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: 1993), p.394.

[3] Kazantzakis, Nikos (2012-09-04). Saint Francis (Kindle Location 51). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

[4] Hervey Allen. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allen Poe. (Murray Hill, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1934), p.674.

[5] John Stott, The Radical Disciple (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), p.21.

Acts 23

¹ And looking intently at the council, Paul said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.” ² And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. ³ Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?” ⁴ Those who stood by said, “Would you revile God’s high priest?” ⁵ And Paul said, “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’” ⁶ Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” ⁷ And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. ⁸ For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. ⁹ Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” ¹⁰ And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks. ¹¹ The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.” ¹² When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. ¹³ There were more than forty who made this conspiracy. ¹⁴ They went to the chief priests and elders and said, “We have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul. ¹⁵ Now therefore you, along with the council, give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you were going to determine his case more exactly. And we are ready to kill him before he comes near.” ¹⁶ Now the son of Paul’s sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul. ¹⁷ Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the tribune, for he has something to tell him.” ¹⁸ So he took him and brought him to the tribune and said, “Paul the prisoner called me and asked me to bring this young man to you, as he has something to say to you.” ¹⁹ The tribune took him by the hand, and going aside asked him privately, “What is it that you have to tell me?” ²⁰ And he said, “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him. ²¹ But do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him. And now they are ready, waiting for your consent.” ²² So the tribune dismissed the young man, charging him, “Tell no one that you have informed me of these things.” ²³ Then he called two of the centurions and said, “Get ready two hundred soldiers, with seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go as far as Caesarea at the third hour of the night. ²⁴ Also provide mounts for Paul to ride and bring him safely to Felix the governor.” ²⁵ And he wrote a letter to this effect: ²⁶ “Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings. ²⁷ This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them when I came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman citizen. ²⁸ And desiring to know the charge for which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their council. ²⁹ I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. ³⁰ And when it was disclosed to me that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him.” ³¹ So the soldiers, according to their instructions, took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris. ³² And on the next day they returned to the barracks, letting the horsemen go on with him. ³³ When they had come to Caesarea and delivered the letter to the governor, they presented Paul also before him. ³⁴ On reading the letter, he asked what province he was from. And when he learned that he was from Cilicia, ³⁵ he said, “I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive.” And he commanded him to be guarded in Herod’s praetorium.

Francis Chan is a well known Christian pastor, and understandably so. He has a true passion for the gospel as well as for the body of Christ and frequently communicates gospel truths in quite unique ways. For instance, in his book Crazy Love, Chan used a bag of potato chips to illustrate the tragedy of the lack of integrity in many Christians’ lives.

Recently I saw a bag of potato chips with a bold declaration splashed across the front: “Zero grams of trans fat.” I was glad to know that I wouldn’t be consuming trans fat, which research has shown is detrimental to my health. But then I flipped the bag over and read the ingredients list, which included things like “yellow #6” and other artificial colors, and partially hydrogenated oil (which is trans fat, just a small enough amount that they can legally call it “0 grams”). I thought it was incredibly ironic that these chips were being advertised in a way that makes me think they are not harmful yet were really full of empty calories, weird chemicals, and, ironically, trans fat.

It struck me that many Christians flash around their “no trans fat” label, trying to convince everyone they are healthy and good. Yet they have no substantive or healthful elements to their faith…Obviously, it’s not what you advertise that counts; it’s what you are really made of.[1]

Wow! That raises an interesting question: what are we really made of? You can usually tell what somebody is truly made of in times of great trial or testing. In those moments, we get to see if the label matches the reality. That was the case with Paul, anyway, as he stood before the Jewish high council to launch a defense of himself: his label matched his reality. His example in this episode (which really is just an explanation of his life) provides us with a model for how we too should live as followers of Jesus.

Live with such a fierce consistency that the charge of hypocrisy cannot stick.

Paul has already offered his apologia, his defense, before a larger crowd of the Jews. Now he is speaking to the religious authorities, indeed before the Jewish high priest himself, before whom he had been hauled.

¹ And looking intently at the council, Paul said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.”

Notice, first, the intensity of Paul’s focus and defense. He looked at them, not away from them. He did not mumble. He was not afraid. He was prepared to say what he needed to say. However, what he said first is most troubling! “I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.”

Well.

What on earth can this mean? After all, Paul was keenly aware of his own sinfulness, even going so far as to call himself “the chief of sinners.” How, then, can he say with a straight face that he had lived his life…before God…in good conscience…up to this day?

This is one of those instances in which a consideration of the original language will help us tremendously.

A.T. Robertson notes that the Greek for the phrase “lived my life before God” is pepoliteumai toi theoi and that the verb pepoliteumai is an “old verb” that means “to manage [the] affairs of [a] city (polis) or state, to be a citizen, [to] behave as a citizen.” He then quotes a paraphrase of the verse from Rackham as, “He had lived as God’s citizen, as a member of God’s commonwealth.” Furthermore, the word “conscience” is suneidesis which literally means “joint-knowledge” and probably carries the meaning here of Paul having lived consistently with what he felt was true at each stage of his life, whether wrongly as a persecutor of the Church or rightly now as a follower of Jesus. Regardles, Robertson tells us, “the golden thread of consistency runs through, as a good citizen of God’s commonwealth.”[2]

What Paul is saying, then, is that when he was a Jew and persecuted the Church, he was in error, yes, but he was nonetheless living consistently with what he thought was true and with what he thought would most bring glory to God. Then, when he became a believer, he saw the error of his ways and became a follower and champion of Jesus. In the former instance, he was in error. In the latter instance, he was correct. But in neither instance did Paul act as a hypocrite.

He was not arguing for moral perfection. That indeed would have been an audacious and false thing for Paul to do. On the contrary, he was trying to say that he was the type of person that lived in fierce consistency with his principles, even if his principles were mistaken. Thus, he seemed to be saying, “You can look at me and tell me you think I’m in error, but I defy you to look at me and tell me that I’m a hypocrite, or that I lack integrity, or that I’m an opportunist, or that I ride whatever wave happens to be fashionable at the time.”

Paul was radically committed to what he felt was true. This meant that when he was in error, he was all in with his error! But when he was right, he was all in with the truth! What he did not lack was integrity, and, in that sense, Paul could say he had operated in good conscience before God throughout his life. That is, he was a man who believed what he believed and said what he thought was true and would continue to do so until such time as he was shown to be in error.

Our age, like Paul’s age, is sorely lacking in this type of stubborn consistency. In Umberto Eco’s novel, Focault’s Pendulum, Signor Salon makes the following comment to Casaubon:

Today, even among ideologies, there’s no consistency. There are times when I think of switching to narcotics. There, at least you can rely on a heroin pusher to push heroin.[3]

Ha! Well, he is right. You can count on drug pushers to push drugs. You can say (rightly) that they are in error, but the average drug pusher knows what he is about. Tragically, this cannot be said of large swathes of the Christian Church today. Os Guinness put it like this:

Anyone who wants to observe religion in the modern world and find the sort of belief that behaves would be advised to look at the cults rather than at Christians. What cult members believe may be bizarre, and the way they behave even worse, but to their credit there is a consistency between their belief and their behavior which is rare in the modern world.[4]

Church, live with such a fierce consistency that the charge of hypocrisy cannot stick. Paul did! He was right in what he asserted, even though, as we will see, his assertion was not well received.

² And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. ³ Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?” ⁴ Those who stood by said, “Would you revile God’s high priest?” ⁵ And Paul said, “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’” ⁶ Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” ⁷ And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. ⁸ For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. ⁹ Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” ¹⁰ And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.

Paul deftly sized up the situation and played on the inter-party politics and theological conflicts between the Pharisees (who believed in a final resurrection of the dead) and Sadducees (who did not) to get the two sides to turn on each other. This conflict turned ugly and then violent, so Paul, once more, was saved by the soldiers who hauled him away from the riot.

Live with undaunted courage, knowing that the Lord Jesus stands beside you.

In addition to living with fierce consistency, this episode shows us that we should live with undaunted courage, knowing that the Lord Jesus stands beside us. After this tumultuous escape, something amazing happened to Paul in the night.

¹¹ The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”

The wording here (“the Lord stood by him”) means that Jesus himself appeared to Paul. He not only appeared to him, he spoke words of profound comfort and courage to him: “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.” Meaning, “Paul, I am with you, and I am not done with you. You have more to do in my service…but you will not do it alone.”

R.C. Sproul has pointed out something intriguing about the actual wording at this point in our text.

The English translation of Jesus’ words here doesn’t really grasp the force of what happened. First, it says that Jesus “stood by” him. That is weak. The Greek words indicate that Jesus came and in a sense overshadowed Paul. His presence was enormous. There was Paul cringing in his cell, and suddenly the risen Christ came and hovered over him and said, “Be of good cheer.” The Latin translation uses a word that is the foundation for the English word constancy. This was no glib “Cheer up!” Jesus was saying, “Paul, be constant. Be consistent. Stay with the ministry you have had through all these years, day in and day out.” That is a message we all need to hear. This is how Jesus encouraged His Apostle. If anybody had ever been constant in ministry from the day he was called, it was Paul; yet Jesus had come to him personally and shore him up.[5]

Yes, we all need to hear this challenge to constancy! Many, many years before Sproul’s observation, John Chrysostom asked a question about this text and then answered it.

Why didn’t [Jesus] appear to him before he fell into danger. Because, as always, it is in afflictions that God consoles. For then he appears more desirable, as he trains us even in the midst of dangers.[6]

Oh, Church! “As always, it is in afflictions that God consoles!” It is ok to need encouragement. Paul did! So do we! Live with undaunted courage, knowing that the Lord Jesus stands beside you.

Live unwaveringly as an agent of holy unrest in the midst of an age that is blind to the truth.

And Church, create trouble in this troubled world! Oh, I do not mean mere mischief or trouble for trouble’s sake. I mean, be an agent of sanctified agitation. Live unwaveringly as an agent of holy unrest in the midst of an age that is blind to the truth! See the agitation that seemed to follow Paul:

¹² When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. ¹³ There were more than forty who made this conspiracy. ¹⁴ They went to the chief priests and elders and said, “We have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul. ¹⁵ Now therefore you, along with the council, give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you were going to determine his case more exactly. And we are ready to kill him before he comes near.” ¹⁶ Now the son of Paul’s sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul. ¹⁷ Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the tribune, for he has something to tell him.” ¹⁸ So he took him and brought him to the tribune and said, “Paul the prisoner called me and asked me to bring this young man to you, as he has something to say to you.” ¹⁹ The tribune took him by the hand, and going aside asked him privately, “What is it that you have to tell me?” ²⁰ And he said, “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him. ²¹ But do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him. And now they are ready, waiting for your consent.” ²² So the tribune dismissed the young man, charging him, “Tell no one that you have informed me of these things.” ²³ Then he called two of the centurions and said, “Get ready two hundred soldiers, with seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go as far as Caesarea at the third hour of the night. ²⁴ Also provide mounts for Paul to ride and bring him safely to Felix the governor.” ²⁵ And he wrote a letter to this effect: ²⁶ “Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings. ²⁷ This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them when I came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman citizen. ²⁸ And desiring to know the charge for which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their council. ²⁹ I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. ³⁰ And when it was disclosed to me that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him.” ³¹ So the soldiers, according to their instructions, took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris. ³² And on the next day they returned to the barracks, letting the horsemen go on with him. ³³ When they had come to Caesarea and delivered the letter to the governor, they presented Paul also before him. ³⁴ On reading the letter, he asked what province he was from. And when he learned that he was from Cilicia, ³⁵ he said, “I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive.” And he commanded him to be guarded in Herod’s praetorium.

Say what you will about Paul, but he lived with such unbelievable fidelity to Christ and His gospel that the world could not be complacent around him. You have to be a particular kind of person to have more than forty folk vow not to eat or drink until they succeeded in murdering you! Paul was a sanctified trouble maker! French theologian Jacques Ellul once said, “Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.”[7] Yes, and that dimension that is incompatible with society as it is currently ordered is the Kingdom of God!

Do you see? To be a faithful ambassador and representative of the Kingdom of God is to live in such conflict with the current world order that your mere presence is an agitation. Shane Clairborne has passed on some amazing and inspiring words about this critical dynamic.

[Kaj] Munk was an outspoken priest and playwright who uttered these prophetic words before he was killed, with his Bible next to him, by the Gestapo in January 1944…

What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say – courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature…we lack a holy rage – the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth…To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish…but never the chameleon.[8]

Ah, amen and amen, Church! Live unwaveringly as an agent of holy unrest in the midst of an age that is blind to the truth!

[1] Francis Chan, Crazy Love (Colorado Springs, CO: David Cook, 2008), p.93.

[2] A.T. Robertson, Acts. Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.III (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1930), p.398.

[3] Umberto Eco. Focault’s Pendulum. (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1989), p.315.

[4] Os Guinness. The Devil’s Gauntlet. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989), p.13.

[5] Sproul, R.C. Acts (St. Andrews Expositional Commentary) (Location 5911-5920). Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

[6] Francis Martin, ed. Acts. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament, vol.V. Thomas C. Oden, gen. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.279.

[7] Quoted in Shane Clairborne, The Irresistible Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), p.231.

[8] Shane Clairborne, p.294-295.

It would be hard for me to overstate what the work of Methodist theologian Thomas Oden has meant to me since I first encountered it almost twenty years ago.  Simply put, Oden helped pull me away from the ahistorical fundamentalism of my youth into the exhilarating and liberating fields of orthodoxy and classical Christian truth.  A Change of Heart is Oden’s fascinating tale of his journey into, through, and then out the other side of radical activist theological faddishness on his journey toward orthodoxy.  It is an enthralling tale covering a dizzying array of 20th century theological movements, most of the leaders of which Tom Oden either met, worked with, or knew.  He mentions a lot of names, but amazingly one does not get the feel that he is “name dropping.”  Oden has walked too long a road for such foolishness, and the reader will no doubt see his earnest intentions if he reads this memoir with any sense of charity.

Oden is a man who has thought deeply about Christian truth.  He walked in the fields of radical leftist ideologies for quite some time, contributing to its literature and its institutional manifestations.  He drank deeply from the well of modernity and turned his keen mind toward the defense and advancement of its premises and worldview.  Then a colleague challenged Oden to consider the foundation on which he had built his career to that point. More so, he told Oden that he would never truly be a Christian theologian until he entered the world of the early Church fathers and classical consensual Christianity.  What Oden found there shook him to his core.  He found that these earlier generations of believers were not the simplistic and often grotesque caricatures that the intelligentsia of the radical left had painted them to be.  Rather, they were deeply passionate men and women of God who, while imperfect and prone themselves to error (as are we all), passed on the core of the faith to each successive generation.

Oden was overwhelmed by the beauty of Christianity in its purer forms as opposed to its hyper-modernistic recasting.  As a result, his earlier assumptions and extremes began to give way beneath the deep wellsprings of Christian truth.  It changed the trajectory of his life and, ever since, he has become perhaps the leading Protestant champion of the reclamation of patristic wisdom, conciliar Christian truth, and a robust orthodoxy alive today.

This story is very well told and is insightful, challenging, and convicting.  Of particular interest are the anecdotal stories of Oden’s encounters with the theological giants of the 20th century and of his insider’s look at the workings of leftist theological institutional life.  Furthermore, his account of how the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (of which he is editor) came to be is fascinating as is his explanation of his current work on the history of African Christianity.

Oden is an elderly man now, but it is clear that his mind is still sharp and his heart attuned to the beauty of the gospel.  The Church today is stronger because of the work and insights of men like Oden.  I, for one, am deeply appreciative of the man and his work and wish him many more long years and published works!

Acts 21:40-22:30

⁴⁰ And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the steps, motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the Hebrew language, saying: ¹ “Brothers and fathers, hear the defense that I now make before you.” ² And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even more quiet. And he said: ³ “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day. ⁴ I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, ⁵ as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished. ⁶ “As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. ⁷ And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ⁸ And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ ⁹ Now those who were with me saw the light but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me. ¹⁰ And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ ¹¹ And since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus. ¹² “And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, ¹³ came to me, and standing by me said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him. ¹⁴ And he said, ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth; ¹⁵ for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard. ¹⁶ And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’ ¹⁷ “When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance ¹⁸ and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ ¹⁹ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. ²⁰ And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’ ²¹ And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” ²² Up to this word they listened to him. Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” ²³ And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, ²⁴ the tribune ordered him to be brought into the barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging, to find out why they were shouting against him like this. ²⁵ But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?” ²⁶ When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.” ²⁷ So the tribune came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” And he said, “Yes.” ²⁸ The tribune answered, “I bought this citizenship for a large sum.” Paul said, “But I am a citizen by birth.” ²⁹ So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him. ³⁰ But on the next day, desiring to know the real reason why he was being accused by the Jews, he unbound him and commanded the chief priests and all the council to meet, and he brought Paul down and set him before them.

On March 2, 2004, the American theologian Avery Cardinal Dulles delivered the McGinley Lecture at Fordham University. It was entitled “The Rebirth of Apologetics.” That is a word we need to learn: apologetics. Apologetics refers to the act of defending the Christian faith. A Christian apologist is somebody who gives particular attention to defending the faith and countering arguments against the Christian faith with the truth of the gospel. There are people who have this as their primary ministry, but, in truth, every Christian needs to be an apologist.

Dulles’ lecture, “The Rebirth of Apologetics,” dealt with the question of how the Christian Church has defended the Christian faith over the last two thousand years and how it should seek to defend the Christian faith today. It was a very interesting lecture filled with very interesting insights. He shared how in earlier periods of Church history different approaches to defending the faith took center stage: some of them philosophical and some of them argumentative and some of them confronting particular heretical ideas or non-Christian religions that seemed to be threatening the Church at particular times or in particular places. In his lecture, after outlining the history of Christian apologetics, Dulles proposed that the future of Christian apologetics, the future of how we will most effectively defend the faith, will be through the sharing of testimonies. That is, we will best defend the faith by telling our stories about our personal relationships with Jesus.[1]

Church, there is something powerful about the story of how you came to Jesus and what difference He has made in your life! Do you remember the great old hymn “Blessed Assurance”? In 1873, Fanny Crosby wrote this hymn. Notice the words of it.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Perfect submission, perfect delight, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels, descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

And after each stanza, the refrain:

This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song, 
Praising my Savior all the day long.

Yes, “This is my story, this is my song!”

We need to regain a sense of the beauty and power of telling our stories, our testimonies. Some of you may be hearing this and may be thinking, “I do not have a story. I do not even know Jesus!” To you I would like to say, “You can begin your story today! You can accept Jesus today! Today could be the first chapter of your story with Jesus!”

I also realize that some of you are thinking, “Oh, I know all about these testimonies. The really good ones involve people who have done truly terrible things, who met Jesus in unbelievably shocking ways, and who have then had amazing, public ministries as a result! My story is nothing like that. I was raised in a Christian home and came to know Jesus at a very early life. My testimony is boring! Nobody would want to hear that!”

To anybody here today who is saying that, may I share with you some words from Megan Hill? She wrote these in an article she entitled, “My Boring Christian Testimony,” in Christianity Today.

There is no dull salvation. The Son of God took on flesh to suffer and die, purchasing a people for his glory. As Gloria Furman writes, “The idea that anyone’s testimony of blood-bought salvation could be uninteresting or unspectacular is a defamation of the work of Christ.”[2]

To that I say, “Amen!”

Again, there is great power in telling your story! For instance, in our text today, the Apostle Paul is standing before a very large, very angry crowd of people who want to kill him. He begs permission to be able to address this hostile crowd. When it is granted, the people, and all of us, wait on the edge of our seats to see what this infamous Paul will say. Will he deliver a three point sermon? Will he wax eloquent with a profound philosophical discourse? Will he attack and berate the people? What will he do?

Here is what he does: he tells his story. Watch and see how Paul chose to defend the faith by giving his testimony.

Your story about your relationship with Jesus is your greatest defense of the truth of the gospel.

Let us begin by first noting that Paul viewed his testimony as a defense and not simply a story.

⁴⁰ And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the steps, motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the Hebrew language, saying: ¹ “Brothers and fathers, hear the defense that I now make before you.” ² And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even more quiet. And he said:

Paul, addressing the audience in their native tongue, said, “hear the defense that I now make before you.” Do you remember that I began this sermon talking about apologetics? Well here is that word. The word “defense” is the Greek word apologia. Tellingly, Paul uses it to describe his testimony. That is, his testimony, his story, was his apologia, his defense.

One thing we must realize is that the idea of an apologia, a defense, was well known in the ancient world. In the Roman Empire it had become popular for speakers to give an apologia, a defense of oneself. It was fashionable because it was associated with Socrates and so had a kind of cultural authority. In the wider culture of the time, historians tell us that an apologia was a rhetorical device, “a strategic vehicle through which individuals were able to ‘write the self’ or perform idealized cultural identities.” Furthermore, “the apologia was a rhetorical opportunity for sophists to present highly stylized versions of themselves in imagined scenarios” in order to “present themselves in culturally authoritative ways.”[3]

That is most interesting. We must note that Paul used a device that was well known at the time. However, contrary to how some sophists or mere rhetoricians might have made their apologias, Paul was in no way seeking crassly to “present [a] highly stylized version of [himself] in [an] imagined scenario.” He was, however, seeking to “write the self,” because what had happened to him was real and life-changing. Furthermore, it was so real that he could stand confidently on what had happened to him and say to everybody who would listen, “You need this too! You need this Jesus too!”

Please note: Paul sees his story as his defense.

We should too.

Why is your story, your testimony, also your best apologia? Because nobody can take away from you what happened to you when you met Jesus. Theoretical arguments can be dismissed and philosophical proposals can be shrugged off, but the story of how you met Jesus and what difference it has made in your life carries a power that goes right to the hearts of all who will listen.

Some of you are afraid to share your faith. Tell your story! Some of you worry about whether or not you will be asked a question that you cannot answer. Tell your story!

Would you like to see an amazing example of the stubborn power of personal testimony? Consider the man born blind who Jesus healed in John 9. He was healed by Jesus and the religious authorities were angry about it so they approached the man and tried to slander Jesus and engage the man in an argument. Watch how this unfolded.

¹⁸ The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight ¹⁹ and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” ²⁰ His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. ²¹ But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” ²² (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) ²³ Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” ²⁴ So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” ²⁵ He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” ²⁶ They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” ²⁷ He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” ²⁸ And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. ²⁹ We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” ³⁰ The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. ³¹ We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. ³² Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. ³³ If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” ³⁴ They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.

Ha! I love it! You can hear the utter frustration in the voices of his critics when the man just goes back to his story time and again. “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

Oh, Church, we do indeed need to learn theology and doctrine and the deep things of God. There is no excuse to be willfully ignorant of the truths of Jesus. But may I say that if all you have is your story, then tell it and know that God can work through it! You do not need a PhD in theology to tell your story! You do not have to be Thomas Aquinas to tell your story! You do not have to know the ordo salutis, what a good definition of the hypostatic union is, what apophatic theology is, what supralapsarianism, antelapsarianism, infralapsarianism, sublapsarianism, or postlapsarianism is, what theophany is, what the exact calibrations and formulations of Trinitarian theology are, what perichoresis is, what transubstantiation is, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whether or not Adam had a belly button to tell your story!

We can grow in our understanding of theological truths, and we should, but, at the least, we should have a story. And, if we do, that story has power! D.L. Moody, the great Chicago preacher of yesteryear, put it like this:

You ask me to explain regeneration. I cannot do it. But one thing I know: that I have been regenerated. All the infidels and skeptics could not make me feel differently. I feel a different man than I did twenty-one years ago last March, when God gave me a new heart. I have not sworn since that night, and I have no desire to swear. I delight to labor for God, and all the influences of the world cannot convince me that I am not a different man.[4]

Simply awesome! Your best defense of the truth of the gospel of Jesus is your own story of how Jesus has changed your life!

Your story should have three key elements.

And what should your story sound like? Well, it is uniquely your story so it will not sound just like anybody else’s. So stop beating yourself up that your story does not sound like the stories of others. Each is unique! Even so, a Christian’s story should generally have three basic elements:

1. An awareness of your need for Jesus.
2. How you came to know Jesus.
3. What difference knowing Jesus has made in your life.

1. An awareness of your need for Jesus.

When Paul began to tell his story to the watching, listening crowd, he began by telling them that he was once far from Jesus and needed a Savior.

³ “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day. ⁴ I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, ⁵ as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished.

Do you see? Paul is trying to say that he was not always as he is now. There was a time when he did not know Jesus. In fact, there was a time when he hated the things of Christ and actively sought to stomp out the Christian movement!

Church, however your story unfolds, it should have somewhere in its telling an awareness on your part that you needed Jesus, that you would be lost in your sins and rebellions without Jesus! For Paul, it was persecution. For all of us, it is something. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

At this point I think that many of us who grew up Christians sometimes struggle. We hear dramatic testimonies of horrible crimes committed and we think, “I accepted Jesus when I was a child. I knew I needed him but I did not have a prison record or a drug habit or a violent past. But I knew I needed him!”

That is the key: you knew you needed him. I daresay that a child can come to know that he needs a Savior. To be sure, he or she will grow in greater awareness of this need, but a child can know he or she is a sinner.

I speak from experience. When my mother and father sat on the side of my bed and led me to Jesus as a six or seven year old boy, I had committed no great crime in the eyes of man, but I had in my own heart. Believe me when I tell you that when my parents told me I needed forgiveness I could say even at that age with as much sincerity as a prisoner on death row that I did need it. Even then I knew that my little heart wanted to do what I wanted to do and was bent toward every kind of wickedness.

Had I known these words from William Faulkner at that age I would have agreed with him:

When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they don’t really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size.[5]

Pessimistic, you say? Not for me. And not for you.

My point is this: you do not have to have been to jail to be a criminal. You may laugh, but when I stole a sucker from the Piggly Wiggly of Sumter, SC, as a boy I waited until my mother was not looking before I did it. Are stealing suckers and committing mass murder different things? Yes, but only as a matter of degree.

If you have truly accepted Christ that means that you knew you needed to do so. If you have never felt the need to do so then in what sense is He your Savior? But if you have felt the need for Christ, if you have felt conviction over your sins, whether as a child or as an elderly person, then you can tell that part of your story. It is your story!

2. How you came to know Christ.

Paul then tells how he came to receive Jesus. His story was, of course, jaw-droppingly dramatic.

⁶ “As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. ⁷ And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ⁸ And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ ⁹ Now those who were with me saw the light but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me. ¹⁰ And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ ¹¹ And since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus. ¹² “And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, ¹³ came to me, and standing by me said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him.

Not all of us have been struck to the ground before the revealed Christ, but all of us need to know that we have received and accepted Him, that we have met the Lord Jesus. Sometimes this is dramatic and sometimes this is not. Sometimes this happens later in life and sometimes it does not. Some people can give you the date and time and what they were wearing when they accepted Christ and others simply know that they have accepted Jesus, that He is their Lord.

Once again, do not beat yourself up over the fact that your way of coming to receive Christ was not like others’ ways. The Puritan Thomas Watson said this:

The Lord does not tie himself to a particular way, or use the same order with all. He comes sometimes in a still small voice. Such as have had godly parents, and have sat under the warm sunshine of religious education, often do not know how or when they were called. The Lord did secretly and gradually instil [sic] grace into their hearts, as dew falls unnoticed in drops.[6]

I believe this is well said. I have had two occasions in the last couple of weeks to talk to people who know they love the Lord and know that He is Lord of their lives but who struggle to remember the exact moment of their conversion. But they know they have been converted. So I have asked them, “Do you love Jesus now? Is He your Lord? Does Jesus reside within you as Savior and King? Then follow Him. Walk with Him. Stop worrying about the template that we have created for how exactly you should come to know him and follow your King.”

I recently reminded a young believer of the words of Paul from 1 Corinthians 12:3. “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” If you can claim “Jesus is Lord!” as the truth, then walk in the power of the indwelling Spirit and in the name of the King who was slain and yet Who rose again!

Yes, some of us have had dramatic moments and some of us were raised in the faith and took the hand of Christ along and along beginning early in life. But here is the key: both are examples of coming to know Christ.

To be a Christian is to have a relationship with Jesus. There are people who mouthed a formulaic prayer in their youth who have no relationship with Jesus. There are others who are fuzzier on the exact moment but know they have a relationship with Jesus. Your story, no matter what twists and turns it has made, needs to include how you came to know Jesus, be it a Damascus Road experience like Paul or the warm love of a Christian household that brought you up in Christ.

Tell your story, and be sure to tell how your relationship with Jesus came to be!

3. What difference knowing Jesus has made in your life.

And tell what difference it has made. Paul moved from telling of his life before Christ, to telling of his fateful meeting with Christ, to telling of what coming to know Christ meant for the rest of His life.

¹⁴ And he said, ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth; ¹⁵ for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard. ¹⁶ And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’ ¹⁷ “When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance ¹⁸ and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ ¹⁹ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. ²⁰ And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’ ²¹ And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”

Do you see the calling that God put on Paul’s life? “You will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard.” So the first calling of the believer is to bear witness to your own story of coming to know Christ. We might say that this as the general calling for all believers. And specifically, in verse 21, the Lord told Paul that He would send him “far away to the Gentiles.”

On the road to Damascus, Paul met Jesus and Jesus turned his whole life around. So this is what Paul shared with the Jews. He simply told his story. Did they receive his story? No.

²² Up to this word they listened to him. Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” ²³ And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, ²⁴ the tribune ordered him to be brought into the barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging, to find out why they were shouting against him like this. ²⁵ But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?” ²⁶ When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.” ²⁷ So the tribune came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” And he said, “Yes.” ²⁸ The tribune answered, “I bought this citizenship for a large sum.” Paul said, “But I am a citizen by birth.” ²⁹ So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him. ³⁰ But on the next day, desiring to know the real reason why he was being accused by the Jews, he unbound him and commanded the chief priests and all the council to meet, and he brought Paul down and set him before them.

They did not receive Paul’s story, but even in their rejection they demonstrated the power of testimony: “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.”

If you tell your story, some will trust and believe and others might want you to be blotted from the face of the earth, but this much is certain: no one who hears it will be indifferent. Why? Because it is your story, and you are a living and breathing human being, and you are recounting the amazing tale of how Christ got ahold of your life! Not all will like it, but all to whom you say it will hear how the risen Christ changed you and will be confronted with the powerful challenge of a life forever altered.

Church, hear me: tell your story! It is the greatest defense of the truth of the gospel of Christ!

[1] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/05/the-rebirth-of-apologetics

[2] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/december/how-i-know-my-testimony-is-real.html?start=3

[3] Ryan Carhart, “The Second Sophistic and the cultural idealization of Paul in Acts.” Engaging Early Christian History: Reading Acts in the Second Century. Eds., Ruben R. Dupertuis and Todd Penner (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), p.199.

[4] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/08/what-narrative-theology-forgot

[5] William Faulkner. The Reivers. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p.46.

[6] Quoted in https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/december/how-i-know-my-testimony-is-real.html?start=3

Acts 21:17-39

¹⁷ When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. ¹⁸ On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. ²⁰ And when they heard it, they glorified God. And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, ²¹ and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. ²² What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. ²³ Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; ²⁴ take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law. ²⁵ But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.” ²⁶ Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them. ²⁷ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, ²⁸ crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” ²⁹ For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. ³⁰ Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. ³¹ And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. ³² He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. ³³ Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done. ³⁴ Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. ³⁵ And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, ³⁶ for the mob of the people followed, crying out, “Away with him!” ³⁷ As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, “May I say something to you?” And he said, “Do you know Greek? ³⁸ Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” ³⁹ Paul replied, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.”

In 1742, Charles Wesley wrote the hymn that we today know as “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.” Consider its depiction of Christ.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child;

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to Thee.

Fain I would to Thee be brought,

Dearest God, forbid it not;

Give me, dearest God, a place

In the kingdom of Thy grace

Lamb of God, I look to Thee;

Thou shalt my Example be;

Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;

Thou wast once a little child.

Fain I would be as Thou art;

Give me Thine obedient heart;

Thou art pitiful and kind,

Let me have Thy loving mind.

Let me, above all, fulfill

God my heav’nly Father’s will;

Never His good Spirit grieve;

Only to His glory live.

Thou didst live to God alone;

Thou didst never seek Thin own;

Thou Thyself didst never please:

God was all Thy happiness.

Loving Jesus, gentle Lamb,

In Thy gracious hands I am;

Make me, Savior, what Thou art,

Live Thyself within my heart.

I shall then show forth Thy praise,

Serve Thee all my happy days;

Then the world shall always see

Christ, the holy Child, in me.

I am very hesitant to critique a hymn by the brilliant and godly Charles Wesley. After all, in the right context and stressed to the right proportion, this is a perfectly biblical vision of Jesus. Furthermore, it is likely that in the mid 1700’s this picture of Jesus may have been needed to balance a predominantly stern or hard vision of Christ. Who knows?

But read in our day it gives one pause. If earlier ages of the Church depicted Jesus as overly stern or hard or wrathful, our age has a vision of Jesus that is so saccharine it is hard to call it “biblical” at all. In other words, take that hymn and drop it into a modern worship pep rally with its vaguely biblical but largely therapeutic sermons, its consumerism, its sentimentalized and Americanized Jesus, and its general demeanor of a carefree euphoria and obliviousness and that hymn will positively turn your stomach.

Again, the problem is not calling Jesus “meek” and “mild.” Both are biblical virtues held in balance by all other biblical virtues. The problem is our culture can only conceive of a mild Jesus. Wesley’s words have a point, but they ought not be taken to eclipse the words of Christ about Himself in, say, Matthew 10.

³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Meek? Yes. Mild? Properly understood, perhaps. But also divisive, controversial, incendiary, world-changing, and conflict bringing! Jesus is all of these things.

Paul came to understand these latter realities when faced with the response of both non-Christian and even some Christian Jews in Jerusalem when he returned to Church there. He learned that following Jesus can mean great and difficult interpersonal conflicts with people you love. In truth, largely as a result of Paul’s astounding missionary efforts, the entire Church found itself in a precarious situation with the Jewish people. This led to some awkwardness as well as, as we shall see, some careful efforts to clarify what it is the Church was and was not saying.

The Jewish believers within the early Church walked a fine line between proclaiming the completeness of the work of Christ for our salvation and not needlessly offending the sensibilities of Jews seeking to honor the Law.

To call this line “a fine line” is an understatement. It was an outright dangerous line, as Paul already knew and as the Church at large would soon learn. The occasion for this latest controversy came with Paul’s return to Jerusalem.

¹⁷ When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. ¹⁸ On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. ^20a And when they heard it, they glorified God.

These beginning verses are crucial for helping us understand a very important truth: there was no division between James and Paul or between the Jerusalem church and Paul. They genuinely praised God for what was happening among the Gentiles. Many people have tried to suggest a conflict between James and Paul and I would like to point out that such an idea is uncharitable to James.

Even so, James was situated in the Jerusalem church and his daily reality was having to negotiate exactly what it meant for Jews to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord. Furthermore, the news of Paul’s great missionary journeys, while profoundly exciting for all believers who heard it, was creating some tense situations in and around the mother church of Jerusalem as James explained to Paul.

^20b And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, ²¹ and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. ²² What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.

So the problem becomes clearer. It is important that you read carefully what James is saying. He is saying that many Jews who have accepted Christ (“who have believed”) want to follow Jesus but still have an appreciation for the Law and the customs of Israel. We know, of course, that there were some Jews who actually tried to import adherence to the Law into the gospel itself thereby announcing that one had to accept Jesus and be circumcised and keep the dietary laws and observe all the feasts, etc. But this does not seem to be the case here. What seems to be happening here is that some Jews were coming to Jesus and were still wanting to honor the ceremonial law – temple worship, circumcision, the food laws – but did not necessarily see this as saving.

In other words, we should make a distinction between Jewish believers who tried to add to the gospel and Jewish believers who understood the gospel but still sought to live as observant Jews and honor the customs of the Jews. And what needs to be understood is that neither Paul nor anybody else in the early Church was saying that this was, in and of itself, a problem. On the contrary, Paul himself held to this to some extent as evidenced by his having taken a Nazirite vow just before his last trip to Jerusalem.

Paul understood perfectly well that Christ and Christ alone saves us. Furthermore, Paul saw the Law as revealing to us our sinfulness and need for a Savior. Paul did not hate or disparage the Law. Rather, he saw it as limited in terms of what it could accomplish, but as having certain useful functions. The Law could condemn but it could not save.

What is more, as Paul went to the Gentiles and began to see more and more non-Jews come to Christ, he made it abundantly clear (as, we should note, did James and the earlier Jerusalem Council), that it was not necessary for non-Jewish Christians to become Jews. Therefore, it was not necessary for Gentiles to be circumcised, to keep kosher, etc.

The situation was made even more complex, however, by the fact that the missionary churches Paul was planting oftentimes had both Jewish and Gentile Christians. This fact may have been the situation that gave rise to the false rumor James reported that Paul was telling Jewish believers to abandon Moses and the Law. In reality, though, while Paul absolutely exalted Christ as the Savior of all who would come to Him, and while Paul also pointed out the limitations of the Law for the Jews, and while Paul did not bind Gentile converts to the Law, he had never told Jewish believers that they had to abandon their observance of the customs of the Jews. He had only called upon them to understand these things more clearly in the light of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ! However, some Jewish believers may have been softening their adherence to the traditional customs as they were cast out of their synagogues and entered churches with Gentile members.

John Polhill has summarized the situation probably as succinctly as it can be summarized:

In short, Paul saw one’s status in Christ as transcending the distinction between Jew and Gentile (Gal 3:28). Being in Christ neither required that the Gentile become a Jew nor that the Jew cease to be a Jew (cf. 1 Cor 9:19f.). Still, there may have been a grain of truth in the rumor that Paul was encouraging Jews of the Diaspora to abandon the Torah. It would not have been Paul’s having actually urged the Jews to do so but rather the social situation of Paul’s Diaspora churches. In the Diaspora, Jews who became Christians would almost inevitably have transferred form the synagogue to the predominantly Gentile churches. Acts 19:9 would indicate that this had been the case in Ephesus. Having left the base of support for their Jewish identity in the synagogue, there would be the natural inclination to adapt to the ways of the Gentile majority in the Christian churches. Whether or not this was the case, Paul himself had not urged Jewish Christians to abandon the Torah, and there is no evidence that the elders themselves lent any credence to the allegations.[1]

The rumors in Jerusalem about Paul were therefore false. But perception is 9/10^ths reality, as they say, so James and the other leaders were wondering if Paul might could take some action to help squelch the rumors and to assure Jewish believers in Christ that they were not in error to keep the customs and observances of the Jews. Here was their proposal:

²³ Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; ²⁴ take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law. ²⁵ But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.”

This is a most fascinating proposal. Tellingly, on the question of Gentile believers, James and the other elders upheld the earlier decision of the Jerusalem Council and did not ask that they become Jews. On the question of Jewish believers and, specifically, of those who had heard rumors of Paul disparaging the Law, James had an intriguing proposal concerning a way for Paul to clarify his position. Four of the Jewish converts in the Church had taken a Nazirite vow that, as we have seen, required them to abstain from cutting their hair, drinking wine, or coming into contact with dead bodies for thirty days. At the end of the thirty days, they were to make a sacrifice at the temple, offering their hair as part of it in completion of the vow. James asked Paul to join with them, defraying the expenses associated with their vow, and undergoing purification himself as a sign of understanding and approval. Paul’s purification should likely be differentiated from the Nazirite vow these Jewish brothers took and was probably associated with Paul’s having just come back from Gentile lands and extensive contact with Gentiles.

Paul’s response to this idea is quite moving.

²⁶ Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them.

In other words, he did what was proposed. He underwent purification himself and prepared to pay their expenses.

What does this tell us about Paul? For one thing, it tells us that Paul, while understanding the freedom he had in Christ, was willing to give up those freedoms for the sake of weaker brothers. F.F. Bruce put it beautifully when he said, “a truly emancipated spirit such as Paul’s is not in bondage to its own emancipation.”[2] I love that!

To insist on your rights simply because you have them with no regard to where other believers are in their own journeys is a most selfish thing to do. Furthermore, to insist on your freedoms simply because you have them with no regard for how the exercise of those freedoms may cause weaker brothers to stumble is callousness.

Did Paul have to undergo purification in the temple? No. He knew he had been cleansed by Christ. But he did so in order not to cause offense on a non-salvific issue among brothers who still highly prized these aspects of the Jewish customs. Paul would address his approach most clearly in 1 Corinthians 9.

¹⁹ For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. ²⁰ To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. ²¹ To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. ²³ I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

So there is a powerful example of humility for the sake of the body of Christ in Paul’s agreement to this proposal. It should give us pause. How attuned are we to the spiritual growth of our brothers and sisters? Do we consider where they are and what we can do to help them in their growth? Are we willing to abstain from certain freedoms for the sake of helping others in the Church? Do we insist on our rights, our freedoms, our desires, or do we value others as more important than ourselves? Paul valued others.

Paul’s actions also demonstrate something else about Paul. Ajith Fernando writes, “We cannot be certain whether this act was a mistake. But it shows us how serious Paul was about preserving unity in the body of Christ.”[3] “Serious” is a good way to describe it. This was serious business to Paul. It mattered whether or not the Church fractured on this point. For Paul, such a fracturing was unnecessary, so he made concessions to keep the believers together.

That fine line ultimately proved very difficult to walk and led to a break between Judaism and Christianity.

Paul, then, attempted to foster peace and understanding by agreeing to James’ proposal. Unfortunately, things did not go well.

²⁷ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him,

Notice who these Jews are. They are “Jews from Asia.” Why is that significant? Because Ephesus was in Asia. In other words, these were Jews from the territory where Paul spent three years ministering. These were Jews, in other words, who had seen the comingling of Jewish and Gentile believers and had seen the disruption of the synagogues that the preaching of the gospel caused. So they had an ax to grind. Thus, seeing Paul in the temple, they made their move.

²⁸ crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” ²⁹ For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.

The Jews drew attention to Paul and slandered him. Paul had never spoken “against” the Jews, the law, or the temple, though his preaching of the gospel had implications for all of these. Most slanderous of all was their outright false assertion that Paul took Trophimus the Ephesian, a non-Jewish man, into the temple. It was strictly forbidden to take Gentiles past the court of the Gentiles. Archeologists have discovered two markers that were in the temple of this time warning Gentiles that they would be put to death if they ventured further into the temple. But Paul had, in fact, not taken Trophimus in. He was likely just seen in the Court of the Gentiles with him and they pinned this allegation on him on that basis.

Regardless, it had the desired effect.

³⁰ Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. ³¹ And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. ³² He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. ³³ Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done. ³⁴ Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. ³⁵ And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, ³⁶ for the mob of the people followed, crying out, “Away with him!” ³⁷ As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, “May I say something to you?” And he said, “Do you know Greek? ³⁸ Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” ³⁹ Paul replied, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.”

Another riot ensued, and this time Paul was saved by the Roman soldiers stationed near the temple. Our text ends with Paul asking permission to speak to the angry crowd, which he does, but what is most telling at this point are the words from the latter half of verse 30: “They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut.”

That phrase, “and at once the gates were shut,” is likely saying more than it seems. In fact, this was the beginning of the end of the Jewish-Christian attempt to live at peace as observant Jews who followed Jesus. The gate was shut on Paul and it would soon be shut on the Church.

F.F. Bruce quotes T. D. Bernard as saying in his 1864 Bampton Lectures, “‘Believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets’ and ‘having committed nothing against the people or customs of [his] fathers’, he [Paul] and his creed are forced from their proper home. On it as well as him the temple doors are shut.” To which Bruce adds:

For Luke himself, this may have been the moment when the Jerusalem temple ceased to fill the honorable role hitherto ascribed to it in his twofold history. The exclusion of God’s message and messenger from the house once called by his name sealed its doom: it was now ripe for the destruction which Jesus had predicted for it many years before (Luke 21:6).[4]

Not too long after this, the temple would be destroyed. Furthermore, the Jews would formally cast out those Jews who professed faith in Christ. This, in other words, was the beginning in the end.

In this sense, the attempt to calm the tension in the city failed. In another sense, however, it was a success: in the sense that Paul, the great missionary to the Gentiles, had demonstrated deep sensitivity to the complexities of life for the Jewish believers and had been willing to humble himself, without compromising the gospel, for the greater good of the body of Christ.

That, friends, is an example worth imitating.

[1] Polhill, Acts, p.117. Robertson, Acts, p.36. Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), p.448.

[2] Quoted in Stott, John (2014-04-02). The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today Series) (Kindle Location 6305). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

[3] Fernando, Ajith (2010-12-21). Acts (The NIV Application Commentary) (p. 511). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[4] Bruce, F.F. (1988-06-30). The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) (p. 410). Eerdmans Publishing Co – A. Kindle Edition.